Something I wonder about with something that huge is where it goes. I had mixed feelings when my Ogre Designers Edition rolled in a couple years ago, OK I can afford this, good, but where do I put something of this physical size?
$120 for a kit of this size is actually pretty cheap by Lego standards; I would've expected it to come in at $200. But I guess they're not paying licensing fees on this one. Lego is fun, and usually worth the price, but boy it can get expensive.
Compare the size and piece count to something like a large Star Wars model like the Mellenium Falcon (https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B00WI0PJE2/), $120 for ~1300 pieces. I'm surprised this model's MSRP is so low! I would happily pay ~$200 for this.
Kerbal would likely be more expensive due to licensing fees -- the Saturn 5 is public domain.
I'm not going to argue that KSP isn't fun, or that it's not a good value for the money, or that you shouldn't play it - but this is something you can build physically (maybe with your kid, maybe with your significant other, maybe with a friend) and actually display.
And honestly, KSP isn't really for everyone. Some people would find it boring while building a giant Lego rocket would be right up their alley.
I love KSP but when people ask me if they should buy it I try to be as honest about the brutal learning curve as possible. It is definitely not for everyone.
Throwing this thing up in the air will have more chance of success in achieving orbit than anything you build in KSP for the first 30 hours of play time though.
For the price of the Lego kit, a better expenditure to "build with your kid" (or which the kid can build himself if he has the skills) would be a model rocket kits.
There are more than a few kits out there which can be easily built and launched safely - where the total equipment needed (if all purchased) would amount to something around what this Lego kit costs.
And you get a real flying rocket in the end!
If you want to spend a bit (or a lot) less, you can build flyable model rockets from literally trash: One local model rocket club here in the Phoenix area likes to display rockets made from Pringles cans (body, fins, and nosecone!). There is plenty of free and low-cost software out there to help with designing such rockets (and more than a few books).
Lastly - if you want - you can even make your own engines from easily sourced materials (sugar rocket engines are easily made using powdered sugar and tree stump remover, for instance, stuffed/poured into paper tubes or PVC pipe). You can find plenty of information on the internet too about these designs.
So - instead of building a non-flying pretend rocket - build a flying real one, strap a gopro to it, and launch!
This. I love Lego - I grew up building Lego, but you are right. For the time and money spend on this model you could build and fly a real rocket. Do that instead. (And it will look just as nice on the shelf between flights.)
I also regret spending more time building Airfix model planes than building flying RC planes. oh well.
They also have a few days of early release on some sets via Lego.com VIP program. They don't always announce them. The brickheads were this way for a while.
Yeah. I hope I will be able to pick one up for roughly the price they announced here. I could see this getting bumped up to $300+ from people buying just to resell!
I never understood Lego kits... The whole point of a construction set is to be able to build many different things, possibly unimagined to the producer. But the Legos are usually limited to one or two predefined models.
> Legos are usually limited to one or two predefined models.
Eh, you can always just take it apart and build what you want or just build what you want form the get and throw the instructions out. I did this for years as a child and have done it for years as an adult.
Think of it as buying a set of pieces you can use build anything you want with (including combining with other sets to build bigger/other stuff), but it comes with instructions to build something very cool using just those pieces.
On a side note, LEGO does sell boxes of basic pieces with multiple instructions sets included that only utilize a small portion of the whole box.
Although that's strictly true, I'd say it's definitely more true (closer to true?) now than 30-40 years ago. The proliferation of specialized pieces has definitely had a negative effect on their reusability IMO.
My concern is that, due to the much greater number of unique pieces, the increased difficulty of organizing a collection, or finding the piece you need in an unorganized pile, or even just being able to visualize what it is you want to build will tend to discourage kids from making their own creations. Hopefully I'm wrong about that.
I think you're overestimating the number of specialized pieces out there. This is easy to do when you walk down the toy aisle at Walmart and see thirty big box Star Wars models, each with one or two unique pieces. But Lego actually makes so many models that don't use any specialized pieces. When I started looking at their website I was surprised to see that the boxes you see at the toy store seem to be the exception--probably because they sell so much better if they can pull off that iconic look that one or two cover pieces provide. I've been buying the Creator Expert series for a while now (Really cute rowhouse style models) that iirc don't use any uniques.
I can believe that there's less of a difference when mainly comparing models of buildings. My opinion is based on comparing my Lego collection (primarily Expert Builder/Technics, Legoland Space, and general purpose Creator-like sets from ~30 years ago), and my son's collection (not as large, no Technics, mostly vehicles), which is at most a few years old. There is definitely a very big difference between those two collections. Also, my point (which I realize now I didn't convey very well) was not that there are so many unique pieces, it's that the diversity of non-unique pieces has greatly increased.
>it's that the diversity of non-unique pieces has greatly increased.
Ahh, I see. That makes sense, but also I fail to see how that's a bad thing. The new pieces are built to be backwards compatible with your Legos from 30 years ago, so wouldn't that just make them MORE attractive?
You don't need those specialised bits. You can just buy the creative boxes, and then some extra bits off bricklink (I bought jets, wheels, propellers, and seats) and then just mash them together.
Don't under estimate kids' ability to change and invent.
You certainly don't understand Legos then. The design on the box is just the first step. Then it gets junked, reimagined into something else, tossed into the huge Rubbermaid tub with the other scrap pieces, and pawed through and built, deconstructed and rebuilt into a thousand different things.
The packaging used to be better about this, even including alternate instructions using the pieces in the set.
> The packaging used to be better about this, even including alternate instructions using the pieces in the set
They still do that with some sets.
Lego Classic 10709 - a small cheap set (less than $5) - has one page with suggestions if you combine it with other similar sets, and another page with instructions about modifying this set.
Lego has more sets today that are just bricks or bricks with multiple models than they've had for like 35+ years. Not to mention dozens of books they put out with other ideas.
And I'm not talking about instructions for how to build a different set, I mean "Here's a way you can combine these pieces that you might not have though of - figure out what to do with that" or "You like animals? Here's how to make a tail. Go make some animals."
My daughter gets plenty of small sets, and then typically just wants to dive into all of the extra pieces and build something completely different. Sometimes these are inspired by Lego suggestions. Sometimes they are crazy things she comes up with on her own.
There is nothing that Lego sells that legitimately limits people in what they can build.
Visit the nearest store, you'll see dozens of kits and couple of yellow "Lego Classic" boxes, somewhere on bottom (cheapest) shelves.
We have ~20 kits at home (gifts, impulsive purchases, etc), it looks like pile of assorted, useless, weird blocks, non-matching wheels. My son started play Lego after I bit the bullet and just sorted out that crap, leaving only 5-10 standard blocks.
I visit multiple Lego stores on a regular basis. They all have pick a brick walls that are filled with standard bricks along with some specialty pieces. Next to that are usually a few shelves of Lego Classic and Lego Creator sets.
I also wonder what some people consider standard blocks. If you're just talking about 2x4s, they're actually not that much fun. If I sorted all of my sets, the majority of pieces would be 1x2 or longer bricks or various flat pieces which are significantly better for building.
There are plenty of odd pieces out there, but when you get into the expert level sets and see them use croissants and robot fists to do remarkable detail on buildings... well I certainly realized that very few pieces are useless.
And far as this particular model goes, There really aren't any pieces that stand out as being very uncommon anyways. It has a ton of common curved and round shaped pieces I've seen many times, and that's just because rockets tend to be cylindrical. Standout pieces are usually stickered/decal pieces.
I'd get it not just because I'm a space travel buff but because of the scale- it's a meter tall! Great job bringing out the immense size of the Saturn V, in Lego form.
These aren't limitations imposed by The LEGO Group. They include a box of parts with instructions to build a model, but that doesn't stop anyone from building other things.
There are a few sites around where LEGO fans post alternate builds of models. Here's an example search showing 100+ alternate models built from a single 67 piece kit:
Seeing what a set designer has put together is always a fun way to learn new techniques and design concepts, but there's nothing stopping anyone from building whatever they want out of a LEGO set.
I was lucky enough to grow up as the third child of a family obsessed with lego. Some of my fondest memories are digging through all the loose parts my mother kept in rubbermaid containers and building anything I could imagine with my brothers. Those pieces all started life as a bunch of different sets, but the whole point of lego for me was that the sets can be a springboard to create anything you can imagine.
Plus, nothing's stopping you from buying lots of loose pieces. I'm not sure if it's still the case, but you used to be able to just buy whole boxes of bricks of different colors or shapes from lego.
Sorry, it is your imagination that is limited. Just go to any Lego show and look at the absolutely amazing creations that people do. Those weirdo pieces that you think only have one use turn out to have many creative uses. Swing your browser over to someplace like bricklink.com and cruise the discussion forums for pictures of interesting stuff people have built and want to show each other.
Just because you can't think of anything to build other than what is shown in the book in front of you, doesn't mean that applies to everyone.
Websites don't have that blocky '90s shape/look now either. There's an eerie parallel where both the Web and LEGO have moved increasingly from a place of "limited aesthetic suggestions so you can build anything you want" to "it's gonna be much easier for you if you play/watch/live within a walled garden with highly scripted interactions from the entertainment/advertising industry." It's interesting that Minecraft has risen as a reaction to this trend.
For those that are surprised that it's "so expensive", LEGO is usually very expensive (and totally worth it.) This is only 119 euros/dollars (same for both) and I know I'll be buying it both for myself and as a gift for my best friend (unless she gets it for herself first.)
LEGO sets have an average price per piece of around 10 cents, which has been pretty stable since the late 70s [0]. With 1969 pieces (which is a fantastic number) you'd expect the set to cost $216.59 at the current average of 11 cents per piece, so this is a fantastic deal.
It's also a meter high (about 3 foot 4 for the Americans) which is really fantastic.
Molds have a finite cycle count before parts go out of tolerance. A typical steel mold might have a million cycles, more complex and precise ones may be much less. At the volumes Lego delivers (~19 billion elements a year), I'd expect nearly 100% turnover each year.
One of my favourite examples is the black vs grey pins. Here's the black one [1], and [2] is the grey one. It's one of those parts that often look like it's a rather haphazard choice which one to use. And sometimes it might be.
But the black one has friction ridges that are a tiny fraction of a millimetre. Little enough that for constructions where friction doesn't matter (you just want to connect two parts and something else will prevent rotation), they are mostly interchangeable, but the grey ones work better to connect wheels that you actually want to be able to spin, and the black one works better if you want to build a rigid structure.
You don't tend to find two parts that similar with that kind of minor difference for most non-lego plastic building blocks because most of them don't manufacture their parts precisely enough for it to work.
Yes, they deliver value for money and profit from it! Great and more power to them! It's a show of how much greater in value their product is to their customers than the sum of its constituent parts/labor (or, put another way, its cost).
Whenever someone goes out of their way to complain about the profit someone makes (as though its dirty somehow) I always wonder... have you ever calculated your own profit margin? Having a job is rarely free and, unless you you're just living off prior earnings/trust fund/etc. this is a figure you can come up with. Most people I've known, including myself over time (I've for worked everything from minimum wage to very healthy salaries), have done pretty well in the profit margin percentage area as compared to the 32.8% markup you cite.
To be fair, you certainly didn't register a complaint per se in your comment, but something to think about before making that complaint.
Well that was weird. The grandparent asked why LEGO was so expensive. People reply with familiar Lego Group PR sound bytes that don't explain the markup. I reply with fresh economic facts that actually explain the costs and I am implicitly being cast as either a communist or as being ignorant?
They also discard (melt & reuse) a ridiculous number of bricks. Someone did a study on the standard deviation of sold Lego bricks, and found extremely tight tolerances.
The patent expired long ago, but few companies will put that much effort into making those shapes that precisely.
A friend of mine was confused as to how they continue to sell so well without the patents and I told him to try to build with MegaBlox. The knock offs are terrible and barely hold together. I can still build with 30+ year-old Lego pieces.
In fact, when I was young, I built little ships and using an RCX even a submarine, using only plain Lego pieces and a shredded paper towel in a little "chamber" between the water and the motor to keep incoming water from damaging the motor. Funny enough, the towel was enough to sustain half an hour of water exposure.
$0.10 per brick yields a wildly inaccurate estimate. It would be much better to look at which pieces are included in each set rather than average the cost per brick across all sets sold by year.
You may think it's wildly inaccurate, but head over to the lego store and you'll see how closely this holds up. This is by far the highest piece count model I've seen for $119.
Fwiw, there is an untrue statement in the article:
"With 1969 LEGO elements the 21309 NASA Apollo Saturn V rockets its way into LEGO Ideas history as the tallest LEGO Ideas set, as well as the one containing most elements."
They weren't claiming it had the most pieces of any Lego set, but that it had the most pieces of any Lego Ideas set, Ideas being the program for fans to submit their own designs for sets.
In this case, 'elements' seems to refer to the number of sections of the set that are independent -- the stages of the rocket, the lander, the astronauts, etc.
Also, they specifically refer to the "LEGO Ideas" collection; the Taj Mahal was part of the "LEGO Sculptures" collection.
(There have been many other sets from other collections with more pieces than this.)
I built one of these as a kid complete with lander and orbiting module. Colours were accurate too.
Around that age I also built a bomber plane with cruise missile. I was inspired by Greenham Common and the news! My parents did not think that was so good.
All the adults were impressed by our creations, plus our child view of the world. So that Saturn rocket would be subtly on show rather than thrown in the box. We had feedback on our creations and played to the crowd.
I am sure brick economics would have me not getting every piece optimal, however there would be few spare bricks. I doubt our version would compare to this fancy kit version though. Therefore the original mega project would not have been attempted had the new kit been available, it would enforce a requirement to have the special bricks rather than be extra resourceful.
Yes I will buy this for my sister in memory of those happy times, to be a familiar object on the shelf for her newborn to eventually play with. It will be there ready.
As an adult who has had to deal with a Lego addiction, my suggestion is IF you have an addictive personality and not money to burn -
please .. don't start. I sunk 1-2 grand into sets - for me it wasn't worth it. The old legos were a lot better. Reusable pieces that make them an investment. The newer sets often have special purpose pieces and instructions to just build 2-3 models. I thought I was learning about mechanical stuff - differential steering, inside of an engine, etc. Frankly, watching Youtube videos is a much more cost effective way of learning. What is the worst thing of it all - artificial scarcity. I'd buy sets I didn't really care for because I was afraid they would go out of stock. This has happened to some of the popular sets where scalpers charge 10x. They even have web sites where people do this full time. Just say no.
Fischertechnik is fantastic, but I guess mostly unknown in the US?
The tolerances are far worse than with Lego, but there are many more possibilities to build workng machines.
I'm just reading a book about technic history with Fischertechnik, where all kinds of differentials, steering mechanisms, planetariums (yes, with several planets, ecliptic, and so on) and even several types of mechanical clocks are built.
> What is the worst thing of it all - artificial scarcity. I'd buy sets I didn't really care for because I was afraid they would go out of stock. This has happened to some of the popular sets where scalpers charge 10x. They even have web sites where people do this full time. Just say no.
Hell, they even do it at the Lego store. I was in Bellevue WA and they had about half a dozen of one of the Star Wars sets, and the guy there suggested I might want to buy several of them because they were about to stop production...
(Alas, though, my Lego fetish is Architecture, and some of the Creator stuff).
which is an excellent reference for how to build steering mechanisms, differentials, transmissions, suspensions... and Sariel usually offers two or three different ways of accomplishing any given goal.
I also highly recommend this book. It's basically a crash course in mechanical engineering. I'm a 41yr old software engineer who's played with Legos my whole life, and I still learned a bunch.
The Mindstorms kits, a few pounds of technic parts are also pretty good for dipping your toe into robotics. The Mindstorms have instructions on building line-following cars and a variety of other things.
I have fond memories of hacking together a 10 dpi photocopier using the light sensor and a few motors.
As a kid, I had a few of the Lego "Expert Builder" sets, so when the first Mindstorms kits came out, as an adult I was pretty stoked.
I thought "here's a good way to prototype building robots and having fun too" - and I could use my old kit with it.
I found that buying that first kit rather steep, but I persisted. Over time I purchased more parts, hit up the Lego-Pitsco-Dacta store to get others (stuff like pneumatic pieces and gears), and a few of the Mindstorms expansion sets...
I sunk several hundred into it all before I came to realization that it wasn't cost effective; today I know it isn't.
If you want to prototype (or outright build) robotic systems, just go with "raw" materials (especially surplus or junkyard pulls). Small scale stuff can be easily bodged together with hot glue, cardboard, and RC servos. At the time, a great controller for it all was the BASIC Stamp, today it would be an Arduino, RasPi, or ESP8266 - or any number of other options that are all low cost.
Still - where Lego (and other building kits) shine is the modularity and standardness of the system. There have been attempts, some fairly successful, to do the same with more robust (mechanically and structurally) parts for kits (makerbeam, vex, actobotics), but they don't all have the traction the Lego enjoys from being a near first-mover, and not requiring tools to put together.
But if you don't mind tools - there are plenty of lower cost options out there (not saying this because people don't know it - plenty do).
Nothing is stopping you from reusing pieces, they're made to the same quality as always. Newer sets don't have as many "speciality" pieces as they did in the dark ages (2000-2005) and the instructions have NEVER had more than 1-2 models in them.
If you want mechanical stuff, buy the Technic range.
And there is no "artificial scarcity" - they just happen to release new products constantly, and they can't keep every single set in production; so sets are retired after 3-4 years.
Finally, scalpers aren't the only ones to buy from; I find below-RRP sets all the time on Craigslist & similar.
Check out the 8020 set. That is what I grew up with. Beautiful models (in my eye as a kid and as an adult), and an amazing number of them with the same set.
But I don't disagree with your points. I think if you lose control over any hobby, interest or indulgence, you end up in a bad place. I warned about lego because I didn't consider the dark side when I started :)
I've got the opposite problem. I was so hesitant to pay money, that I failed to buy sets before they were dropped, and I really regret missing some of them. The Medieval Market Village and Bag-end, in particular.
That said, Lego Star Wars has been taking over our house, and we now need to buy a bigger house.
This is the artificial scarcity problem I mentioned ... there is no reason one cannot pay extra, heck 100% extra, and get any set from Lego's catalogue on demand.
Go to a lego store after they launch, buy it. Even the rare porsche was widely available. There hasn't been a lego set I "missed" because I didn't order it the second it was available, and I even have the "ultra rare" 4x4 remote control car.
Can you imagine how large and expensive this would be if it were minifig-scale? The minifigs that come with it are maybe half-size. That just goes to show how incredibly massive Saturn V really was!
Edit: Imagination no longer required.
> Ryan "The Brickman" McNaught, one of only 13 LEGO Certified Professionals, has built an 18.7 foot (5.7 meter) tall Saturn V with launch umbilical tower using 120,000 bricks. It took him 250 hours to build.
Usually traditional toys experiencing a boom in expensive collector behavior means the crash is coming up. Look at greatest gen / early boomers and baseball cards. So that part is sad, when lego is gone because a generation of kids grew up where its too expensive to play with I'm going to miss it. But time moves on. Hard to predict exactly how much my kids will pay for Minecraft memorabilia when they're in their 40s... bet it will be near $119 inflation adjusted LOL as per this article. Maybe 2040 will have a re-release of the original iphone.
I've got a yearly pass to Kennedy Space Center, but I don't even live in the US. Still, I've been there more than four times just this year, and even watched a rocket launch from the LC-39 gantry. I've been to the Apollo/Saturn V center a number of times and the sheer size of the rocket gets me every time. I watch rocket launches all the time on the web, and am constantly awed by what engineers can accomplish, not least with SpaceX landing rockets like parking a car these days. I'm a total space nerd.
This package is epic, even down to the number of pieces. I need it.
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[ 3.1 ms ] story [ 198 ms ] threadKerbal would likely be more expensive due to licensing fees -- the Saturn 5 is public domain.
And honestly, KSP isn't really for everyone. Some people would find it boring while building a giant Lego rocket would be right up their alley.
There are more than a few kits out there which can be easily built and launched safely - where the total equipment needed (if all purchased) would amount to something around what this Lego kit costs.
And you get a real flying rocket in the end!
If you want to spend a bit (or a lot) less, you can build flyable model rockets from literally trash: One local model rocket club here in the Phoenix area likes to display rockets made from Pringles cans (body, fins, and nosecone!). There is plenty of free and low-cost software out there to help with designing such rockets (and more than a few books).
Lastly - if you want - you can even make your own engines from easily sourced materials (sugar rocket engines are easily made using powdered sugar and tree stump remover, for instance, stuffed/poured into paper tubes or PVC pipe). You can find plenty of information on the internet too about these designs.
So - instead of building a non-flying pretend rocket - build a flying real one, strap a gopro to it, and launch!
I also regret spending more time building Airfix model planes than building flying RC planes. oh well.
From a reply to the same question in the comments
I MUST HAVE THIS! I am afraid when my birthday comes around it will be sold out.
Eh, you can always just take it apart and build what you want or just build what you want form the get and throw the instructions out. I did this for years as a child and have done it for years as an adult.
Think of it as buying a set of pieces you can use build anything you want with (including combining with other sets to build bigger/other stuff), but it comes with instructions to build something very cool using just those pieces.
On a side note, LEGO does sell boxes of basic pieces with multiple instructions sets included that only utilize a small portion of the whole box.
My concern is that, due to the much greater number of unique pieces, the increased difficulty of organizing a collection, or finding the piece you need in an unorganized pile, or even just being able to visualize what it is you want to build will tend to discourage kids from making their own creations. Hopefully I'm wrong about that.
Ahh, I see. That makes sense, but also I fail to see how that's a bad thing. The new pieces are built to be backwards compatible with your Legos from 30 years ago, so wouldn't that just make them MORE attractive?
Don't under estimate kids' ability to change and invent.
The packaging used to be better about this, even including alternate instructions using the pieces in the set.
They still do that with some sets.
Lego Classic 10709 - a small cheap set (less than $5) - has one page with suggestions if you combine it with other similar sets, and another page with instructions about modifying this set.
Pages 14 and 24.
https://www.lego.com/en-us/classic/activities/booklets/10709...
The collection seems small, but it looks like you can buy general brick sets for maximum creativity.
Lego has more sets today that are just bricks or bricks with multiple models than they've had for like 35+ years. Not to mention dozens of books they put out with other ideas.
And I'm not talking about instructions for how to build a different set, I mean "Here's a way you can combine these pieces that you might not have though of - figure out what to do with that" or "You like animals? Here's how to make a tail. Go make some animals."
My daughter gets plenty of small sets, and then typically just wants to dive into all of the extra pieces and build something completely different. Sometimes these are inspired by Lego suggestions. Sometimes they are crazy things she comes up with on her own.
There is nothing that Lego sells that legitimately limits people in what they can build.
We have ~20 kits at home (gifts, impulsive purchases, etc), it looks like pile of assorted, useless, weird blocks, non-matching wheels. My son started play Lego after I bit the bullet and just sorted out that crap, leaving only 5-10 standard blocks.
I also wonder what some people consider standard blocks. If you're just talking about 2x4s, they're actually not that much fun. If I sorted all of my sets, the majority of pieces would be 1x2 or longer bricks or various flat pieces which are significantly better for building.
There are plenty of odd pieces out there, but when you get into the expert level sets and see them use croissants and robot fists to do remarkable detail on buildings... well I certainly realized that very few pieces are useless.
I'd get it not just because I'm a space travel buff but because of the scale- it's a meter tall! Great job bringing out the immense size of the Saturn V, in Lego form.
There are a few sites around where LEGO fans post alternate builds of models. Here's an example search showing 100+ alternate models built from a single 67 piece kit:
https://rebrickable.com/search/?search_type=mocs&parent_set=...
You can do this with licensed themes as well. Here's five alternate models that I built from a tiny X-Wing:
https://rebrickable.com/users/jncraton/mocs/?parent_set=7512...
Seeing what a set designer has put together is always a fun way to learn new techniques and design concepts, but there's nothing stopping anyone from building whatever they want out of a LEGO set.
Plus, nothing's stopping you from buying lots of loose pieces. I'm not sure if it's still the case, but you used to be able to just buy whole boxes of bricks of different colors or shapes from lego.
Also, for what it's worth the correct plural of lego is up for debate. http://www.adrants.com/2005/09/lego-gets-pissy-about-brand-n...
Just because you can't think of anything to build other than what is shown in the book in front of you, doesn't mean that applies to everyone.
This is a beautiful model. Looks like a model though and not a Lego set.
LEGO sets have an average price per piece of around 10 cents, which has been pretty stable since the late 70s [0]. With 1969 pieces (which is a fantastic number) you'd expect the set to cost $216.59 at the current average of 11 cents per piece, so this is a fantastic deal.
It's also a meter high (about 3 foot 4 for the Americans) which is really fantastic.
[0] https://flowingdata.com/2013/02/07/analysis-of-lego-brick-pr...
But the black one has friction ridges that are a tiny fraction of a millimetre. Little enough that for constructions where friction doesn't matter (you just want to connect two parts and something else will prevent rotation), they are mostly interchangeable, but the grey ones work better to connect wheels that you actually want to be able to spin, and the black one works better if you want to build a rigid structure.
You don't tend to find two parts that similar with that kind of minor difference for most non-lego plastic building blocks because most of them don't manufacture their parts precisely enough for it to work.
[1] https://www.bricklink.com/v2/catalog/catalogitem.page?P=2780...
[2] https://www.bricklink.com/v2/catalog/catalogitem.page?P=3673...
Whenever someone goes out of their way to complain about the profit someone makes (as though its dirty somehow) I always wonder... have you ever calculated your own profit margin? Having a job is rarely free and, unless you you're just living off prior earnings/trust fund/etc. this is a figure you can come up with. Most people I've known, including myself over time (I've for worked everything from minimum wage to very healthy salaries), have done pretty well in the profit margin percentage area as compared to the 32.8% markup you cite.
To be fair, you certainly didn't register a complaint per se in your comment, but something to think about before making that complaint.
(I just explained why Lego is expensive. Nothing else.)
Maybe don't be so judgemental for no reason?
The patent expired long ago, but few companies will put that much effort into making those shapes that precisely.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=1&v=Tnb-LUM0yd4
edit: Ah! He did it for this stack exchange question - https://bricks.stackexchange.com/questions/1754/how-much-usa...
Legos are amazing.
https://bricks.stackexchange.com/a/8216/708
Seriously? How do you design something with that kind of easter egg in it?
"With 1969 LEGO elements the 21309 NASA Apollo Saturn V rockets its way into LEGO Ideas history as the tallest LEGO Ideas set, as well as the one containing most elements."
The last part is incorrect, the Lego set with the most pieces was Taj Mahal with 5922 pieces, way more than this: http://lego.wikia.com/wiki/10189_Taj_Mahal
Edit: I misread that, thanks for the clarification.
Also, they specifically refer to the "LEGO Ideas" collection; the Taj Mahal was part of the "LEGO Sculptures" collection.
(There have been many other sets from other collections with more pieces than this.)
Around that age I also built a bomber plane with cruise missile. I was inspired by Greenham Common and the news! My parents did not think that was so good.
All the adults were impressed by our creations, plus our child view of the world. So that Saturn rocket would be subtly on show rather than thrown in the box. We had feedback on our creations and played to the crowd.
I am sure brick economics would have me not getting every piece optimal, however there would be few spare bricks. I doubt our version would compare to this fancy kit version though. Therefore the original mega project would not have been attempted had the new kit been available, it would enforce a requirement to have the special bricks rather than be extra resourceful.
Yes I will buy this for my sister in memory of those happy times, to be a familiar object on the shelf for her newborn to eventually play with. It will be there ready.
The tolerances are far worse than with Lego, but there are many more possibilities to build workng machines.
I'm just reading a book about technic history with Fischertechnik, where all kinds of differentials, steering mechanisms, planetariums (yes, with several planets, ecliptic, and so on) and even several types of mechanical clocks are built.
Perhaps only by those "not in the know" so to speak. For the general consumer, yeah mostly.
But if you're into DIY robotics for any length of time (or perhaps other STEM pursuits), you likely know about it.
That said, Fischertechnik makes Lego look cost effective...
Dirk Fox, Thomas Püttmann ISBN: 978-3864902963
Hell, they even do it at the Lego store. I was in Bellevue WA and they had about half a dozen of one of the Star Wars sets, and the guy there suggested I might want to buy several of them because they were about to stop production...
(Alas, though, my Lego fetish is Architecture, and some of the Creator stuff).
You want the Unofficial LEGO Technic Builder's Guide: https://www.nostarch.com/technicbuilder
which is an excellent reference for how to build steering mechanisms, differentials, transmissions, suspensions... and Sariel usually offers two or three different ways of accomplishing any given goal.
Highly recommended.
I have fond memories of hacking together a 10 dpi photocopier using the light sensor and a few motors.
I thought "here's a good way to prototype building robots and having fun too" - and I could use my old kit with it.
I found that buying that first kit rather steep, but I persisted. Over time I purchased more parts, hit up the Lego-Pitsco-Dacta store to get others (stuff like pneumatic pieces and gears), and a few of the Mindstorms expansion sets...
I sunk several hundred into it all before I came to realization that it wasn't cost effective; today I know it isn't.
If you want to prototype (or outright build) robotic systems, just go with "raw" materials (especially surplus or junkyard pulls). Small scale stuff can be easily bodged together with hot glue, cardboard, and RC servos. At the time, a great controller for it all was the BASIC Stamp, today it would be an Arduino, RasPi, or ESP8266 - or any number of other options that are all low cost.
Still - where Lego (and other building kits) shine is the modularity and standardness of the system. There have been attempts, some fairly successful, to do the same with more robust (mechanically and structurally) parts for kits (makerbeam, vex, actobotics), but they don't all have the traction the Lego enjoys from being a near first-mover, and not requiring tools to put together.
But if you don't mind tools - there are plenty of lower cost options out there (not saying this because people don't know it - plenty do).
Nothing is stopping you from reusing pieces, they're made to the same quality as always. Newer sets don't have as many "speciality" pieces as they did in the dark ages (2000-2005) and the instructions have NEVER had more than 1-2 models in them.
If you want mechanical stuff, buy the Technic range.
And there is no "artificial scarcity" - they just happen to release new products constantly, and they can't keep every single set in production; so sets are retired after 3-4 years.
Finally, scalpers aren't the only ones to buy from; I find below-RRP sets all the time on Craigslist & similar.
But I don't disagree with your points. I think if you lose control over any hobby, interest or indulgence, you end up in a bad place. I warned about lego because I didn't consider the dark side when I started :)
That said, Lego Star Wars has been taking over our house, and we now need to buy a bigger house.
I will have this set.
I prefer real scale models over Lego
Edit: Imagination no longer required.
> Ryan "The Brickman" McNaught, one of only 13 LEGO Certified Professionals, has built an 18.7 foot (5.7 meter) tall Saturn V with launch umbilical tower using 120,000 bricks. It took him 250 hours to build.
http://www.collectspace.com/ubb/Forum16/HTML/000764.html
I've got a yearly pass to Kennedy Space Center, but I don't even live in the US. Still, I've been there more than four times just this year, and even watched a rocket launch from the LC-39 gantry. I've been to the Apollo/Saturn V center a number of times and the sheer size of the rocket gets me every time. I watch rocket launches all the time on the web, and am constantly awed by what engineers can accomplish, not least with SpaceX landing rockets like parking a car these days. I'm a total space nerd.
This package is epic, even down to the number of pieces. I need it.