[eaglefield]

I don't think your second part is really true at least for the titanic. You can look up the brick list on the Internet[1] and the vast majority of pieces exist in other sets. Some of them may only exist in that colour in the titanic set but at least to me they're all still recognisably lego bricks. Unless your standard only includes the right angle pieces, but that applies as well to anything produced by lego in the last maybe 30 years. The titanic uses black lego minifigure hotdogs for the anchor, which if anything I think is a testament to the creative piece use at play in these.

[1] https://www.bricklink.com/catalogItemInv.asp?S=10294-1