Lego breaks ground on first US manufacturing facility

Re:Lego breaks ground on first US manufacturing facility by TedDoesntTalk on Sunday April 23, 2023 @04:02PM (#35679939)

I’ve posted before that Lego in the USA in the 1970s consisted of multi-colored bricks of different sizes. That’s it. And usually someone replies “You’re wrong” and points to some Lego mini-figure or elaborate kit that existed in the US in the 70s but in reality, I never ever saw one and neither me nor any of my friends ever had anything besides basic bricks. It’s like there is some alternate 1970s Lego reality that other children must have lived. Or revisionist history.

I think there were jet packs in the 1970s, too. But I never knew anyone who owned one.

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Re:Lego breaks ground on first US manufacturing facility by majormajor on Sunday April 23, 2023 @04:09PM (#35679995)

The 90s are when fancy sets with specialized pieces REALLY took off. The 90s space stuff compared with the 80s was a big shift.

But that's still 30 years ago so Lego has been fancy pieces and custom kits for a couple generations of kids now.

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Re:Lego breaks ground on first US manufacturing facility by gtop3 on Sunday April 23, 2023 @05:23PM (#35680774)

> But that's still 30 years ago so Lego has been fancy pieces and custom kits for a couple generations of kids now.

You can get a 790 piece big box of Lego brand plastic building blocks on Amazon for $35. These types of collections tend to end up in yard sells, or passed around extended families because they last longer than a single childhood. The none-fancy Lego branded blocks still exist, and are still a common part of childhood in America. Lego just doesn't have to market them as hard, and the sale volume is naturally lower.

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Re:Lego breaks ground on first US manufacturing facility by majormajor on Sunday April 23, 2023 @06:44PM (#35681447)

Sure, and my young relatives do things basically the same as I did: have a stable of "common" bricks + a bunch of specialty models.

Then when you get bored with the specialty model as-it-is, the pieces go in the bins and you remix them with everything else :)

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Re:Lego breaks ground on first US manufacturing facility by nicoburns on Sunday April 23, 2023 @06:56PM (#35681560)

They push the sets pretty hard. I know someone who ran a toy shop, and Lego wouldn’t sell them plain brick packets unless they bought a certain number of expensive sets.

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Re:Lego breaks ground on first US manufacturing facility by LudwigNagasena on Monday April 24, 2023 @12:12AM (#35683578)

I think in 00s they didn’t abuse special pieces so much as they do now. Their sets looked more like “see what can be done with our pieces” rather than ”you have to buy this exact set because only it contains the pieces you need to build it”.

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Re:Lego breaks ground on first US manufacturing facility by vidarh on Monday April 24, 2023 @03:46AM (#35684764)

There are very sets that contains exclusives, and then usually minifigs, and you can also pick and buy individual pieces. But they are certainly leaning far more into the special pieces. That said, there even when I was buying LEGO sets for myself or begging for them for christmas and birthdays in the early 1980's, it was still on the basis on wanting a specific set because of how they made it look assembled, not for "just" the collection of bricks.

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Re:Lego breaks ground on first US manufacturing facility by vidarh on Monday April 24, 2023 @03:37AM (#35684707)

I agree it was mostly basic that early, but already by the 80's, LEGO ads were full of elaborate sets. Not nearly as elaborate as now, but certainly much more. The proportion of special pieces in each set were certainly much smaller, and made getting those special pieces a lot more exciting.

This [1] from LEGO Movie specifically plays on the 1980's space sets, for example, and I personally had quite a few of these [2] sets in the early 80's.

[1] https://www.lego.com/en-gb/product/benny-s-space-squad-70841

[2] http://www.doubledumbassonyou.com/2016/02/19/lets-enjoy-a-lo...

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Re:Lego breaks ground on first US manufacturing facility by TedDoesntTalk on Monday April 24, 2023 @08:33AM (#35686851)

Great! But the comment was about the 1970s.

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Re:Lego breaks ground on first US manufacturing facility by vidarh on Monday April 24, 2023 @08:53AM (#35687059)

Yes, but the comment above yours was not, and hence the discussion is not confined to just that. My point being that this changed a very long time ago. It's not 1970s vs now but 1970s and before vs the last 40 years.

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