Why do you think classic era LEGO (70s-90s) are often looked upon more higly than modern sets?

[JesseNight]

I can't speak for everybody, but as a kid I definitely had an interest in other people's models if they managed to build something I couldn't myself.
I doubt they'll be buying instructions indeed, there's still plenty of free ones available too though.
That aside, I do miss the alt build instructions and alt build suggestions on boxes, those were a nice little extra.

[TeriXeri]

5 hours ago, MAB said:

That is an adult thing though, isn't it? I don't think I've ever seen a younger kid buying or using other people's MOC instructions. Parts acquisition (and time) is a major hurdle for other people's MOCs, whereas kids typically want to build with what they have now.

Yeah, I don't think most kids go look for MOC models + instructions and go order parts for it.

The thing I can imagine current kids can do,  are alternative builds, as that's basicly an evolution of back of box builds, and Rebrickable has a great trove of alt builds, or 2x / 3x combo models that don't require other parts.

Personally I mainly look at MOC / Alt builds for inspiration, but I have not made someone else's moc or alt built to this date.

In the past, LEGO offered a few combined models with instructions, like there was a red car from 3 technic models (I think 1991, 8024+ 8815 + 8820) , and Slizers had instructions for 2 combined larger mechs in 1999.

Edited February 10 by TeriXeri

[JesseNight]

7 hours ago, TeriXeri said:

The thing I can imagine current kids can do,  are alternative builds, as that's basicly an evolution of back of box builds, and Rebrickable has a great trove of alt builds, or 2x / 3x combo models that don't require other parts.

Yeah that's pretty much what I was referring to. I see this as the modern Idea Books, just now with everybody being able to do their part on sharing models on a much larger scale.

[Mylenium]

A lot of nostalgia, for sure, be it from real experience or just looking at a different era with rose-tinted glasses. There are a few other factors, the crudeness of the models itself being one. There's a certain appeal in simplification just like with certain art styles. The other thing is of course that it was a lot more complicated to produce this stuff back then. Discovering a new element from a new mold or even just a new print would have a completely different impact because you knew how hard it was to pull off. This also affects perception overall because the market as a whole was simply different. I remember this well from my scale modelling days at the time. There wasn't a new model coming out every day. Stuff was shown at the Nuremberg Toy Fair and other such shows and that was basically it for the rest of the year. These days it's literally an endless stream of new releases which makes each individual item a lot less significant. And for LEGO it's pretty much the same. With a few hundred new sets coming out every year it's a whole different story compared to perhaps thirty to fifty sets each year way back when...

Mylenium

[AmperZand]

On 2/8/2024 at 6:31 PM, John Carter said:

I think that the main appeal of the pre-2000s Lego is that they are more "Lego"-ish.

 

13 hours ago, Mylenium said:

There's a certain appeal in simplification just like with certain art styles.

Both @John Carter and @Mylenium are right. LEGO has - or had - its own design language. Back in the '70s but decreasingly true over the decades, LEGO parts were designed to emulate hand made wooden toys: the shape of minifigure heads can be turned on a lathe, animals have flat sides because they're easier to make than rounded ones, prints were made to look like they could be hand painted etc. There was a simplicity and naivety to the look, and it was coherent. Since then, the aesthetic has become muddled with super detailed prints, intricate pieces, and textures & fine details in sets using lots of small parts alongside the same cylindrical minifigure heads and blockish bricks. It's a visual mess. That's why so many of the earlier sets and themes remain popular. They speak the same design language rather than trying to speak multiple languages simultaneously.

That's not to say that for some AFOLs nostalgia doesn't play any part. No doubt it does. But there's more to it than rose-tinted retrospection.

[JesseNight]

A lot has changed over the decennia.
Remember how the founder of LEGO was very much against any weapons or violence in his toy line?
But when he was gone, the late 1970s brought swords with the Castle theme, and the late 1980s brought guns with the Pirates. And now we pretty much have every violent movie IP based thing in there. Probably good that he isn't around to see this... But yeah, times change and so do company principles, even more in a capitalist society.

[TeriXeri]

39 minutes ago, JesseNight said:

A lot has changed over the decennia.
Remember how the founder of LEGO was very much against any weapons or violence in his toy line?
But when he was gone, the late 1970s brought swords with the Castle theme, and the late 1980s brought guns with the Pirates. And now we pretty much have every violent movie IP based thing in there. Probably good that he isn't around to see this... But yeah, times change and so do company principles, even more in a capitalist society.

True, but it still seems LEGO does try to avoid using gun pieces like the revolver or SMG by itself outside of licensed themes, some action themes have them , but either as part of builds , or heavily modified shooters.

The Western/Adventurers Rifle has not been used since 2013.

Hidden Side did have the revolver used as a gun but in a ghostly green color , used by ghost bikers in 2019, last time it was used in grey in-house was LEGO Movie 1 Western themed builds.

 

And then there's a controversy about this piece being a gun or nightstick in a Police minifig pack but that was years ago too : 

City has used dynamites for a while tho, but lately that seems to have stopped, after that dynamite factory set never was released, and the Daisy Kaboom character was disguised as garbage truck driver instead.

Edited February 12 by TeriXeri

[The Reader]

21 hours ago, AmperZand said:

LEGO has - or had - its own design language. Back in the '70s but decreasingly true over the decades, LEGO parts were designed to emulate hand made wooden toys: the shape of minifigure heads can be turned on a lathe, animals have flat sides because they're easier to make than rounded ones, prints were made to look like they could be hand painted etc. There was a simplicity and naivety to the look, and it was coherent. Since then, the aesthetic has become muddled with super detailed prints, intricate pieces, and textures & fine details in sets using lots of small parts alongside the same cylindrical minifigure heads and blockish bricks. It's a visual mess. That's why so many of the earlier sets and themes remain popular. They speak the same design language rather than trying to speak multiple languages simultaneously.

I totally agree with you. That's exactly the point. Well said. Thanks!

Classic Lego sets are "clean" (even though they have a lot of studs), while modern ones almost try to be modell building.

P.S.: This is my 500th post.

[EamonnMR]

I actually think that Dreamz is pretty cool, but I loved Time Twisters and see it as a similar idea-show off Lego's flexibility by mashing together different ideas, and design models that follow a kid's MOC logic.

I also will acknowledge that the design of new sets _as toys_ has gotten a fair bit better-as fun as it was to build a Mega Core Magnetizer, the technique is just a big box and wasn't terribly inspiring.

For me it's absolutely nostalgia. But I think you need to expand your idea of what someone's 'time' is.

I probably started with Lego in about 1997. But I still got my hands on an Ice Sat V. I still looked at 'limited quantities, order now' Starhawk II and Monorail in a slowly tattering catalogue. I saw old pieces in an idea book (I still promise to scan that if I can't find it!) My cousins had the instructions for the Magnetizer kicking around because they were older.

You got glimpses, in other words, of older themes. The unattainable nature make them potent nostalgia; I was a fan of old Lego before it was even that old!

[TeriXeri]

If I look at the Basic lists of old sets (so outside of things like Town / Castle / Pirates / Space etc, there are some very underrated sets, but many would probably call outdated.

Like the only official System bricks Zoo set ever made,  dating back almost 50 years ago now from 1976 (Duplo Zoo started much later in 1990)

 

The beauty of those old sets to me, is how much they get done with so few parts types and colors in comparison to like the 2000s onwards.

And some of the old builds really aren't worse compared to much more modern iterations : 

730 (1985) vs 7641: City Corner (2009)

I think many of those old Basic building sets just make a lot more interesting sets compared what many of the 2015 Classic (branded) theme revival offers.

 

Of course 2009 also already feels like another era of LEGO by now, since then , so many new parts and colors and techniques have appeared, giving modern LEGO a very different look overall.

Edited March 2 by TeriXeri

[Lyichir]

To be honest I think those kinds of sets are mostly just looked up to more by people who grew up with them (AFOLs of a certain age, overrepresented on sites like these). I've already started to see a shift toward more nostalgia for 2000s-era themes on the part of slightly younger AFOLs.

That said, I also appreciate the nostalgic throwbacks to themes like Classic Space despite not growing up with them myself. But that's less because the themes and sets were inherently superior to later ones, and more because I appreciate the things that paved the way for later themes (and modern throwbacks tend to SIGNIFICANTLY improve rudimentary older set designs.

And this is coming from somebody who DOES love themes like Dreamzzz, Ninjago, Friends, and Monkie Kid. I think fans of modern themes also tend to be significantly less cantankerous and dismissive of the things they personally didn't grow up with, so there is that.

[JesseNight]

I remember having one such Basic set in the beginning of my young Lego days. While the modern sets surely look closer resembling reality and better detailed, one of the beauties of Basic sets was that it came with instructions for 4-5 very different things (all the things you see on the front of the box/instructions). That's no doubt what Teri means with "how much they did with so few parts".

In those days, Technic also had sets like this for young people to get acquainted with the basics of Technic before going into more advanced builds, called Universal Building Sets.

Edited March 3 by JesseNight

[Gkaiser100]

On 3/1/2024 at 8:37 PM, TeriXeri said:

Of course 2009 also already feels like another era of LEGO by now, since then , so many new parts and colors and techniques have appeared, giving modern LEGO a very different look overall.

It's funny, that was one of the sets I gazed at in the back of my city manuals back in 2009. I never even got one copy of it 😞. I think it was because I wanted 2 so I could make a closed-back building. I would've been happy just to have one for my bus.

While I knew of the older sets from a library book, I didn't start investigating until I was a TFOL. Then I got on the internet and searches for Space, Castle, and Pirates on YouTube showed me the Classics. I've never longed for them like the sets from 2007-12, however. Though a neighbor gave me 1997's Interstellar Starfighter from UFO, it being the only set to survive the great purge of 2012. It's now the jewel of my modern collection. 

These days I buy whichever sets strike my fancy. Sometimes there are set that in hindsight would've been good to pick up, but I chose not to have them so it doesn't sting like the those sets. Nostalgia for me is Fantasy Castle, Indiana Jones (first set I had minifigures), Kingdoms, Atlantis, SPIII, 2008-12 City, SpongeBob, and Power Miners. 

Edited March 10 by Gkaiser100
Grammar.

[TeriXeri]

6 hours ago, Gkaiser100 said:

It's funny, that was one of the sets I gazed at in the back of my city manuals back in 2009. I never even got one copy of it 😞.

I pretty much did not follow any LEGO at all between 2001 and 2015, so a big gap in time, but even then, I notice LEGO's design direction now, is still very different from sets from when I came back in 2016,  which of course by now, is already 7-8 years ago, but there have been many new colors, and easily 100+ new parts since (not counting recolors / prints on older parts)

Edited March 10 by TeriXeri

[SpacePolice89]

On 3/10/2024 at 9:55 PM, TeriXeri said:

I pretty much did not follow any LEGO at all between 2001 and 2015, so a big gap in time, but even then, I notice LEGO's design direction now, is still very different from sets from when I came back in 2016,  which of course by now, is already 7-8 years ago, but there have been many new colors, and easily 100+ new parts since (not counting recolors / prints on older parts)

In the late 90s I lost interest in new City/Town sets (with a few exceptions like trains) because of the junio.rized style they started to use back then. In 2005 things started to improve and we had great sets up until about 2016. It was almost like a second golden age and it was also other themes like Castle and Pirates to name a few. After 2016 it started to go downhill again and some of today's City sets are dangerously close to Jack Stone level.

Edited March 11 by SpacePolice89

[TeriXeri]

3 hours ago, SpacePolice89 said:

In the late 90s I lost interest in new City/Town sets (with a few exceptions like trains) because of the junio.rized style they started to use back then. In 2005 things started to improve and we had great sets up until about 2016. It was almost like a second golden age and it was also other themes like Castle and Pirates to name a few. After 2016 it started to go downhill again and some of today's City sets are dangerously close to Jack Stone level.

Town, and LEGO's overall junior era of 1997 really played part of me stopping following LEGO entirely after 2001, Town theme even kinda disappeared, and at the time I thankfully didn't know Jack Stone existed, or even was meant to be it's successor.

I think my last sets were Slizers, so I had no interest in Bionicle either, or Star Wars , and I don't think I've known about Harry Potter until many years after the 1st movie. Just happened to have different interests at the time, online video gaming was getting a lot more popular and with internet being past the Dial-up phase, multiplayer gaming came along.

Even the 2014 LEGO Movie didn't really get my attention, so it wasn't until late 2015 where I started looking it up again.

Wasn't until 2016 where Nexo Knights really triggered me in a good way, perhaps big nostalgia and favor toward neon orange being a big focus of that theme, and yet combined with Castle stuff, I really liked it (keep in mind, my direct comparison would be with year 2000 Castle and stuff like UFO / Insectoids, not comparing it with the many Castle/LOTR stuff lego has done in the 2010s, that's basicly a big gap of not following LEGO's sets at all for a long long time)

I only started following City from like 2018, and the most Jack Stone like thing LEGO has done so far since then were those pull cord helicopters, some 4+ sets weren't great, especially the price to value ratio on anything larger then €20, but recently there have been good value 4+ sets as well like the spaceship, or Friends donut shop.

If I had to pick a worst year of City between 2018 and 2024, I'd say 2020, and comparing the Police, Bank , or Townhall set from then, to 2022/2023 versions is like huge difference.

But 2020 had some nice stuff as well, especially liked the underwater base, and 2022 did have some flaws as well, with sets like the school or stuntz loops.

Will be interesting to compare current sets to like 10-15 years from now. 

Edited March 11 by TeriXeri

[SpacePolice89]

7 hours ago, TeriXeri said:

Town, and LEGO's overall junior era of 1997 really played part of me stopping following LEGO entirely after 2001, Town theme even kinda disappeared, and at the time I thankfully didn't know Jack Stone existed, or even was meant to be it's successor.

I think my last sets were Slizers, so I had no interest in Bionicle either, or Star Wars , and I don't think I've known about Harry Potter until many years after the 1st movie. Just happened to have different interests at the time, online video gaming was getting a lot more popular and with internet being past the Dial-up phase, multiplayer gaming came along.

Even the 2014 LEGO Movie didn't really get my attention, so it wasn't until late 2015 where I started looking it up again.

Wasn't until 2016 where Nexo Knights really triggered me in a good way, perhaps big nostalgia and favor toward neon orange being a big focus of that theme, and yet combined with Castle stuff, I really liked it (keep in mind, my direct comparison would be with year 2000 Castle and stuff like UFO / Insectoids, not comparing it with the many Castle/LOTR stuff lego has done in the 2010s, that's basicly a big gap of not following LEGO's sets at all for a long long time)

I only started following City from like 2018, and the most Jack Stone like thing LEGO has done so far since then were those pull cord helicopters, some 4+ sets weren't great, especially the price to value ratio on anything larger then €20, but recently there have been good value 4+ sets as well like the spaceship, or Friends donut shop.

If I had to pick a worst year of City between 2018 and 2024, I'd say 2020, and comparing the Police, Bank , or Townhall set from then, to 2022/2023 versions is like huge difference.

But 2020 had some nice stuff as well, especially liked the underwater base, and 2022 did have some flaws as well, with sets like the school or stuntz loops.

Will be interesting to compare current sets to like 10-15 years from now. 

Some of the current City sets are really nice and look great, especially the Arctic Explorer subtheme and the trains.