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lego rocks!

lego rocks!

Go buy dolls

Which one?
This one? : https://www.myfriendcayla.com/...
This one? : https://www.amazon.com/Toy-Fi-...
This one? : https://furby.hasbro.com/en-us

Lego bricks

Should I buy this Lego? : https://www.lego.com/en-us/ser...
Or maybe some Lego which comes with these instructions? : https://www.lego.com/en-us/gam...

Your kids won't feel "different from the others".

Oh wow. You don't actually know or understand children at all.

Go buy dolls

Which one?
This one? : https://www.myfriendcayla.com/...
This one? : https://www.amazon.com/Toy-Fi-...
This one? : https://furby.hasbro.com/en-us

Lego bricks

Should I buy this Lego? : https://www.lego.com/en-us/ser...
Or maybe some Lego which comes with these instructions? : https://www.lego.com/en-us/gam...

Your kids won't feel "different from the others".

Oh wow. You don't actually know or understand children at all.

You can read the Official Lego guidelines for cleaning lego bricks. They say not to put them in the laundry machine or dishwasher.

Not really, I miss the old Lego, before they tried to make nothing but branded and licensed parts that sell well because of their associated content.

Actually they have less special parts now. It was one of the things they fixed during the turn-around. They have licensed models, but fewer special parts.

You can still find generic kits: they're cheap too. There are also over-priced versions aimed squarely at adults.

Not really, I miss the old Lego, before they tried to make nothing but branded and licensed parts that sell well because of their associated content.

Actually they have less special parts now. It was one of the things they fixed during the turn-around. They have licensed models, but fewer special parts.

You can still find generic kits: they're cheap too. There are also over-priced versions aimed squarely at adults.

Project page of the Lego Accelerator

Lego actually had something similar to this where you could upload your build and they would mail you an actual kit. http://ldd.lego.com/en-us/subp... They shut it down because they said they couldn't maintain the same level of quality control. Even if lego could buy the printer, the tech isn't there. To have the same quality, they would have to do 1 off injection molding which would be horrible expensive or possible custom CNC each piece which would also be expensive and would still not be the same as an actual lego. For certain items, they could possibly injection mold an oversize piece and then carve it down to size but this wouldn't be a one size fits all solution either.

http://shop.lego.com/en-GB/LEG...

1500 pieces, mostly bricks but enough windows, wheels etc. And lots more colours than there used to be.

That's the largest, but there are a few sizes of the same thing, and in a Lego shop you can buy individual bricks by volume. I don't see what more they could do — there'd be no point having 50 no-particular-theme sets.

What Lego could do for me would be to offer kits of bulk pieces that are not intended to build something specific, at a good price. Older kits were a lot more like that

They do have those, appropriately named Lego Classic. And they are about the same price as any other Lego, around 6-8 cents/brick.

I wonder if this is even legal?

As long as you don't print the LEGO trademark on them, it is legal. But it is not possible, at least on a cheap 3D-printer. Legos are made in custom injection molds with 0.005mm precision. A 3D printer is not going to even get close to that. Making Lego Bricks.

If I was making that joke I would have pluralised it because...

a) Readers are, on average, slightly dumber than the editors.
b) One Fischertechnik, like one Meccano, is NFUTA.

Let's look at Lego. If Lego sold as many sets to girls as they sell to boys they would earn billions more than they do now. So they try hard to sell to girls.

They tried and tried, for decades, and failed every time. Until now. In 2012, they released the Friends line. And the number one bestselling LEGO of 2012 was Olivia's House. A Friends set. It beat every Star Wars set they make. I'm having trouble finding it now, but I read that in 2013, the Friends line was the number one bestselling LEGO theme by dollar value. Ahead of Star Wars. That's a fantastic amount of previously untapped market power.

They make pink sets with flowers and ponies.

Pink was good, but purple was what they settled on for Friends. It seems to work great.

It's just that Legos don't appeal to most girls.

They didn't. They do now. The $40 million in marketing and the tens of millions more invested over 4 years leading up to the release of the line might have helped.

LEGO has child behavior psychologists on staff. LEGO does research. And the new CEO listened to the research results. The research said "girls like bright colors". The research said "girls don't like fat dolls". The research said "girls play with the inside of a structure they've built, not the outside". The research said "girls prefer story-driven play about interpersonal relationships". So LEGO Friends sets are pink and purple and periwinkle, feature taller, slenderer mini-dolls, not mini-figures, have detailed building interiors, and have characters with names and backstories. In direct contrast to every non-licensed LEGO set for decades prior, and in marked contrast to LEGO's prior attempts to make sets for girls.

Bionicle and Ninjago have demonstrated that boys also like story-driven play with named characters, but boys are fine with the "overweight" appearance of minifigs, boys still play with the outside of structures, and boys still prefer darker, more saturated colors. In short, LEGO figured out that boys and girls are different and managed to zero in on the real differences.

The proof that they were right? $1 billion more in revenue than they expected, driven entirely by sales to girls. Girls made up the bulk of new customers, while boosting the LEGO buying of their brothers by concentrating the whole family in the LEGO aisle. The ongoing proof they were right? Double digit sales growth since 2012, when the overall toy market actually contracted in 2013, and was in the low single digits in 2014. Why did it work this time, when it failed so many times before? Hitting all of the differences in one package, instead of selectively picking and choosing among them. They've done pink and purple before. That didn't work. They did taller, more slender characters before. That didn't work either. They've done named characters before. That didn't work. Put it all together and market the hell out of it so little girls actually found out about it, and they finally broke through.

The wailing and gnashing of teeth continues to this day, but LEGO has tapped into billions of dollars, while still fundamentally making construction toys that are assembled brick by brick. It wasn't the spatial awareness, or digital dexterity that were the barriers. It was everything else.

Here, here's a technically feasible Mars idea.

But wait, that's not a city. Not quite. How about this. There. That was about $5000 worth of work. Pay the man.

Here, here's a technically feasible Mars idea.

But wait, that's not a city. Not quite. How about this. There. That was about $5000 worth of work. Pay the man.

Do you know how the Lego Minecraft set came to be? Mojang submitted a proposal to Lego Cuusoo (since renamed to Lego Ideas). On this site anyone can submit ideas for Lego sets, when an idea attracts 10,000 votes Lego will look into producing it as a set. We got some cool stuff that way: the Curiosity rover, for instance. The Minecraft set also got lots of votes, and the rest is history.

err let me just leave this for you

http://shop.lego.com/en-US/Pic...

direct Genuine Lego(TM) building blocks (assuming you don't have a Physical Store in your area)

LEGO faced a decision whether they would keep their mediocre sales figures

Actually, LEGO faced a decision whether they would go bankrupt or do tie-ins. The BI BI linked in another comment is excellent in showing what happened to Lego and their comeback.

All the crying about crappy tie-in Lego sets is hysterical hand-wringing. Yes, those occupy the majority of retail store shelf-space, but that only reflects the reteail store's decision. The key thing is that those tie-ins have not replaced other "pure" Lego sets in Lego's catalog. It's 2015, search online: there are many online shops and alternatives. Even better, there's Brickset, an amazing database of sets, which not only will show you the wide variety of still-in-production sets but also useful tools to help you find the cheapest set for cost-per-brick.

And you know what Lego sets my kids want more than any others? The Lego creator series since while they do come with instructions it seems to be for 3 different models and they come with a lot of pieces. Granted they have a number of star wars sets now but they have far more creator sets as well as Lego city sets.

I'll be "that other...other guy" and point out that LEGO is still all-caps.

Lego are big on sustainability and protecting the environment: http://aboutus.lego.com/en-gb/...

Greenpeace is pointing out that their stated goals and values are incompatible with the actions of Shell, a company they associate with. Lego have accepted this and decided to do something about it.

Right target, reasonable argument based on Lego's stated position and goals, reasonable outcome.

It looks like Lego already did that Lego Fusion

Ok, the LEGO set is independent of this prototype. But it's available this month. Here is the original proposal on Lego Ideas. Buy your own minifig exosuit! You know you want to.

I heard this story on NPR yesterday and they said the idea came from a 7 year old Dutch girl who wrote LEGO a letter complaining about the lack of girl figurines doing the cools things the boys figures where doing.

Of course that's what NPR said, 'cause it makes for a better narrative, but where it came from is LEGO CUUSOO, which has since been renamed LEGO Ideas. Specifically, this proposal. It sat in LEGO CUUSOO as a proposal since April 30, 2012. It didn't get the 10,000 supporters it needed until late last year.

So yeah, little Dutch girl. Right. I'm sure there is a little Dutch girl, and I'm sure she did write a letter, but it had nothing to do with this set. Broadcast media lies for ratings, as usual. The real Dutch woman who proposed the set is a geochemist who likes LEGO and classic video games. She's designed some Megaman minifigs and sets too, not just Female Scientists. Her Big Bang Theory vignette has also reached 10,000 supporters, and is currently in review by the LEGO Group for possible production. Her Megaman designs have 3891 supporters. She's not 7 years old.

I heard this story on NPR yesterday and they said the idea came from a 7 year old Dutch girl who wrote LEGO a letter complaining about the lack of girl figurines doing the cools things the boys figures where doing.

Of course that's what NPR said, 'cause it makes for a better narrative, but where it came from is LEGO CUUSOO, which has since been renamed LEGO Ideas. Specifically, this proposal. It sat in LEGO CUUSOO as a proposal since April 30, 2012. It didn't get the 10,000 supporters it needed until late last year.

So yeah, little Dutch girl. Right. I'm sure there is a little Dutch girl, and I'm sure she did write a letter, but it had nothing to do with this set. Broadcast media lies for ratings, as usual. The real Dutch woman who proposed the set is a geochemist who likes LEGO and classic video games. She's designed some Megaman minifigs and sets too, not just Female Scientists. Her Big Bang Theory vignette has also reached 10,000 supporters, and is currently in review by the LEGO Group for possible production. Her Megaman designs have 3891 supporters. She's not 7 years old.

Minecraft supplements, not replaces, Lego in the minds of creative kids. Minecraft is neat, and it lets you do a lot, but there's something special about being physically engaged with what you're building. You can't take your Minecraft creation out back to play by the stream (unless you recreate it with Legos?).

And now the inverse is also true

The kits that used to be just a random collection of bricks are a lot harder to find today. Head over to Toys-R-Us and almost all of it (other than big blox things for toddlers) are specialized kits. Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter, Star Wars, etc. The lego kits we had in the 70s or 80s just aren't common at local stores.

If you're buying Lego from Toys-R-Us, you're doing it wrong.

Let me introduce you to http://vip.lego.com/ -- you can even order the pieces on your tablet.

The older lego kits are still there. You can get Educational Lego (which is the basic bricks), Space Lego is now Star Wars Lego (same stuff, just rebranded with some star wars specific pieces added), medieval Lego still exists, although they've changed the coats of arms, and Lego City still exists and is growing in parts selection.

And then, of course, there's http://www.bricklink.com/ and http://rebrickable.com/.

After that, find your local Lego store, and get your missing pieces by hitting the pick-a-brick wall from time to time to get the pieces when they come available at a discount (you fill a slurpee-sized cup with whatever you want for a fixed price).

The bricks alone are very easy to find.

There's almost no point in it being a lego toy, because you're just assembling a crude model of an x-wing, and the only thing you can make with the set is...an x-wing. Why not just...play with a model x-wing?

Seriously... watch the lego movie... or hell just look at some of the sets they've released based on the movie.

I think this one illustrates my point:

http://static.indigoimages.ca/...

Take a good look at it. The 'goblet' piece is a gun. The wagon wheels are the engine turbines, the turbine housings are those molded castle tower pieces. The half-barrel is the pilots seat. Torches reworked into a missile launcher. The working catapult?... well they kept that.

They took a medieval gate and cart and turned it into something akin to a pod-racer, as an official set.

The lego movie and movie sets simultaneously agrees with all your complaints ... and then proves your conclusion wrong.

Granted a single small lego set is usually only much good for a particular model or a variation on a theme. But after you've got 5 or 6 lego sets especially if they are from different themes you can build pretty much anything. Medieval space ships, sailing ships out of space lego, Giant transforming robots out of lego city vehicles.

Honestly there were a bit of a bad spot in the late 90s where the lego wasn't as good, but the current sets and over the last 5-10 years are an absolute joy.

I recommend any parent with kids becoming lego aged to start with a basic bulk bucket. I think there's a yellow bucket out right now 600 basic bricks for $40 bucks.

Then you throw in a star wars or batman set or two so the kid has a couple minifigures, droids (my son loves r2d2s), light sabers, etc. And then build out from there.

The new lego master builder academy sets are BRILLIANT too.

http://shop.lego.com/en-US/Mas...

The instruction books alone are nearly with the price of entry.

Here's the instructions to an actual Lego castle-themed set. The number of "big castle-shaped pieces", as shown in the back, is not large. The fact is, older sets were a lot smaller and had a lot fewer pieces with less variety than sets do now.

To be honest, I'm really disappointed with the modern lego sets. When I was a kid, I had the city sets, and for the most part they were buildings that you made from brick-shaped bricks with only a few uniquely molded parts for that set. Today there's barely any blocks. They're all cross-licensed tie-ins with movies or cartoons, and so in order to get the assembled set to look like something from The Lord of the Rings or Star Wars, 75% of the blocks are special molds.

There's almost no point in it being a lego toy, because you're just assembling a crude model of an x-wing, and the only thing you can make with the set is...an x-wing. Why not just...play with a model x-wing?

This is completely wrong. Here's the instructions to the latest X-Wing. Flip to the back and count the number of "special molds" yourself. Do you see anything in there that can't be used for anything but an X-Wing?

Actually, there are quite a few nice sets which I`ve purchased for my kids. I agree that there's a lot of bad sets out there, but I look at my old sets instructions advertisement pages, and there was also a lot of bad sets 30 years ago but we didn`t happened to purchase them either :)

http://www.lego.com/en-us/crea...
http://www.lego.com/en-us/crea...
http://www.lego.com/en-us/crea...
http://www.lego.com/en-us/tech...

Ok, that last one`s for me :)

Actually, there are quite a few nice sets which I`ve purchased for my kids. I agree that there's a lot of bad sets out there, but I look at my old sets instructions advertisement pages, and there was also a lot of bad sets 30 years ago but we didn`t happened to purchase them either :)

http://www.lego.com/en-us/crea...
http://www.lego.com/en-us/crea...
http://www.lego.com/en-us/crea...
http://www.lego.com/en-us/tech...

Ok, that last one`s for me :)

Actually, there are quite a few nice sets which I`ve purchased for my kids. I agree that there's a lot of bad sets out there, but I look at my old sets instructions advertisement pages, and there was also a lot of bad sets 30 years ago but we didn`t happened to purchase them either :)

http://www.lego.com/en-us/crea...
http://www.lego.com/en-us/crea...
http://www.lego.com/en-us/crea...
http://www.lego.com/en-us/tech...

Ok, that last one`s for me :)

Actually, there are quite a few nice sets which I`ve purchased for my kids. I agree that there's a lot of bad sets out there, but I look at my old sets instructions advertisement pages, and there was also a lot of bad sets 30 years ago but we didn`t happened to purchase them either :)

http://www.lego.com/en-us/crea...
http://www.lego.com/en-us/crea...
http://www.lego.com/en-us/crea...
http://www.lego.com/en-us/tech...

Ok, that last one`s for me :)

For example, my 7 year old granddaughter loves minecraft, and spends hours building things there. I think she would love the ability to print out stuff she has built there. She also likes to make her own videos. She will arrange her dollhouses and stuff animals and make up a story involving them, and record it. I think she would love the ability to design her own dollhouses, sets, etc.

They already have this.
Lego already failed to take off with girls. What makes you think 3D printing will take off with them?

Citation Needed

Legos cost under 5 cents a piece to buy.

A 3D Printed lego brick on the other hand. In the video they were able to print out 12 bricks using $1.35 in material. Which works out to just under 12 cents to make. That price is also not including the cost of electricity to run the printer, cost of wear and tear on the printer., etc...

When 3D printing becomes fast, cheap and ubiquitous, the makers of Lego

3D printing will never be faster or cheaper that how Lego's are manufactured now. They make 1,140 elements per second. Injection molding will always be faster and cheaper than 3D printing.

I'm sure you could find some here.

It's getting to a point where all the various types of LEGO could be an entire store unto itself!

You want one of these?
http://stores.lego.com/nl-be/?showlanguageselector=true

http://ldd.lego.com/en-us/

Lego has their own free 3D-ish design program. I have played with it a bit - it can be finicky, but it's pretty cool.

Read the LEGO Mindstorm site for details. In short, there is a central computer to which you can attach motors and sensors. The kit comes with a visual programming language that you use to program the computer. You upload programs to the computer with USB. The basic kit comes with three motors, bump sensors, distance, and color detector. Other sensors are available as add-ons. You use standard LEGO bricks to assemble your creation. Search YouTube, you will get a ton of examples of the kit in action.

There's only one main LEGO Mindstorms kit.

At the time, I never imagined that a childhood spent playing with a Danish toy would prepare me to someday be quite proficient at assembling Swedish furniture.

1. No. No, it can't.
2. It would be just like the USA to pay $471 for something that can be had for $400.

i just skimmed the articles, but it also just said "linux based". busybox would still be great... but it could easily be as closed platform as android and friends.
if it would be truly open... i think i have some plans to waste a bit of money and time then ;)

and looks like their online designer still has no linux support, so they don't seem to be very interested in that area :>
http://ldd.lego.com/

Go online:

You can buy tubs and boxes of generic bricks, pick a brick or themed groups such as all windows and doors or all wheels.

The Creator range is where you find your classic feel sets. Generic buildings and cars with multiple ideas per set.

City is still there if you want the early 80s style minifigs and fire stations vibe.

And for those with a sense of the dramatic, they have their huge modular buildings line.

Stores don't sell them due to licensed sets selling faster. But Lego absolutely still makes "plain kits."

Go online:

You can buy tubs and boxes of generic bricks, pick a brick or themed groups such as all windows and doors or all wheels.

The Creator range is where you find your classic feel sets. Generic buildings and cars with multiple ideas per set.

City is still there if you want the early 80s style minifigs and fire stations vibe.

And for those with a sense of the dramatic, they have their huge modular buildings line.

Stores don't sell them due to licensed sets selling faster. But Lego absolutely still makes "plain kits."

Go online:

You can buy tubs and boxes of generic bricks, pick a brick or themed groups such as all windows and doors or all wheels.

The Creator range is where you find your classic feel sets. Generic buildings and cars with multiple ideas per set.

City is still there if you want the early 80s style minifigs and fire stations vibe.

And for those with a sense of the dramatic, they have their huge modular buildings line.

Stores don't sell them due to licensed sets selling faster. But Lego absolutely still makes "plain kits."