[sbecker]

Just to provide some counterpoint to the echo chamber here - as a Dad of a six year old who played with legos as a kid and again now, I can affirm - Legos and the sets they put out now are way cooler now than when I was a kid!

You might worry that the less general purpose, specialized pieces might stunt creativity, but guess what!? The 6 year old has no problem taking them completely apart and building something off script.

It's the olds who worry about keeping them all together and not losing the pieces so they can still make the thing on the front of the box. The kids don't care and will happily take it all apart and build things we never would have thought of.

[pbhjpbhj]

It's definitely variable, some children will not go off-script, others barely want to stay on script long enough to do the box-image build.

Certainly in our house I (as dad) am more relaxed about playing with the stuff than building "the" model; that's fun too but you might as well use the Kragle if you're not going to mod it or tear it down and build something else...

[dudul]

The new sets are more complex and detailed, but god do I hate the franchised sets. Nothing kills kids creativity more than that. It's not a pirate ship, it is Jack Sparrow's pirate ship. It's not a spaceship, it's Luke Skywalker's spaceship!

Additionally, the quality of parts has seriously decreased since the 80s and 90s.

[saulrh]

I disagree wrt licensed IPs.

There's no single right "amount" of structure to provide to inspire creativity. Different works of art, different moods, different people, different days, will all "want" different starting points. Sometimes you want to experiment with basic geometry and it's useful to start from a bucket of raw parts. Sometimes you want to dig into stories and characters and it's useful to start with something that already exists. And because you can always remove structure from a situation - Legos can always be broken down into the bucket of raw parts! - more highly structured sets strictly expand the available range by pushing out the high end.

Even more than that, kids are learning how to be creative, and having some structure to start from helps a huge amount for a beginner. If you hand a blank piece of paper to someone who's never written anybody and tell them to be creative they'll never even be able to start. If you give them something to start from they'll have a much easier time. Even as expertise builds and you pull back on the guidance it's still incredibly useful to have new material injected from outside your own bubble of experience. Concretely, when you're just getting started it's a hell of a lot easier to learn that you can have a different person win a lightsaber fight than it is to write all your own characters from whole cloth, and when you're trying to learn how people work it's absolutely necessary to examine characters and stories that you didn't make up and that don't just confirm your own preconceptions and biases.

If I wanted to summarize my opinions, I think that playing with licensed-IP Lego sets is actually a critical step in the development of creativity because it lets you get started on more complicated topics earlier, makes you less afraid to adapt existing works, and provides inspiration and outside influence to break filter bubbles. I would compare it in many ways to writing fanfiction, and in a very literal sense it absolutely is.

[yreg]

> Nothing kills kids creativity more than that. It's not a pirate ship, it is Jack Sparrow's pirate ship. It's not a spaceship, it's Luke Skywalker's spaceship!

Why do you think so? I had a Hogwarts Express set and most of the time I didn't pretend for it to be the Hogwarts Express when playing.

[dudul]

Good for you. That's a data set of 1.

I based that on empirical observation of my kids' friends. They don't make up stories, they just replay the star wars or Harry Potter movies. So I don't know, a dozen kids or so. I haven't done a nation wide study yet.

[ilinx]

“The new sets are more complex and detailed, but god do I hate the franchised sets. Nothing kills kids creativity more than that.”

I haven’t noticed this with my son, fortunately. What I have noticed is that franchised characters immediately detach from their property when they enter his LEGO world. Lately I think Chewbacca has been dating an elderly woman, and every time Luke Skywalker talks about the rebellion his hair falls off. We have a Porg that runs a food delivery service with a Goomba and Harry Potter. I played in a similar way when I was a kid. I think in many cases the characters can be jumping off points, but a lot of kids take plenty of liberties from there.

[rvba]

The "ecological" parts are no longer bulletproof. What is not ecological, but I guess they want you to throw away bricks and buy new ones.

[dudul]

I don't know, they have a service online to order replacements for lost or broken pieces for free. I use it 2 or 3 times a year, they never question it and just ship the pieces.

[yreg]

No one in their right mind throws away lego.

[jansan]

Having two teenage boys I cannot confirm this. They play with other stuff, but Lego is for building once and putting it on a shelf, where it will collect thick layers of dust. My sons never really played with Lego, which I found a bit disappointing.

[Navarr]

I wouldn't say that it stifles creativity, but expands LEGO to people who don't want to be creative with it.

You can treat it as a fun 3D Puzzle with step-by-step, or you can do whatever you want with it.

Neither way is particularly "wrong"

[jansan]

It is not wrong, but it does not force the kids to be creative in a way it used to.

I would rather buy some wooden trains and rails if my kids where young now.

[w0m]

you can always buy generic builder-part sets; they still sell them. Simply don't buy the overpriced kits.

[WillAdams]

Is it an option to get them:

https://www.brickgun.com/

esp.

https://www.brickgun.com/Models/MAC-11_RB/BrickGun_MAC-11_RB...

I bought two of those last Christmas, one for me, the other for the son of a co-worker --- mine is currently out on loan to the parent to practice with so as to be able to keep up with the child (and if need be, as a source of parts if any are missing).

[jacquesm]

You're free to take them apart and start making stuff with them. I'm pretty sure your kids would join in, mine certainly did. Sets should not be seen as holy and giving them a prominent display spot may be the wrong thing to do. For a week, sure, after that it's parts :)

[pbhjpbhj]

Oh no my friend, this is not allowed - "Dad, don't touch it; why did you add that piece; you're ruining it" "but you're not using it, it was just sitting on the shelf...".

There's definitely a strong divergence. In part, for us I think it's driven by poverty, they want "the nice thing" to look at (all our own models are necessarily colour-mismatched). But I know others who have rooms full of prestige sets that are 'not to be touched'!

Many on HN will be tinkerers who will take anything apart, that probably makes a difference too.

[dragoncrab]

Totally agree.

I always cry on the inside when I see those beautifully designed, symmetrical, detailed sets taken apart and tossed together to form the next ninja castle or whatever, but after all Lego is to be taken apart and my 6-8-9 year olds have no remorse in doing so.