Unpopular Opinions about LEGO

[Darth_Bane13]

28 minutes ago, JesseNight said:

I'm on the opposite end. I stopped with Lego around 1995-1996, I never knew there was new grey and brown until 2 years ago. First time I heard about it was... confusing.

I'm okay with there being new colors, as well as light and dark shades. It just feels a bit too much at times, sometimes having trouble telling 2 shades apart that are really close. And I know I'm not the only one, having seen threads on this board about the exact same thing before.

To make you guys feel old, I was born the year they switched the greys and browns.

[MAB]

On 1/4/2026 at 10:57 PM, JesseNight said:

I guess that's the exact problem I've been running up against. I need more figures for my 80s and early 90s space themes and I guess some are just too unique to their specific themes. And yes next to the cheap prices of common bricks, I consider a few Eur/Usd per minifig a lot when needing a good amount. The more rare colors of course get even crazier. I don't mind some minimal wear, to me that adds to realism of a scene. But of course icons on a torso do need to be recognizable as such.

Yeah, I don't see those as just old children's toys. They are nostalgic vintage collectables. 

I sell quite a lot of minifigures, old and new, and it is funny how people view prices. I often get comments along the line of you want how much for that, it is just an old child's toy. It is nearly always described as a "child's toy" by a buyer even though it is for themselves. So I tell them if they want just an old child's toy they can buy these ones at 10% of the price. But of course they want the vintage collectables and not the generic City figures.

 

Edited January 6 by MAB

[Toastie]

14 hours ago, Darth_Bane13 said:

To make you guys feel old, I was born the year they switched the greys and browns.

Wow - to make you feel even younger, I entered my dark ages when Jerry Ehman found the Wow! signal upon analyzing the SETI data recorded that year by the Ohio State University's Big Ear radio telescope. I never heard anything about SETI back then, living in a small town in Northern Germany, where you could see the Milky Way as bright background illumination of the sky at night. It took me almost 15 years to regain LEGO traction, way before TLG decided to switch from old to new gray/brown.

Here is to feeling younger than ever 

Best
Thorsten

[MAB]

15 hours ago, Darth_Bane13 said:

To make you guys feel old, I was born the year they switched the greys and browns.

One of the joys of being a bit older is that I bought a lot of now popular sets from around that time and the following year at clearance prices, and had the sense to keep them together rather than mix them into general parts. I've even got a few still sealed.

[Milan]

Posts with politics have been removed.
Do not discuss politics on EB.
 

[SpacePolice89]

I think that Lego Ideas should only accept builds that are non-licensed because there are so many other licensed sets and themes.

[JesseNight]

1 hour ago, SpacePolice89 said:

I think that Lego Ideas should only accept builds that are non-licensed because there are so many other licensed sets and themes.

Isn't that the case? I remember even builds based on past in-house themes weren't accepted.
Then again I haven't been following the Ideas submissions closely.

[Napoleon3]

7 hours ago, JesseNight said:

Isn't that the case? I remember even builds based on past in-house themes weren't accepted.

Nope, new licenses are allowed, though I believe you are correct about in-house licenses.

[SpacePolice89]

10 hours ago, JesseNight said:

Isn't that the case? I remember even builds based on past in-house themes weren't accepted.
Then again I haven't been following the Ideas submissions closely.

I once built a spaceship for Ideas and included Futuron in the name and it wasn't allowed so I had to remove the Futuron part of the name but they didn't mind the Futuron looking spaceship which was allowed which is very interesting because I've seen many builds called something with M-Tron or Blacktron. Nowadays it's unfortunately mostly licensed builds that gets selected which is a huge shame because great sets such as the Barracuda Bay and the Medieval Blacksmith were Ideas sets.

[jimmynick]

12 hours ago, JesseNight said:

Isn't that the case? I remember even builds based on past in-house themes weren't accepted.
Then again I haven't been following the Ideas submissions closely.

Sets like the Friends cafe, Yellow Submarine, the original Ecto-1, the Goonies, etc.: all Ideas

[MAB]

1 hour ago, SpacePolice89 said:

I once built a spaceship for Ideas and included Futuron in the name and it wasn't allowed so I had to remove the Futuron part of the name but they didn't mind the Futuron looking spaceship which was allowed which is very interesting because I've seen many builds called something with M-Tron or Blacktron. Nowadays it's unfortunately mostly licensed builds that gets selected which is a huge shame because great sets such as the Barracuda Bay and the Medieval Blacksmith were Ideas sets.

Unlicensed IDEAS sets are still relatively common. If you look at the list of sets, the distribution hasn't really changed since the start. 

 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lego_Ideas

Plus now we have Bricklink sets, where there are five unlicensed sets per round.

 

[JesseNight]

18 hours ago, SpacePolice89 said:

I once built a spaceship for Ideas and included Futuron in the name and it wasn't allowed so I had to remove the Futuron part of the name but they didn't mind the Futuron looking spaceship which was allowed which is very interesting because I've seen many builds called something with M-Tron or Blacktron. Nowadays it's unfortunately mostly licensed builds that gets selected which is a huge shame because great sets such as the Barracuda Bay and the Medieval Blacksmith were Ideas sets.

Absolutely. I think Barracuda Bay is a marvelous set, being able to be either the bay with shipwreck or a full ship that's winking back to the classic pirate ship from 1989.
I don't like all the licenses either... It's the time we live in now. Licenses are guaranteed income. Even some movie studios only accept sequels and spinoffs on existing successful licenses rather than taking a risk on an original new idea.

[Napoleon3]

On 1/1/2026 at 2:26 PM, Siroco said:

That is the only thing worse than fleshies, mixing lemon heads with fleshies. 

But this is the unpopular opinions topic, so anything goes and I wouldn't dare to say that your opinion is more unpopular than mine.

Agreed about the first part, we cannot sully the perfectness of the Lego minifigure with any impure blood! Death to those who mix and match parts! 

That being said, unfortunately, more people convert yellow figs into fleshies than the other way round...

On 1/5/2026 at 4:52 AM, SpacePolice89 said:

I don't mind minifigs being unique and like the variety of the 80s and 90s minifigs but I on the other hand don't like too detailed minifigs. I think that leg and helmet printing should only be used on special minifigs like officers and robots like Spyrius and Unitron did.

Completely disagree about detailing, I feel like it makes the figures more immersive and interesting to look at than the simpler ones. That being said, I have seen a few instances where I agree that less is more...

[MAB]

4 hours ago, Napoleon3 said:

That being said, unfortunately, more people convert yellow figs into fleshies than the other way round...

Why is that unfortunate? If people want to change their figures one way or the other it is a good thing. I convert yellow skin to fleshies, as I think they look more modern and also look better when displayed near licensed sets, even if they are not mingled with them.

LEGO now aid this better than in the past by having less flesh printed on torsos so they can be repurposed more easily.

I don't mind leg printing, so long as it is not meant to be a continuous design from torso to legs. I prefer it when the legs and torsos can be used with other parts, and also posed without the legs needing to be straight for the print to match up.

Edited January 11 by MAB

[Napoleon3]

7 hours ago, MAB said:

Why is that unfortunate? If people want to change their figures one way or the other it is a good thing. I convert yellow skin to fleshies, as I think they look more modern and also look better when displayed near licensed sets, even if they are not mingled with them.

It is unfortunate because I do not like fleshies.

Agreed about leg prints that are tailored to certain torsos, though they do look nice when they are done well.

[MAB]

1 hour ago, Napoleon3 said:

It is unfortunate because I do not like fleshies.

Agreed about leg prints that are tailored to certain torsos, though they do look nice when they are done well.

Other people changing their figures to fleshie means they have yellow heads and hands to get rid of. That is good for builders that like yellow skins. I prefer fleshie and regularly trade a bag full of yellow body parts with others that like them. 

[Napoleon3]

2 hours ago, MAB said:

Other people changing their figures to fleshie means they have yellow heads and hands to get rid of. That is good for builders that like yellow skins. I prefer fleshie and regularly trade a bag full of yellow body parts with others that like them. 

True, more demand for fleshies means less demand for yellow-heads means more yellow blood for the blood god!

[BrickBob Studpants]

I have another one: 

I never really liked either colour and was happy to see them be permanently replaced by trans-bright green and trans-orange  Every time I saw them in a set after the new colours were introduced, I just wished they were their non-neon counterparts instead. Wish granted!

Even as a kid I didn’t like them because I was a sucker for transparent parts (still am) and didn’t consider them to be truly transparent. Also, trans-neon green in particular ruined green lightsabers for the longest time and I will never forgive them for the trans-neon green crystal in that Power Miners set that should’ve had a trans-yellow one!!

[Kit Figsto]

I don't know if this is even that unpopular, but I think LEGO as a company feels completely different in the post-COVID world than it did for most of my childhood (2000s + 2010s).  To be clear, I think that the actual designs of sets is generally pretty top-notch - accurate to the source material, usually some creative/well-thought out play features, and structurally sound.  There are exceptions to this for sure (sometimes I think just because the source material doesn't translate well to LEGO, and sometimes just because of the fiasco that was the Juggernaut last summer), but for the most part, I think that the designers do a great job.

Where I find myself feeling more and more disinterested is that it feels like LEGO currently is just "Thing - but LEGO! (and it costs $400)" for, like, 50% of their sets.  I just don't see any of the creativity, outside of stuff like City or some of the in-house themes anymore.  I'm not even talking about this as a licensed vs. unlicensed debate - I grew up playing with LEGO Star Wars, Prince of Persia (perhaps this is an actual unpopular, opinion but that wave of sets was truly fantastic and is heavily overlooked these days) and Indiana Jones (and I still do!) just as much as I played with Aqua Raiders, Exo-Force, or Castle.  My problem mostly lies in that all of these sets, whether licensed or unlicensed, felt like I was getting a box of pieces that could build the main model, but could also be rebuilt into whatever I wanted.  If I bought a fire truck, I could use those to make another kind of fire truck, or an ambulance, or some other vehicle.  If I bought a TIE Fighter, I could build another spaceship, or some sort of Imperial command post out of it.

This sort of hit me as I was looking at the Pokemon starter set.  I've never been a Pokemon guy, so I don't have any attachment to the property or the sets, but I was, and still am, just shocked that it's $650 for essentially 3 6-inch figurines and a large base.  Even if they were $150 each, I don't see the value at all.  This is partially because the size (I feel like we just get less and less "stuff" in sets these days, even if the price/piece ratio has remained somewhat consistent), but partially because I don't see these sets are any different from just buying an action figure or plastic model of the same thing.  I'm finding Charizard statues for $50-60 online that look to be around the same size.  Do you get to build it?  No, but is that even the point anymore?  I would bet 95% of people that are buying the black-box sets are building them once and displaying them - perhaps only taking it apart to put it in storage or move or whatever. 

This isn't me saying customers are wrong - what has LEGO done that would make you want to rebuild it?  It's now hundreds/thousands of small plates or bits, many of which are new specialized parts that can't really easily be reused outside of the context that they're created for.  I remember when putting out a new part was a big deal (to me, a 1x2 cheese slope is still a new-ish part), now it seems like I'll buy a $30 set and it's got like 5 parts that I've never seen before, only for me to find out that they've been around for two years.  Call me cynical, but that's a lot different than dumping out the pieces from a police station and trying to make something new out of it.

Another example of what I'm talking about was the Foosball table - it was like $300, when I can get an actual, working table for $150.  The Polaroid camera is like $70, and it looks like I can get a new one on sale at Best Buy for $80.  Why do these sets need to be so expensive?  Has anyone honestly asked for some of this stuff?  Obviously it's selling well enough if they're making it, but at what point does the novelty wear off and people get sick of shelling out thousands and thousands on plastic display pieces.

Anyway, I saw a comment the other day regarding the new Star Wars set reveals, and they were saying that in the 80s/90s/2000s, LEGO sets/themes felt like they were creating worlds, whereas now, it feels like simply a medium, and that sums up my feelings.

[MAB]

2 hours ago, Kit Figsto said:

I don't know if this is even that unpopular, but I think LEGO as a company feels completely different in the post-COVID world than it did for most of my childhood (2000s + 2010s).  ...

Where I find myself feeling more and more disinterested is that it feels like LEGO currently is just "Thing - but LEGO! (and it costs $400)" for, like, 50% of their sets.  ...

Another example of what I'm talking about was the Foosball table - it was like $300, when I can get an actual, working table for $150.  The Polaroid camera is like $70, and it looks like I can get a new one on sale at Best Buy for $80.  Why do these sets need to be so expensive?  Has anyone honestly asked for some of this stuff?  Obviously it's selling well enough if they're making it, but at what point does the novelty wear off and people get sick of shelling out thousands and thousands on plastic display pieces.

LEGO has changed a lot since COVID and really it started before that, about 2015 (The LEGO Movie time). Adults started to get more involved and so adult LEGO took off. Before that it was often a 'dirty secret' that some adults bought LEGO for themselves but it has become mainstream and legitimate now. There are a lot of "thing" sets and I guess that goes hand in hand with the rise of adult fans wanting display pieces. It is not 50% but they are popular. As to whether people ask for them, absolutely! The Polaroid camera, the typewriter, ship in a bottle, grand piano, etc have all come through IDEAS so at least 10000 people asked for them,  and then they were bought in the 10,000s by consumers. 

When will it wear off? Who knows! Part of LEGO's strategy is to market to new groups of people rather than just long term LEGO fans, so maybe people aren't getting sick of shelling out large sums for LEGO as they don't do it very often. 

[danth]

3 hours ago, Kit Figsto said:

it feels like LEGO currently is just "Thing - but LEGO! (and it costs $400)"...I don't see these sets are any different from just buying an action figure or plastic model of the same thing...Do you get to build it?  No, but is that even the point anymore?  I would bet 95% of people that are buying the black-box sets are building them once and displaying them...Why do these sets need to be so expensive?  Has anyone honestly asked for some of this stuff?

Wow. Well said. This is how I feel too. 

[ShaydDeGrai]

22 minutes ago, MAB said:

...maybe people aren't getting sick of shelling out large sums for LEGO as they don't do it very often. 

This is a good point, recent years have seen a lot of one-offs aimed at (essentially) non-AFOLs.  This usually takes the form of some (possibly overpriced) Ideas set that speaks to someone in a particular way and motivates them to shell out for a "novelty" item.

Case in point, I know someone who was a serious Big Bang Theory fan and when she heard about the set (on social media), she berated me for not telling her first (as she knew I was into LEGO and just generally assumed that TLG runs all their plans past me personally...) Anyway, she rushed out to go buy it (despite being a regular fixture in the mall, it may well have been the first time she set foot in The Lego Store) Then she asked me to help her assemble the minifigures (I warned you she really wasn't an AFOL) which she then put on a shelf and gave me the rest of the kit (still in pieces) saying she just wanted "the dolls".

I'm sure she's not the only person in the world who's done this.  Does it sell product? Sure.  Could it be a "gateway drug", getting people who never go into the Lego Store or visit their website to discover other kits that might appeal to them? Maybe, but in the case of my acquaintance, she pretty much went in with blinders on and couldn't have left faster if the place had been on fire.  Is it a sustainable business model? I don't know, but it's been going on for a while, so it must be working for somebody.

Personally I think its just one prong of a much larger game plan and TLG (finally*) recognizing that there may not be a "typical" Lego consumer and that not everyone has to like everything or like the same things for the same reasons; its perfectly fine to like Botanicals and not give a damn about Technic; I can collect Speed Champions because I enjoy the cool SNOT techniques that goes into building them, someone else might be a motor head and loves the cars they model and if they weren't buying Lego sets they'd be building plastic glue-together models of them instead.  Back in the '70's and '80's it felt like TLG was always trying to appeal to the same (small) crowd and sell them as much as possible ("Oh you like our castles? Have you considered adding Pirates?") and when they tried to diversify they seemed to forget their roots and came off as more pandering and condescending than welcoming to certain demographics (I'm having flashbacks to negative reactions to Belville with many mom's I know considering it insulting compared with Elves and Friends and the (many) great sets that have come out of that return to their roots and simply embracing subjects with broader appeal to a wider audience.  These days I think they just want to diversify their customer base as much as possible and if they can't sell a Technic Set to someone who likes Mosaics, so be it, they'll just sell that person more Mosaics and, as MAB observed, if that person is only buying one or two kits a year, maybe they won't object as loudly as the rest of us when they see the price tag because, to them, it's a special purchase, not a weekly expense.

*Perhaps "finally" is too strong a word, they have certainly known for decades which demographics they are most popular with and where there were "untapped marketing opportunities" but its really been since COVID (and adults rediscovering hobbies during lockdown) that TLG has devoted serious time and energy to catering to specialty niches without trying to upsell everyone on their entire product line.

[JesseNight]

4 hours ago, Kit Figsto said:

Do you get to build it?  No, but is that even the point anymore?  I would bet 95% of people that are buying the black-box sets are building them once and displaying them - perhaps only taking it apart to put it in storage or move or whatever. 

I guess a lot of people stopped enjoying the building. Just look at all the speed build videos where people show off how fast they can rush a build. Look closely and notice mistakes being made even with modern instructions that are so much simpler than they once were.
I guess people are all about destination now and forgot to enjoy the journey. Eventually they'll run out of destinations, and every enjoyment is short lived.
 

53 minutes ago, ShaydDeGrai said:

I'm sure she's not the only person in the world who's done this.  Does it sell product? Sure.  Could it be a "gateway drug", getting people who never go into the Lego Store or visit their website to discover other kits that might appeal to them? Maybe, but in the case of my acquaintance, she pretty much went in with blinders on and couldn't have left faster if the place had been on fire.  Is it a sustainable business model? I don't know, but it's been going on for a while, so it must be working for somebody.

I feel like a lot of people make rash and thoughtless purchases. Marketing departments know this and exploit this eagerly. Especially fomo is easily triggered in people nowadays, when we can see online what the whole world is doing. And yes, it's a business model that unfortunately works on the masses, therefore it keeps continuing.
Not to offend anyone... but while people can be intelligent, the masses as a whole can be pretty dumb.

[Toastie]

2 hours ago, ShaydDeGrai said:

*Perhaps "finally" is too strong a word, they have certainly known for decades which demographics they are most popular with and where there were "untapped marketing opportunities" but its really been since COVID (and adults rediscovering hobbies during lockdown) that TLG has devoted serious time and energy to catering to specialty niches without trying to upsell everyone on their entire product line

Everything you wrote is really a very nice read, I am enjoying this conversation very much!

Being a university professor myself, I have mixed feelings about COVID having "changed things". My take is that COVID has amplified "changing things", on many scales and levels. And that, just because one species on this planet was under or much better, felt being under existential pressure. The changes in this world are occurring every second - and nothing can survive without adapting to change. Rocks degrade or adjust to external "pressure", but that's it. In essence, they degrade. Living beings have to adjust to their ever-changing environment(s), all the time, or they'll be not of future importance anymore. Timescales matter, of course. And yes, I know that everyone knows that. 

In this context, we have the opportunity of looking back on a data set, generations of LEGO users, "changing" with time, have produced. The LEGO product though, or better, the idea of the product, remains the same, throughout the decades: Be creative, build something. The motivations for building something are manyfold: Creativity needing a pressure valve; it may also be: LEGO has a history of being legendary, I never really made it, so now is my time. 

Why "build" a Nintendo, camera, typewriter, and so on, more or less accurately replicated with LEGOs? (Yes, I know, don't use the s - I simply don't care, I mean the bricks), when one can get the actual thing for less money? Because it's cool to do so. This coolness, though, is only really cool, when you find LEGO cool and when you ever had the chance to buy LEGO at the level of making cool things. LEGO was always expensive, and now it has truly become a rich men's world product. So, the question of getting the real thing for $200 or the LEGO thing for +$500 does not matter. The real thing is of no interest, the replicated LEGO thing on a shelf is, and yes, I built it myself. It looks so real ... (or better, surreal).

I have the feeling that TLG is burning the midnight oil. And that can burn for a >very< long time. With all the improvements in electronics, their top-notch educational line of "bricks" is still - following lines. As they did when there were minds before the storms. More accurate, of course, but I would even challenge that with running my RCX 1.0 with RobotC as firmware.

All the best
Thorsten

Edited January 13 by Toastie

[MAB]

2 hours ago, ShaydDeGrai said:

Case in point, I know someone who was a serious Big Bang Theory fan and when she heard about the set (on social media), she berated me for not telling her first (as she knew I was into LEGO and just generally assumed that TLG runs all their plans past me personally...) Anyway, she rushed out to go buy it (despite being a regular fixture in the mall, it may well have been the first time she set foot in The Lego Store) Then she asked me to help her assemble the minifigures (I warned you she really wasn't an AFOL) which she then put on a shelf and gave me the rest of the kit (still in pieces) saying she just wanted "the dolls".

I'm sure she's not the only person in the world who's done this.  Does it sell product? Sure.  Could it be a "gateway drug", getting people who never go into the Lego Store or visit their website to discover other kits that might appeal to them? Maybe, but in the case of my acquaintance, she pretty much went in with blinders on and couldn't have left faster if the place had been on fire.  Is it a sustainable business model? I don't know, but it's been going on for a while, so it must be working for somebody.

I know of cases both ways, where some people have bought one set due to the license and that remains the only set they have bought whereas others bought the first set, then another from another theme and another... One woman I know bought the first Friends set (the TV show, not LEGO theme) and has gone on to buy probably 50 sets since so is doing about one a month. Not just licensed sets either,  she has all sorts and really seems into botanicals now. And she was amazed when I showed her it was possible to build other things without following instructions at all or just vary them a little to make them look more unique!

1 hour ago, JesseNight said:

I guess a lot of people stopped enjoying the building. Just look at all the speed build videos where people show off how fast they can rush a build. Look closely and notice mistakes being made even with modern instructions that are so much simpler than they once were.

Are they doing that for enjoyment though or clicks and advertising revenue? Rushing and making mistakes goes hand in hand with the need to be the first if they are monetising the videos.