[somat]

Modern Lego set design is this super refined art where the final product looks amazing. It also sort of sucks, ninety percent of the pieces are 1x1 greebles with very few common structural elements, Distinctly different and I feel inferior from the peak of my young Lego architect career in the late 80's, and even then in retrospect, still way to many greebles and not enough structural elements. Sure you want a few of those infernal 1x1's but it feels like the era that best matches the Lego ethos was the 70's where most of the set was structural.

There are a few sets left like this and I bought some to get my nephews Lego bucket started. but still way too many useless small pieces.

[kuboble]

You can still buy whole buckets of generic lego pieces if you wish.

Duplo is also mostly generic parts in sets.

My kids like doing themed Legos as they look cool, but for creative building we do Duplos - even though kids are "too old" for duplo technically. Duplo allows us to build bigger structures. Like https://imgur.com/a/niEhA8E