I was lucky enough to grow up as the third child of a family obsessed with lego. Some of my fondest memories are digging through all the loose parts my mother kept in rubbermaid containers and building anything I could imagine with my brothers. Those pieces all started life as a bunch of different sets, but the whole point of lego for me was that the sets can be a springboard to create anything you can imagine.

Plus, nothing's stopping you from buying lots of loose pieces. I'm not sure if it's still the case, but you used to be able to just buy whole boxes of bricks of different colors or shapes from lego.