to not get why Lego is so fecking expensive?

[Bogeyface]

Its plastic bricks FFS!

I can sort of see why the branded stuff (Star Wars etc) is more as they have to pay for the rights to use the brand, but even the standard stuff is exorbitant for what you get!

I have managed to avoid it thus far but after a play date a few weeks ago, DS i now hooked. I have a set budget at Xmas anyway, but this year it is set in stone thanks to redunancy followed by a NMW job, and what I can get, even with super savvy shopping, is pitiful :(

Tell me to bugger off if you like, but there are a few evening retail shifts advertised on the internet... It might free you from paying for childcare.

What about asking on Freecycle or Facebook?

Ok, sorry, you asked for my opinion, I gave it, I didn't realise you have 6 children to buy for. We are also on a very tight budget, but a £7.99 box of Lego is still appreciated by ds1, it's one of two main presents in fact.

Mini figures are another option. They're about £1.50 and would be good if you we're just buying bricks.

The cheap sets arent as good, limit him to a couple of cheaper sets and keep an eye out on amazon, the brick boxes went down to £6 recently and I got the treehouse for £15 down from 25. He also has a biggish dinosaur thing which was £8.

Im bleddy obsessed with amazon at the mo, it's well worth the stalking.

Cooke Have PM'd you

And if you have a home bargains nearby they often have sets in there, they have lots of books in at the mo too which have the figures and a few pieces.

Books are 99p btw........I cleared the shelves bought a few.

Thanks all and sorry for being a baggy arse!

Just not having a good day and I think I must be determined to see the glass as half empty! I buy vouchers throughout the year as my Xmas savings so Amazon etc is out this year (but I will put them on my voucher list for next year) but thanks for all the tips. Have just posted on my local Freegle, you never know!

There are 80 Lego bricks for every person on the face of the planet. Surely we should be all getting a bucket for free every year!

Toy exchange with friends and their kids? Not for Christmas but yours could swap some of their unused toys for Lego from others.

hi, I have loads of lego here , not really sure what your looking for as in sets etc

but they just collect dust in this house lol
your more than welcome to them.

Dont worry Mum, I am not looking for anything from MN but thank you for offering :) I am just a bit peed off atm!

Perhaps you could offer a small set on Freegle and then gift it all to someone who wont sell it on, expect it to be delivered or is rude?

tbh weren't really thinking of doing anything with it lol
we have had it a few years though my girls are not the lego kind !

LEGO is ridiculously expensive, yes. But be wary of some of the other brands. Some of them are fine, others are awful.

I just finished re-constructing the Character Builder mega TARDIS set. It was an exercise in frustration. Pieces were missing, the instructions were not quite right, and the end result is so flimsy that I can't imagine a child getting any play value from the set. It looks great on the shelf, but that's about it. Fine for me as an adult who just wants a place to stash my mini Doctors, but a bit crap for a child.

What disappoints me about LEGO is that when I was a kid in the 70s it was one of the only toys that never had anything to do with guns, war, killing etc (I never knew this or thought about it but it was true) and then suddenly with the star wars "reboot" thing and all the branding / merchandising it all changed. Now every second set of LEGO has a weapon involved. Seems to have lost it's charm frankly.

STUPIDLY expensive these days and for the same money as a decent LEGO set you can get a whole trolley full of toys.

Dd has a tub of the small mega block stuff for Xmas. It's exactly the same as Lego, fits with Lego and was £10 instead of £20 in Argos. Worth checking out.

A lot of the cheaper bricks fit with Lego, but the plastic is softer and it doesn't click together so well, the end results are not so rigid and the corners round off before long.

I agree it is expensive but totally worth it.
We've got tonnes of the stuff and it gets played with and hoovered up everyday.
My parents still have all of ours so my children play with that as well.
The initial outlay is definitely worth it and if/ when your dc outgrows it you can sell it on for a decent price.

It is very costly my ds loves the stuff but only has a very very small amount even on eBay in my local area it's selling for £40 for not a lot or over £100 for some sets like Harry potter that have been built

One year I shall buy loads but till then I end up buying the cheap sets from qd and wilko

My suspicion on this one, given the rubbishness of knock-off lego, which just does not seem to work in my experience - bricks don't fit together well, stuff falls apart easily, is that it's (1) a better quality of plastic in genuine lego and (2) a better injection moulding technique (I am a sad spod with a PhD in polymer physics...). I really think lego, sadly, is a case where you get what you pay for (and as a lego addict, believe me I wish it was cheaper... but I need my near-clinical grade fix, inferior stuff cut with brick dust and baking powder will not do it).

Brio on the other hand... most of the knock-off brands are perfectly good, thank heavens, and big jigs in particular does some wonderful replicas of famous engines (Mallard, Duchess of Hamilton, my god, I wasn't kidding when I said I was a spod, [proudly adjusts anorak]).