Yay for Creator sets!

[White Nun]

I'm fairly new to Lego and up until now I've been purchasing joblots of used bricks as a way to get a start in on having enough bricks to build things. Today to my great surprise I discovered that the general store/emporium in the rural town where I live has Lego. Not huge quantities mind you, but they do have it. I always thought Lego came in big box sets that needed the sale of a kidney to buy, so I was really surprised when I saw the little Creator sets on the shelf......

Today I purchased the Creator 5864 set and I'm delighted with it. I wonder what I'll buy next week?

[Aanchir]

I'm fairly new to Lego and up until now I've been purchasing joblots of used bricks as a way to get a start in on having enough bricks to build things. Today to my great surprise I discovered that the general store/emporium in the rural town where I live has Lego. Not huge quantities mind you, but they do have it. I always thought Lego came in big box sets that needed the sale of a kidney to buy, so I was really surprised when I saw the little Creator sets on the shelf......

Today I purchased the Creator 5864 set and I'm delighted with it. I wonder what I'll buy next week?

Technically, the big box sets are often a better value. That set right there, for example, is $6 US for 52 pieces (~12 cents per piece), whereas the larger Creator set Off-Road Power (released the same year) is $90 US for 1061 pieces (~8 cents per piece). The most cost-effective sets tend to be from the "Bricks & More" theme-- consider the Deluxe Brick Box which has 704 pieces (including 2 minifigures) for $50 US (~7 cents per piece). Of course, Creator sets can be better than Bricks & More sets in many cases because they have more unique and specialized pieces, and some people prefer to have at least a few of those in their collections. Still, that Deluxe Brick Box has some great window elements, and parts in a good variety of colors, so I'd certainly recommend it for someone just starting to build their collection.

There's a couple things to keep in mind when it comes to price:

• Sets with minifigures tend to be more expensive than sets without minifigures. The more minifigures a set has, the higher its cost tends to be.
  
• Licensed sets tend to be more expensive than non-licensed sets.
  
• Sets with plastic packaging, blister packaging, etc. tend to be more expensive than sets in boxes and polybags.
  
• Large "bulk bricks" buckets tend to be the most economical sets by far, with a low price-per-piece despite coming in large plastic containers. Price-per-piece is a very poor measure of a set's value in many cases because it treats all pieces as having the same value, whereas oftentimes printed minifigure parts, electronics, etc. are a lot more desirable than 1x1 tiles in red. Production costs for different pieces can also be vastly different. But for building a collection without breaking the bank, it can be an important consideration.
  
• Not sure how it is today, but during my childhood yard sales or garage sales were a good way to build your collection. The quality of the pieces isn't always guaranteed-- some parts might be broken, and others might not even be LEGO-- but since you're basically paying for something the owner no longer wants it's easy to get a good deal. Today, if yard sales aren't as viable an option, try looking for bulk bricks on eBay and other sites.

I'm not trying to talk down on Creator sets (I love them and regularly read the blog on the LEGO Creator website), but my point is that as far as economical purchases are concerned, small sets that come in plastic canisters aren't always the wisest things to buy. You may need to save up to afford larger sets, but you'll get more value for your money in many cases.

[meyerc13]

Don't worry, White nun, I agree with you. Those little Creator and Racers sets are awesome. While the MSRP might be $6US, they can often be found for $5US at major retailers, which puts them in the $.10/piece range which is fine. That also puts them in the range on an impulse purchase for me, so I'll often add one to my cart when I'm at the store for something else. While the big buckets might have more bricks/$, they are generally basic bricks whereas the Creator sets are filled with interesting and useful pieces.

I don't have and haven't really taken a close look at the set below, but now that you've posted a picture I see a few reasons why I'd buy that set:

1x2 Blue jumper plates

1x1 Plates with clip lights

1x6 Bar with studs

All of those are great pieces I saw just in your picture. Looking at the inventory for the set on Bricklink (http://www.bricklink.com/catalogItemInv.asp?S=5864-1) I see other useful parts as well. It looks like a great little set and worth not only picking up one but probably a few.

Glad you found them, and good luck finding others. I found 5761 Mini Digger to have some great parts and one build technique that was really interesting.

[vexorian]

I wish they would start making plate bulks. Large bricks are not too useful for me, plates on the other hand...

The mini creator sets are great, they tend to use nice building techniques and are very detailed for their price. But I wish they made more robots and space ships rather than staying with planes, helicopters and cars. That's just me. though. The issue I have right now is that these sets are so cute that even though I am supposedly buying them for the bricks, I can't deconstruct them. I have been noticing though that the latest ones are getting less useful bricks and are less detailed than the ones from 2007-2009. I mean, compare that helicopter set with 4918 from 2007:

I have been resisting the urges to get the very big creator sets. Most of the pre-2010 ones seem to be of great value. But as long as there are exo-force and space sets in my stores, it is unlikely I'll cross that line.

What I really regret is my dark age, I missed the Pod sets. They are half the cost of Mini creator sets and all of them are amazing. The pods are magnitudes more useful for storage than the vertical canisters and you can even use them as bricks.

Edited April 8, 2011 by vexorian

[Gryphon Ink]

I love the Creator minis, too. Some of them look rather clunky, but it seems like most of them give you good value and really cute little models. A couple of weeks ago I found the 5761 Mini Digger at the grocery store, and I'm totally in love with it.

The useful parts to price ratio might not be the best Lego has to offer, as Aanchir pointed out. But for $5 a set, you can buy them while doing the grocery shopping, get your Lego fix and gradually accumulate useful bricks, without feeling guilty about spending $99 on Lego.

One thing I'd really like for TLG to do is mini sets on a standardized scale, so you could build a city without spending the thousands of dollars you need to build a city in minifig scale. But that would probably cannibalize their sales, so I guess it's up to us to design our Mini Cities.

[Zeya]

I buy the Creator houses. I have the Beach House, Apple Tree House, Family Home, and Log Cabin. I think the Beach House is the best and the Log Cabin leaves something to be desired. The most recent sets seem to be getting smaller. And they're including minifigures now, which is kind of strange. The minifig in the Log Cabin is pretty generic. I think I'll still end up getting the upcoming Lighthouse and Hillside House, but I'm not terribly excited about them. I've found the creator sets are a good way to build up my fledgling brick collection, and also it's nice to have 3 different engaging models to build, which really increases the value of the set for me. I don't have as much time as I'd like to design and build MOCs, and that aspect gives me a similar satisfaction to making a MOC.

[dr_spock]

Once a while I see the mini on clearance and snap up a bunch for vehicle parts or gifts. They are good for weekly indulgence without having to save up for the big Creator sets.

[brickmack]

I love the Creator minis, too. Some of them look rather clunky, but it seems like most of them give you good value and really cute little models. A couple of weeks ago I found the 5761 Mini Digger at the grocery store, and I'm totally in love with it.

The useful parts to price ratio might not be the best Lego has to offer, as Aanchir pointed out. But for $5 a set, you can buy them while doing the grocery shopping, get your Lego fix and gradually accumulate useful bricks, without feeling guilty about spending $99 on Lego.

One thing I'd really like for TLG to do is mini sets on a standardized scale, so you could build a city without spending the thousands of dollars you need to build a city in minifig scale. But that would probably cannibalize their sales, so I guess it's up to us to design our Mini Cities.

Hmmm. I have the opposite guilt problem with these. I often feel guilty that I'm getting a 5-6 dollar set, and I usually get around 5-10 per year (I'm including those tiny Racers sets here, since they are the same size and I get both types of sets just for parts usually), which means that I could be getting a much larger set with the same money if I could stop buying the small ones. Also a bigger set would likely have better price per part, so that's more parts I would get, and I find the bigger ones often have better parts anyway.

[The Spark That Bled]

I buy the Creator houses. I have the Beach House, Apple Tree House, Family Home, and Log Cabin. I think the Beach House is the best and the Log Cabin leaves something to be desired. The most recent sets seem to be getting smaller. And they're including minifigures now, which is kind of strange. The minifig in the Log Cabin is pretty generic. I think I'll still end up getting the upcoming Lighthouse and Hillside House, but I'm not terribly excited about them. I've found the creator sets are a good way to build up my fledgling brick collection, and also it's nice to have 3 different engaging models to build, which really increases the value of the set for me. I don't have as much time as I'd like to design and build MOCs, and that aspect gives me a similar satisfaction to making a MOC.

The Creator House sets are a staple of my collection as well for all the reasons you listed. I also loved the beach house the best with the family home (#6754) a close second. I also find the multiple instructions have given me a lot of ideas for MOC's. I haven't gotten any of the mini sets yet. They seem to be mostly vehicles and I'm not much of a vehicle girl.

[Arigomi]

The most recent sets seem to be getting smaller. And they're including minifigures now, which is kind of strange.

It is a result of a lot of feedback from parents and kids about the Creator houses. They wanted minifigures and accessories so that kids could play with them. The Log Cabin was designed as a response to parents that wanted at least one Creator house at a lower price point.

While the bulk buckets are economical, they don't offer much in terms of parts selection.

Unlike other themes, Creator sets have a long shelf life so there isn't a rush to buy them up before a set is discontinued. With some patience, you can snatch them up when they go on sale.

[meyerc13]

I actually like the log cabin - just for all of that brown. Our family's LEGO collection started with some brick boxes, which have lots of the white/red/blue/yellow/green bricks, but brown? Not much. Since we are just getting into Kingdoms in addition to City, I'll take any brown or gray I can find.

I also like that they include a generic mini-fig in the log cabin set, because it adds some variety to our LEGO City. I think the reason parents were asking for this is because 1)Girls like Creator houses, and 2)Boys like them. Given the choice, I think the boy will take a police station or fire station over a Creator house, but even boys know that it isn't fun having a fire department if there aren't any houses for them to protect. So we have a lot of Creator houses in our collection so that we can build LEGO houses for our City.

I agree that the beach house is great, the 3 story open backed model is perfect for a LEGO City. I wish I had bought 1-2 more so I could build a few to represent an apartment complex... or maybe make the interior larger. Oh well, I probably have the yellow bricks, it's the windows and doors that will be hard to accumulate.

Oh... and I have to agree with Vexorian... bulk plate packs would be awesome. I'm to the point where I'm ready to put together an order of plates just to beef up our collection. I never have enough of any size, from 1x1 to 16x6.

[Gryphon Ink]

I really like the Log Cabin, not only for parts but because Lego really doesn't do much in the way of rural settings, and it was nice to get something that wasn't a typical suburban home. I'm still disappointed that I never bought the Beach House when it was in stores, though. That was a beautiful set.

[Legoist]

I'm fairly new to Lego and up until now I've been purchasing joblots of used bricks as a way to get a start in on having enough bricks to build things. Today to my great surprise I discovered that the general store/emporium in the rural town where I live has Lego. Not huge quantities mind you, but they do have it. I always thought Lego came in big box sets that needed the sale of a kidney to buy, so I was really surprised when I saw the little Creator sets on the shelf......

...

Today I purchased the Creator 5864 set and I'm delighted with it. I wonder what I'll buy next week?

I agree with those who said that the smallest Creator sets are not effective to increase your "home bricks supply", because they are proportionally more expensive per brick than larger sets. But from your post I didn't feel you were concerned about this at all... :)

IHMO the reason behind the tiny Creator sets is that they have HUGE building value at very low price, so they are the perfect purchase (mostly for KFOLs but of course AFOLs too) for plain building fun. Just like their bigger Creator bros, these sets come with instructions for multiple models, so even the tiniest Creator set can provide quite a long time of fun for a child, and maybe still a good hour for an adult - or more, if you try to build something original.

I think that they have a long-term value also, because once you (or your kid) are done with the models, the bricks even if always small they usually have some pretty good selection, I'd say something like 50% at least of these bricks are non-basic. So once the set is finally disassembled, they still add nicely to your "home bricks supply" above. Just don't get 50 copies of the same set for the parts :)

[Aanchir]

I agree with those who said that the smallest Creator sets are not effective to increase your "home bricks supply", because they are proportionally more expensive per brick than larger sets. But from your post I didn't feel you were concerned about this at all... :)

IHMO the reason behind the tiny Creator sets is that they have HUGE building value at very low price, so they are the perfect purchase (mostly for KFOLs but of course AFOLs too) for plain building fun. Just like their bigger Creator bros, these sets come with instructions for multiple models, so even the tiniest Creator set can provide quite a long time of fun for a child, and maybe still a good hour for an adult - or more, if you try to build something original.

I think that they have a long-term value also, because once you (or your kid) are done with the models, the bricks even if always small they usually have some pretty good selection, I'd say something like 50% at least of these bricks are non-basic. So once the set is finally disassembled, they still add nicely to your "home bricks supply" above. Just don't get 50 copies of the same set for the parts :)

Well, I have to agree on that. That's basically also why I appreciated the LEGO Brickmaster sets. Pretty much every time I've gotten one I've tried to make an alternate model from the pieces.

The first post definitely gave me the impression that White Nun was trying to build a collection, but then again I guess even if you are trying to build a collection the tiny Creator sets and similarly-sized sets have their value. After all, I know as well as anyone that saying you're going to save up for a larger set and not buy any smaller sets in the meantime doesn't equate to being able to do that. LEGO sets can be a bit addictive, and so I reckon sets this small can help you hold off your LEGO cravings while keeping most of your LEGO budget reserved for larger and more important purchases.

[White Nun]

Exactly, - while I'm saving up for big items the little Creator sets let me get a quick fix of something new to enjoy without breaking my household budget. The specialised bricks in the first set I purchased were a delight to find and will be useful when I move on to MOC building and can finally bring myself to pull my little floatplane apart.