AIBU or is LEGO just a crap toy now

[RockyAddict]

I have spent the morning playing with my six year old DS2 and his Lego. But my God, it's infuriating. He has collected lots of 'kits' which my DH puts together for him, but once they are broken apart and the pieces put into the 'Lego tub' that's it. You can never put them back together again. We keep the instructions but I have just spent half an hour looking for a few of the same bits to no avail. I was a real Lego kid in the 70's and I loved it, but now the bits are so small and the kits so complicated that I lose the will to create anything.
And don't get me started on the cost! £10 for a tiny Star Wars space ship and a couple of Storm Troopers.
AIBU?

I thank you for reading my rant!

Mum bought DS a box of Duplo/Megablocks from a car boot and I sorted through it to check there weren't any small pieces in it (as he's only 1). I found a single piece of yellow lego.............which had a bite mark in it!!

Wtf? There is a toddler out there with jaws of steel who leaves bite marks in lego. I do NOT want that toddler in my Sure Start group

I spent a huge amount of my time as a child making Lego houses, with interior rooms and furniture. I usually got a big box of assorted blocks for Christmas. I recently went to a toys r us to find a gift for a 6 year old boy and was horrified at how little the Lego section might be expected to appeal to a typical girl. It was full of kits with martial or masculine themes. If I had received something like that as a child, I would have put it away and written a very pat thank you note. I got something I hoped the little boy would love (policeman and car plus dog -- his dad is in law enforcement and is often away for work) but found a horse-themed craft in another section for his sister.

Why no house kits, if kits are the new black? Even the dratted Barbie got a purple sparkly Barbie car fgs. Not that I approve of the kits, but if there are kits why not kits that girls might like too? Best solution would be the boxes I remember.

I adored the shutters, RockyAddict. All of my houses had them. Some of the more Spanish themed had doors formed from two tiers of shutters (= 4 layers of blocks iirc)

How can anyone say there is no creativity in Lego???

My DS1 plays with it for hours, making new things out of 101 different sets, as OP admits, Indiana Jones flies in a spaceship with Yoda etc.

(Actually not with Yoda as he is Very Precious and Hard to Find so not to be played with in a general way )

Mathanxiety there is a house, it's great, DS2 got it for birthday here and this has three versions if you want to mess about with it. There are others too actually (more ££ tho)

You can still get the big buckets of Lego in Asia. Maybe it's not as intrenched here so they still sell it like that. Not sure.

Otherwise, it seems that ebay and car boots are the way forward for big treasure troves of mixed Lego.......and so satisfying when you find the odd balcony rail, door or window in the mix

My poor DD was massively disappointed when we stopped in at the Lego shop on our first visit to Legoland. She actually wept with disappointment. Every toy was fighter planes or space stations or construction lorries - except a bright pink house kit (which looked a bit rubbish TBH).

I did tell her that she could choose something and pointed out that she would enjoy playing with the planes - I would have happily bought her any item (within price constraints). But she just wasn't interested, she believed it was for boys and that therefore it wasn't for her. She left with a Lego man key ring.

She loves playing with other construction toys, electronics kits, science stuff - but the Lego seemed to be marketed in such an obviously, aggressively masculine way that it really went outside her comfort zone.

Now if I could get her a big tub of the primary coloured blocks I used to play with, she would be very happy.

Lego is brilliant. If anyone wants their sorted out or kits built - I'm your girl!! I wont even charge you!

pip you can ge a blue box of starter lego, probably at tyosrus
Or Argos. That is what I started dS off with

Hate standing on it!!!

DS1 loves the interesting pieces you get with the kits. He puts them together the first time, then dismantles and builds the coolest stuff.

Endless entertainment in our house.

He has a mix of the big boxes of basics stuff and lots of the kits.

Built a RoboDragon Time Machine once. You had to ride the dragon around the sun at exactly the right velocity during a solar flare apparently, it was very complicated and nerdy.

My Mum had a sort out in her loft and gave away a giant nappy box (the old style one with little compartments for pins and things) to her friend 2 WEEKS before I found out I was pregnant with DS1. I was gutted, absolutely gutted. Well, I must have been to still remember the disappointment so vividly 12 years later

DS1 is now a Lego fiend. We recently moved house and the biggest problem I have had in unpacking is where the sodding hell to put all his Lego, both the boxes of blocks and the made up kits as well as the Lego Metropolis he has created. It will be a sad day for me when Lego doesn't make it onto DS1's birthday or Xmas lists, although by then DS3 (due next week) will be old enough to have it passed down to him

He gets endless hours of use out of it and loves it so much that if he only had a bookcase and some Lego in his room, he would still think he was the luckiest boy alive. It has come in handy for school as well, as every now and again he has to make a model of something, most recently a Gudwara (sp? sorry, a Hindu prayer centre) for RE so pootled off to make a model of one from Lego which we took photos of. His teacher was most impressed and spent ages reminiscing about the Lego he had as a boy

We have so much Lego it has a corner of DS's room to itself. We have a school tray thing with about 30 trays in, it's great for sorting different blocks into. We keep the 4 by 2 bricks in a big plastic treasure chest, and the people in an old lunch box.
Most of our Lego is from car boot sales over the years, some given as gifts for DS.

DC 5 + 2 love the stuff. Have about eight big boxes of lego, plus another box for all the figures. Theres a couple of general lego boxes chucked in, but it is mainly kits all broken up. The only kit not broken is star wars home one.

DS1 tends to play with his lego all day every day when he is at home. He does have other toys but he likes to spend his time making his own creations, mainly death stars and star destroyers as i can't afford the £300 for each one.

DS2 will sometimes sit down for an hour just trying to build spaceships, but as he is just coming up to 3 he sometimes gets fed up and just chucks it all across the room.

They will be getting quite a bit of lego for xmas too, but have now seen the kre-o transformers which is a lego type system. Can see it being just like character building and mega bloks sets which will cause alot of tears if they end up with any!

inmyspare, you soundso organised. Dd' is just tipped altogether into a giant plastic box - which gets tipped out on the floor...

I might snap up some of those ideas.

yabu

Lego hasn't changed a bit from when i was a child. we have a set of cheap plastic storage draws and colour code the pieces. It is not that difficult to find the pieces and besides the kids will just make their own thing anyway.

yabu

Lego is a classic. Lego City is the one if you want to avoid Star Wars etc. DS never went near his Playmobil stuff but chose the huge Lego Police Station kit when various relatives gave him money for Xmas. He's played with it for hours to my surprise and jigs it around to his own liking.

Has anyone sung the praises of the games? Magikus/ Lava Dragon / UFO attack are all good & for slightly older kids the Hogwarts moving staircase one takes a bit of thinking.

My mum has dug out mine and my siblings old lego from many years ago and my ds6 thinks hes in heaven, he was soo excited to have new lego!!!

I hadnt thought that it had changed that much until i compared ds lego to my older lego, the older lego is more basic bricks and less fancy bits and it sticks together better!

I love Lego, always have, not a christmas has yet gone by when I haven't had some (and I'm rapidly approaching 40..) both DS & DD love the stuff as well, but we have clear rules... Their Lego is their responsibility so theres every chance that star wars figs will be found hanging out in a castle/house, taking tea with toy story woody.. and buzz lightyear is as likely to ride a dragon as he is a horse. Some of the boxes I've had over the years have augmented their 'tipped in a random large tub' collection which is used to create many and varied 'worlds'. Now MY lego is a different story, built sometimes by me, more often by DS (nearly 8) and is played with but when finished is broken down and returned to it's ziplock bags and put in the relevant box, with the relevant instructions, sounds utterly anal, but as happened over the holidays mummy bought large set of lego on a trip to legoland (Diagon Alley) we spent days building it together, DS then asked if we could build some of the other HP Lego, it wasn't a problem as we could get the box with all the bits etc and happily build the Weasleys house.

I think of it as an investement, that's how I justified blowing over £100 on a box of plastic. and I'd had a bonus and I was treating myself (and the family )

If at some stage the kids would like to spend DAYS sorting out their own lego into the proper sets, they'll find that their mum has put all the instructions in plastic pockets in a folder...

Yabu!
You can get big boxes of lego for around 20£
Duplo: direct.tesco.com/q/R.211-5747.aspx
Normal lego on 3 for 2: direct.tesco.com/q/R.210-6978.aspx
Pink lego box: direct.tesco.com/q/R.208-7281.aspx
House set : direct.tesco.com/q/R.207-4141.aspx
www.amazon.co.uk/LEGO%C2%AE-5899-LEGO-House-Building/dp/B002KCNUW6/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&qid=1314703604&sr=8-4
www.amazon.co.uk/LEGO-6194-My-Town/dp/B001U3ZMD6/ref=sr_1_6?ie=UTF8&qid=1314703604&sr=8-6

Or... you can just go to ebay and buy lego by the kilo.
We love lego in our house. All mine was passed down to my boys!

You can also convert the ikea lack coffee table into a lego table by gluing the base boards to it. Super cheap.

I like Lego, until I step on it anyway. OUCH.

Our house LOVES Lego

(except at 3am when you get up to the loo and a jabbing pain runs through your leg as you realise you have stepped on a small brick/Darth Vader/Indiana Jones' Hat again)

Best toy we have for our ds and 2 dds. Played with every day. Yes, its expensive but "cost per play" is teeny!

yabu!

Lego should be used and treated as the creative toy it is. Kits are a bit rubbish in concept because who but the most erm... slightly uptight.. will keep them together? My son has had a lot of kits and Mil and her hubby got so annoyed that they had been mixed in they took the lot away, spent hours sorting it and ordering missing bits/ printing instructions from the net!! I realised that this had become rather TOO important to them when they returned said lego/ kits saying in a scolding manner,'don't let it get mixed up again, if you do we will be very angry'.....
Our relationship skidded downhill sharply after this... I still don't know whether I should have been grateful for the time/effort they spent or furious at the interference and attitude... at the time I was just stunned!

and to add to the previous long post, some/most of the newer kits are a bit fiddly and prone to bits falling off but if the houses/castles whatever are built and are being played with (because I'm not so anal that I won't let them play with my lego) if they can't work out how to fix the bit back on it goes in the little spares tub that'll be on/near where the houses/whatever have been left.. or in the event of a big disaster, I will be notified. Said child will be locked in a cupboard for the rest of the day.