LEGO's inexplicable design decisions

[AmperZand]

Occasionally, LEGO ends production of a set early or updates one mid-production because it realises it has made a design mistake. And sometimes, especially in Technic sets, an AFOL finds a better way of achieving a technical goal that LEGO has missed. Those situations are not what this post is about. 

This thread is to discuss LEGO's bizarre design decisions that must have been obviously weird to the designers... but they went ahead with anyway.

Here's an example I came across recently when writing an article for Brickset: the mech's hands in set 71640 Iron Man Mech.

Pretty much every review of this set including Jang's has questioned why the mech has a protrusion from the little finger side of the palm. You can see it in the mech's left hand in the picture above. It looks out of place and serves no purpose.

Why didn't the designers use two 2 x 1 plates, one with a wheel attachment for the thumb and one without? I am aware that LEGO's designers have to operate within constraints, but it would have only added 2 to the parts count (one for each hand) and negligibly more  to the cost. It is no less robust than the 2 x 2 plate with two wheel attachments, so why?

If you're wondering what the hand would look like without the superfluous attachment, here's my mod:

Any ideas why LEGO didn't do this?

Also, what build decisions by LEGO seem strange to you?

[Hagane87]

Initially, I assumed that this was so they could save a bunch of instruction steps/pages by having the same construction twice and then simply adding the thumbs on each side.

However, a lot of the sets that use this design still have them built separately so who knows.

[koalayummies]

Curious as well. Possible hypothetical explanations:

Maybe they already had 4,485,215 on-hand of: And only 177,934 of: and or other sets also in-production were allocated the latter and couldn't use the former due to their construction (whereas Iron mech's hands can despite the aesthetic), or they did it to reduce the number of different bins that pieces must be picked from to assemble these sets.

[JintaiZ]

The exposed studs on 21315 Pop-Up book bothers me a lot... especially since the original idea had them. It would take so little to cover it up!

That is the most strange build decision I've seen...

[ReplicaOfLife]

I could imagine that it is to do with some in-house rule regarding the strength of connections. When using the 2x2 plate with wheel holders, the two 1x2 plates that serve as connection points for the hand/upper arm are clamped inbetween two 2x2 elements. Maybe Lego found that using two 1x2 plates side by side is less stable in extended play or something.

Or maybe it really just had to do with production logistics. I read an article (or maybe it was in a yt video, don't remember) that described the design process a bit, and from what I understood/remember, designers have a budget for their builds: Using a piece that already has to be produced for another set takes up less of that budget than using one that would have to be produced exclusively for the set.

[Hagane87]

I doubt that it's related to the strength of the connection. Those tumor-hands are also on Reinhardt and multiple other Marvel-mechs.

Speaking of Reinhardt, there's one thing that I always found odd about his design: why are there some extra 2x4 plates under his shoulder armor? If the designer thought that this extra height was neccessary then why was this part, which was even exclusively made for him, not moulded that way in the first place? And what's even more baffling: he actually looks better WITHOUT them!

Edited November 29, 2020 by Hagane87

[Mylenium]

23 hours ago, Hagane87 said:

why was this part, which was even exclusively made for him, not moulded that way in the first place?

It's one of their internal rules. Parts have to have certain metrics to fit within the system. You know, one day that shoulder armor could turn into a foot covering on a Ninjago mech or something like that... Large parts tend to be designed that they fit even steppings of full studs, meaning they are 4 x 6, 4 x 8, 6 x 8 and so on. Only smaller parts may use full or half plate height steps.

Mylenium

On 11/29/2020 at 10:03 AM, ReplicaOfLife said:

Or maybe it really just had to do with production logistics.

I doubt that this plays any role here. Both versions of these parts are ones that they produce continually because they are used in so many sets. To me it seems more like this is meant to be an attachment point for some extras and/ or snap on to some mount points on a vehicle. Sometimes such stuff only makes sense in a larger context when figuring in other sets from the series... Just a guess, though.

Mylenium

[MAB]

Maybe they originally intended to have a little finger on there as well using that pin. Then decided against it and didn't bother updating the rest of the hand.

[howitzer]

Something that baffles me is why the designers like put gears as knobs where a crank would be better in Technic sets. I get that for steering HOG and other such controls which are rotated only a little a gear is good but for example the Compact Crawler Crane (42097) had something like a dozen knobs which had to be turned many full rotations to deploy the outriggers and all of them had a 12T gear as a knob so deploying it for play is reeaally tedious, using cranks would've made it much, much easier.

[Aquatic_Arm]

Not sure if this question qualifies as a design decision, and also this question has probably been answered elsewhere before, but I've always wondered why lego never makes minifigure hands in metallic colors save for pearl gold. For example, the silver protocol droids, the winter soldier, and cyborg (DC super heroes) all have to make do with awkward light/dark bluish gray hands. Anyone know why? Is it something to do with how resilient those types of plastic are, or?

[MAB]

The plastic used for hands is different to the plastic used for the rest of the parts. It is still ABS, just a different composition to allow it to be more resilient when flexing, so the hands do not break when attaching accessories. You can tell this if you try to dye yellow hands and other yellow parts. The normal parts take up dye easily, whereas hands barely change colour at all.

 

[hagridshut]

I think that unused wheel attachment was probably supposed to be for another finger.  

Odd design decisions don't annoy me.  I find them funny, and also an opportunity to use my building skills to improve a design. 

[danth]

For whole set design, I don't get this thing:

https://brickset.com/sets/31115-1/Space-Mining-Mech

It's a "mech" with no pilot minifig. That's generally not done.

Also it's a sci-fi set, considering it's a mech with a green alien. But the set uses NASA/SpaceX colors, like all the "modern" space Lego sets. Which means both sci-fi Space fans and NASA/SpaceX fans will have reason to skip it.

A simple color swap of the main bubble canopy and the blue/red stripe pieces would make this a pretty sweet callback to Futuron or Mission to Mars. And of course make the set look way cooler. But as it is, the set is super boring! Just mainly white, very basic looking mech. The only thing that could save a boring design like that is vivid colors. The recent Underwater Robot had more color and more detail (hoses, printed panels) with less pieces!

https://brickset.com/sets/31090-1/Underwater-Robot

Edited December 23, 2020 by danth

[Mylenium]

13 hours ago, danth said:

It's a "mech" with no pilot minifig. That's generally not done.

It could simply be autonomously controlled by an AI or be remote-controlled. Not much of a stretch to imagine, given that one way or another no human could control such a thing without massive assistance from sensors and computers, anyway.

Mylenium

[Erik Leppen]

On 11/30/2020 at 10:48 PM, howitzer said:

Something that baffles me is why the designers like put gears as knobs where a crank would be better in Technic sets. I get that for steering HOG and other such controls which are rotated only a little a gear is good but for example the Compact Crawler Crane (42097) had something like a dozen knobs which had to be turned many full rotations to deploy the outriggers and all of them had a 12T gear as a knob so deploying it for play is reeaally tedious, using cranks would've made it much, much easier.

A crank requires two hands to operate, namely, one for holding the model so it doesn't move away or is lifted. Cranks only work for functions that run smoothly on models that are heavy enough. Studless is lighter and more flexible, and some functions have a lot of friction, all of which make operating a crank less comfortable.

[howitzer]

1 hour ago, Erik Leppen said:

A crank requires two hands to operate, namely, one for holding the model so it doesn't move away or is lifted. Cranks only work for functions that run smoothly on models that are heavy enough. Studless is lighter and more flexible, and some functions have a lot of friction, all of which make operating a crank less comfortable.

Ok, fair enough for small models, but that doesn't explain for example the knob operating linear actuators in 42055. Heavy model + minimal friction should make crank ideal. Not that it's hard to swap the knob for crank but still...

[danth]

9 hours ago, Mylenium said:

It could simply be autonomously controlled by an AI or be remote-controlled. Not much of a stretch to imagine, given that one way or another no human could control such a thing without massive assistance from sensors and computers, anyway.

Mylenium

My point was about the name. Generally Lego "mechs" have minifig pilots inside them.

What's funny is the other sci-fi set is a "Cyber Drone" but it actually has a pilot minifig! Even though Lego "drones" generally don't have pilots.

I'm sure pedantic contrarians will argue that the "Cyber Drone" name is fine because "the pilot is a robot, he's the drone," but robots are not drones, they're robots. Drones are remote controlled vehicles, not autonomous human-shaped robots. One could continue to argue that words can mean whatever one wants, but I would argue that Lego should name sets so that they make the most sense to the most people by using words consistently with how they used them in the recent past.

[Aanchir]

1 hour ago, danth said:

My point was about the name. Generally Lego "mechs" have minifig pilots inside them.

What's funny is the other sci-fi set is a "Cyber Drone" but it actually has a pilot minifig! Even though Lego "drones" generally don't have pilots.

I'm sure pedantic contrarians will argue that the "Cyber Drone" name is fine because "the pilot is a robot, he's the drone," but robots are not drones, they're robots. Drones are remote controlled vehicles, not autonomous human-shaped robots. One could continue to argue that words can mean whatever one wants, but I would argue that Lego should name sets so that they make the most sense to the most people by using words consistently with how they used them in the recent past.

There have been a few other sets like that in the Creator theme and the Designer sets which preceded it… namely Power Mech from 2013 and Mech Lab from 2003. But I realize this differs from those by having a clear canopy in which you'd expect the pilot to be visible if it were piloted. Similarly, last year's Drone Explorer included a cockpit and controls for a minifigure, despite not including one in the set itself.

I think we can file "Space Mining Mech" and "Cyber Drone" in with the long tradition of sci-fi set names that use technobabble and/or alliteration to sound cool, even at the expense of more clearly and accurately describing their contents. That said, these names at least gives a slightly better idea of what sort of set they're describing (a mechanical humanoid and a futuristic flying machine, respectively) than many older examples like "Allied Avenger" or "Spectral Starguider".

LEGO has also used "drone" to describe robots before, like the Nindroid Drones from LEGO Ninjago, the Magma Drones from LEGO Agents, and the Iron Drones from LEGO Exo-Force. In these cases, though, it's clear that they're using it in more of the same sense as Ogel's mind-controlled "Skeleton Drones" from LEGO Alpha Team… in other words, unfeeling footsoldiers/underlings that are only intelligent enough to follow orders from a commander, rather than to think or act independently.

It's unlikely that "Cyber Drone" was meant to be interpreted this way, though, because the set description on LEGO.com consistently uses "Cyber Drone" to refer to the set's main model, while referring to the pilot as a "new-for-January 2021 robot minifigure… which can ride each of the 3 models".

On 12/23/2020 at 1:39 PM, danth said:

For whole set design, I don't get this thing:

https://brickset.com/sets/31115-1/Space-Mining-Mech

It's a "mech" with no pilot minifig. That's generally not done.

Also it's a sci-fi set, considering it's a mech with a green alien. But the set uses NASA/SpaceX colors, like all the "modern" space Lego sets. Which means both sci-fi Space fans and NASA/SpaceX fans will have reason to skip it.

As I mentioned in the sci-fi topic, I think the colors were probably picked because they're colors that people tend to associate with near-future space exploration in general. While the cartoonish green aliens in the Space Rover Explorer and Space Mining Mech sets aren't realistic, the sets still seem to be framed around "first contact" scenarios in which Earthlings are exploring a mysterious and largely uncharted extraterrestrial frontier in a near-future setting.

By contrast, more fanciful spaceships with shapes and colors that vary wildly from real-world space vessels tend to show up in much more futuristic or technologically advanced settings in which travel between different planets or interactions between different species are already "taken for granted" — particularly those that can be broadly categorized as "space opera" like Star Wars, Guardians of the Galaxy, Metroid, Futurama, Cowboy Bebop, etc.

Even in many series that ARE much more highly futuristic, like Star Trek, it's not uncommon for "human" or "Earthling" spaceships to use spaceships with similar color schemes to real-world space agencies, both to establish that they are the creations of a society that traces its history back to our own, and to help contrast them with more fanciful vehicle designs used by alien societies which developed independently from us.

[Mylenium]

14 hours ago, danth said:

My point was about the name. Generally Lego "mechs" have minifig pilots inside them.

Well, you could go back to the primordial soup of the original "Mechwarrior" games where this trope basically originated back in the 1980s and conclude that it was just as wrong back then. I'm afraid this is one of those cases where there is no simple black & white answer here. If you wanted to be overly academic about it, you would in fact not even use words like "mech" or "drone" which are frowned upon in the respective communities that develop (semi-) autonomous vehicles and devices... I do get your point, but it's ultimately a waste of time to even think about it, even more so as the translations for set names and descriptions to other languages are sometimes even more ridiculous. I'm sure I could reverse-translate some German set descriptions and you'd LMAO about the nonsensical gobbledygook it would result in.

Mylenium

[Lira_Bricks]

One thing that I find strange is how much more Lego is braking their own "rules" in their latest sets.

https://www.lego.com/fr-be/product/summer-fun-water-park-41430 has a water-gun that has a pin with stud squeezed into a SNOT brick, which stresses the pin

Then there is the icicle in 80106 https://www.newelementary.com/2020/12/lego-2021-review-80106-story-nian.html

Quote

Another thing I would like to point out in the roof area, is the illegal connection used for the icicles. The Candle (37762) does not fit perfectly in the Tile Special 1 x 1 with Clip with Rounded Edges (15712).

Are there more illegal techniques that Lego is using nowadays?

With illegal I mean what would not be allowed according to that one presentation from a Lego-spokesperson that I cannot find again...

[koalayummies]

1 hour ago, Lira_Bricks said:

Are there more illegal techniques that Lego is using nowadays?

With illegal I mean what would not be allowed according to that one presentation from a Lego-spokesperson that I cannot find again...

There was an interview somewhat recently about that (its called "Stressing the Elements") and they said that it has been updated internally and that some of the things have changed and no longer apply. Some due to materials changes, which I believe New Elementary has covered as well (scroll down to New Transparent/ABS vs PC). Also from Brickset "Are Trans-Clear LEGO (or all trans parts) now made out of a different plastic?".

I can't seem to find any problems with water park water canon you listed. BTW to make your links work click the link icon in the typing tools. For example: https://www.lego.com/fr-be/product/summer-fun-water-park-41430

[Mylenium]

11 hours ago, Lira_Bricks said:

https://www.lego.com/fr-be/product/summer-fun-water-park-41430 has a water-gun that has a pin with stud squeezed into a SNOT brick, which stresses the pin

Not sure what you're getting at. Pins have stud diameter and element 4274 has no friction ridges and I believe it's tolerance is somewhere around 0.1 mm, anyway, given how loosely those elements fit generally. It will only squeeze where it's supposed to - at the rim at the top. It's not an elegant technique, but in terms of stress limits perfectly acceptable.

12 hours ago, Lira_Bricks said:

Then there is the icicle in 80106 https://www.newelementary.com/2020/12/lego-2021-review-80106-story-nian.html

Definitely an odd one, but those clips have had several revisions in recent years, so maybe it's indeed a matter of more liberal tolerances. For long-term presentation of the model I'd replace it most likely with something involving bracket 36840 and a sideways clip, though. The way it's done in the set is certainly not trustworthy and the clip's arms will break eventually at some point.

Mylenium

[Lira_Bricks]

4 hours ago, Mylenium said:

Not sure what you're getting at. Pins have stud diameter and element 4274 has no friction ridges and I believe it's tolerance is somewhere around 0.1 mm, anyway, given how loosely those elements fit generally. It will only squeeze where it's supposed to - at the rim at the top. It's not an elegant technique, but in terms of stress limits perfectly acceptable.

https://bramlambrecht.com/tmp/jamieberard-brickstress-bf06.pdf page/slide 10. The brick in 41430 is a bit different than the brick used in the slide, but still not enough room. And it certainly does not "click" as a pin should

[Fuppylodders]

13 minutes ago, Lira_Bricks said:

https://bramlambrecht.com/tmp/jamieberard-brickstress-bf06.pdf page/slide 10. The brick in 41430 is a bit different than the brick used in the slide, but still not enough room. And it certainly does not "click" as a pin should

Interesting link there, specifically of note, page 26, where it says 'can one brick be used instead of 5'... Pretty sure they break that all the time 

[Mylenium]

2 hours ago, Lira_Bricks said:

https://bramlambrecht.com/tmp/jamieberard-brickstress-bf06.pdf page/slide 10.

Yeah, sure, but the world was different in 2006. And honestly: Given what crooked stuff LEGO do on some models, regardless, this strikes me as a merely academic exercise. LEGO's adherence to those self-imposed rules has always been fishy at best. In any case, long before plugging a pin into a 1 x 1 brick, I guess I'd have other bones to pick and this seems far too trivial to even make a fuss about.

Mylenium