Because it doesn't appear to either be designed at a consistent scale or be a solid rectangular cuboid making volume feel like an even less accurate basis for my silly joke.
Once built, what does one do with this? Generally, these are fragile in the sense that moving them can cause parts of it to become disconnected or fall apart so you don't want to be moving it around to much. It's going to take up a whole lot of space. Your kids can't actually play with it. And if you intend to show it off, you aren't really showing any real skills except for the ability to follow pages and pages of instructions. I don't even want to think about what would be involved in disassembling it such that it could be rebuilt per the instructions.
Why do people put up flowers? No skill (I think...?) involved in getting a bouquet and putting it a vase on a table. Or buying (not creating) art. Some people just like the look and it;'s hard to argue about taste.
If people have a Lego set on display, that is surely a conversation starter for me. Especially if it's a ginormous Minas Tirith or Sagrada Familia set, or an old Technic set.
My wife took on building the plant inspired lego sets several months ago. They are OK in that they don't look that ugly scattered around the house. I like it because it is a hobby she enjoys a lot and it makes it easier for me to buy "the right" gifts haha.
I've never had the patience to build those. I think I have PTSD from my childhood, when my dat bought us a "cheap" brand of lego-like toys (called TENTE I think) for which the bottom pieces fell as you plugged the top pieces.
when you were into Legos, the bricks used were of universal shape. modern sets like this are mostly of a shape that is highly specific to the intended outcome. which is basically orthogonal to the original appeal of playing with Lego. I'm saying that as someone who grew up with two large boxes full of Lego bricks and pieces.
Enjoy its presence. If that doesn’t sound like something you’d enjoy, then it’s not the right set for you. Not something I’d ever buy, but I’m sure many will.
With that said, as someone who put together the Big Ben set back in the day and had raw fingers for a week after, I have a somewhat PTSD-like reaction to this set. It looks like there are going to be a lot of steps dealing with making many of a subassembly that is itself made out of a bunch of tiny pieces that you need to make sure line up well.
These days I much prefer the large Technic theme sets because they are not so repetitive and require a deeper immersion to actually complete; harder to just space out while building the set. Certainly more meditative for me.
All that is to say that if you're going to consider this set, be aware that the build experience might not be the level of fun that the part count seems to indicate.
Good luck to anyone who builds a lego set and then tries to tell my kids we can't play with it or steal parts from it for another build.
LEGO has a wide audience. Some of these go to adults who build them and put them on display. Others will go to kids who build them and then take them apart to build the next thing.
I wouldn't buy this huge set for my kids because that price tag is crazy, but I like buying some of the mid-size sets for them because it's a nice injection of specialty pieces that they like to incorporate into other builds.
> I wouldn't buy this huge set for my kids because that price tag is crazy, but I like buying some of the mid-size sets for them because it's a nice injection of specialty pieces that they like to incorporate into other builds.
Very well said, and this was exactly my experience (as a child).
What's the point of a colouring book? Once you've coloured your drawing you can't do anything with it. You can display it but you're not showing any real skill.
^ bizarre thought process tbh. Both building it and displaying it is fun. That's all.
I genuinely think there are people who don’t “get” hobbies or, if they do, don’t get that other people might like hobbies other than the ones they like. As you say, the point is to enjoy it and that’s all.
People treat giant lego sets the same way they treat other complex model sets, it’s not really for disassembling as much as it is for the fun of building and then having / being proud of, I guess, mostly. I mean you can never really speak for everyone but generally speaking.
When I was a kid I used to spend entire days building and creating new stuff once I built the designs from the booklets.
Today when I see a Lego kit is kind of another toy: is designed to build one and only one design, compared to the generic kits that were sold and also popular many years ago.
All these new kits pieces are just to accomplish one build. The Lego spirit of ever combining and creating with same pieces over and over again is gone.
My kids have a ton of legos, it's their favorite thing. However, and this is the important part: you have to let go of the concept of a set.
Keep new assembled kits out, let them play with it as built from the instructions. But then as it falls apart with play, and the kids don't fix it the same way it was originally built, it eventually goes into a big box of former kits that are all jumbled together.
We did this, and without prompting to do so, the kids started building their own things out of the box, exactly as you did with your kits.
You just have to learn to let go of the set, and it becomes exactly what you want.
Edit: I'm not sure if a $800 set has that same property, but for the everyday $5-$40 sets, absolutely treat them as temporary collections, and life is great.
I have an anecdote about doing exactly that. Always was a LEGO kid (first set I got was bought 3 months before I was born) and slowly over time collected a giant bin of pieces from all the various sets. Now as a much older adult, I actually find myself going back to that bin on occasion to sort out the parts and try to rebuild the sets. Much like how that big bin of parts let me build stuff from my imagination when I was younger, as a form of therapy, now resorting those pieces and reorganizing them is a new form of therapy for myself, and it all comes from the same toy.
I find it particularly endearing how a single system of toys can provide decades of experiences to a single human. I don't think I've ever encountered another toy that is like that on such a massive scale. Yes there's other construction toys out there that strive to do the same, Knex was another one that I was into for a while, but there's nothing that quite scratches that same itch that Lego does.
This is exactly how it happens at my house. I purposely stick to to the $20-$40 boxes for this reason. Over $100, that's not a toy anymore for me. That price range becomes a collectors figurine.
Yes this, I bought sets like the Arctic Ship and police bases thinking they'd be like dioramas. They quickly became components that they build other things on top of. It took some time to mentally un-anchor from the $500 spent on the sets lol.
Yes. I got somewhat stuck on the idea of the sets being kept together, partly because I thought it would be good to pass on used ones with the manuals.
But I found that if the builds are out they will be played with and fall apart and eventually become loose legos and that’s all fine and good.
Loose Legos on the floor making random things is fun. But building with sets and instructions is a different skill set and is entertaining in its own right.
The newer Friends series has a short reward video at the end of some builds which sort of puts the cherry on top of the set builds.
> When I was a kid I used to spend entire days building and creating new stuff once I built the designs from the booklets.
Kids still do this.
I don't know why this idea persists. There have always been sets with custom pieces. My kids go crazy over the custom pieces because it sparks new ideas for their other builds. My kids know every custom piece from every set they've ever built and will describe them in great detail so we can search through the bin until we find it.
> The Lego spirit of ever combining and creating with same pieces over and over again is gone
For you, maybe. The kids are still doing this and having a great time.
A lot of the Lego builds we did when my son was little was exactly this: A set would spark an idea and there'd be endless castles that started with piece of a castle set but went in totally different directions and incorporated all kinds of other stuff, for example.
I can't but help think that people who assume that the big sets take away that haven't touched Lego in decades.
My sons sets got built "to spec" once, got played with like that for a few hours, and then never looked the same again ever, even though we still have the manuals in a box somewhere.
That's borderline crazy, lego is meant to go into a big box/bag/container and be mixed so you use your own imagination to create your own stuff, like the lego gods intended. Ideally also passed down generations/between relatives, so you can visit your nieces and nephews in the future and recognize pieces you once received from some cousin or something.
Did the parents grow up with Lego? The "each set stays in its own bag" thing was what my wife wanted to do for the longest time, not having grown up with the beautiful chaos of a giant tub of pieces, and the oddly reassuring sound of swishing your hand through all of it.
That seems to be somewhat of an exaggeration. These $800 models are obviously not for kids. The creativity is still alive in the price brackets that aren't targeting collectors. Custom builds that involve scavenging other kits for pieces still go viral pretty often.
I'm not very tapped into it, but last month I saw a DIY Lego Rocky from Project Hail Mary going viral. I think this week I saw a very detailed jellyfish model doing the rounds.
All new kits? Gone? I'm not so sure about that. I don't think the target audience of an $800 kit is a 10 year old, sure. There are still plenty of kits at the $100ish and below price range that are targeted for that sort of play.
There's a recurring theme on the Lego subreddit where people build the millennium falcon out of any arbitrary lego set, so the spirit is not COMPLETELY dead, fwiw
There was a period that was very true when Ninjago were a thing. But in the last decade while they sometimes still come out with new pieces there is still a tonne of reusability and creativity in Lego pieces.
I mean yes, there are kits like this that are clearly meant for one kind of build, but nothing stops someone from just getting bulk kits or taking apart other sets? There's lots of other stuff on their catalogue which look just like the stuff I grew up with.
I swear every lego-related post you see people dooming about this when all they look at are the giant sets clearly targeted towards adults that _want_ this sort of thing and not the plethora of other stuff.
You can still buy bulk Legos to mix and match from Lego. And similarly pricey and collector oriented Lego sets existed 20 and 30 years ago as well.
Legos releasing single build sets that are clearly targeted for adults (look at the 18+ age statement) does nothing to harm you - it's targeted a different consumer demographic.
It's like Taco Bells now serving alcohol or Costcos now selling Asian groceries. Companies will not stay stagnant and will look at additional opportunities to expand to new buyer demographics.
Exactly, and like, if one literally looks up "Lego catalogue" and actually read it you'll get a bunch of sets - even the brand tie-ins, which aren't new at all - and these are basically the same types of sets I grew up with and would happily build and then take apart as a kid to do other stuff with...
Lego also has "3-in-1" sets that come with dedicated instructions to build different possible configurations out of the exact same pieces, which seem like a cool way to encourage kids (or anyone :P) to then veer off into their own building experiments.
What they really should have done is sell the kit in 7 stages, each for $99 each, such that you can slowly build it as you can budget money for the construction. :)
(This is how the Sagrada Família was built in case folks don't know its history)
If at all, then the white bricks of LEGO Architecture Studio are on my wishlist just because i dont like following instructions
https://a.co/d/0iJANnKK
So, fun trick with sets like these, that are in the more 'professional' space of Lego is that most of the time, these sets are very open ended because they only provide you a bunch of common pieces. Which you can buy yourself.
Bricklink has a wonderful feature that you can take a set and then part it out into a wanted list, and then search seller inventory to find those parts. That's how I built that giant Imperial Star Destroyer set from the aughts for a little over $200 instead of the like $1000 that used copies of the set were going for at that time (it's probably even more now.)
Just for funsies, I looked it up, and you can get the whole 21050 set for about $150 now on bricklink, which is a pretty good $/psc price. Considering what the set is, and the lack of stickers, means it should be easy to wash a used set to get all the pieces nice and clean; a laundry bra bag with a fine mesh works great for this.
It is not a cathedral, is a basilica: https://sagradafamilia.org/en/history-of-the-temple that will be finished next June 10th, coinciding with the 100th anniversary of Gaudi's death and the visit of pope Leo XIV to Madrid.
If people have a Lego set on display, that is surely a conversation starter for me. Especially if it's a ginormous Minas Tirith or Sagrada Familia set, or an old Technic set.
Not for everyone I suppose.
Put sets on a wishlist, they send you one of them. You build it, unbuild it and send it back. One set a month.
I've never had the patience to build those. I think I have PTSD from my childhood, when my dat bought us a "cheap" brand of lego-like toys (called TENTE I think) for which the bottom pieces fell as you plugged the top pieces.
When I was younger, I used to own a zoo, and a pirate ship....
Though not at the same time. We couldn't afford that much lego.
why do Buddhists make intricate sand sculptures only to rake them over when they're done?
If the LEGO are truly accurate to the real thing, that might take a while!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IKEA_effect
These days I much prefer the large Technic theme sets because they are not so repetitive and require a deeper immersion to actually complete; harder to just space out while building the set. Certainly more meditative for me.
All that is to say that if you're going to consider this set, be aware that the build experience might not be the level of fun that the part count seems to indicate.
Good luck to anyone who builds a lego set and then tries to tell my kids we can't play with it or steal parts from it for another build.
LEGO has a wide audience. Some of these go to adults who build them and put them on display. Others will go to kids who build them and then take them apart to build the next thing.
I wouldn't buy this huge set for my kids because that price tag is crazy, but I like buying some of the mid-size sets for them because it's a nice injection of specialty pieces that they like to incorporate into other builds.
Very well said, and this was exactly my experience (as a child).
Are you asking about the church or the lego set?
^ bizarre thought process tbh. Both building it and displaying it is fun. That's all.
Today when I see a Lego kit is kind of another toy: is designed to build one and only one design, compared to the generic kits that were sold and also popular many years ago.
All these new kits pieces are just to accomplish one build. The Lego spirit of ever combining and creating with same pieces over and over again is gone.
Keep new assembled kits out, let them play with it as built from the instructions. But then as it falls apart with play, and the kids don't fix it the same way it was originally built, it eventually goes into a big box of former kits that are all jumbled together.
We did this, and without prompting to do so, the kids started building their own things out of the box, exactly as you did with your kits.
You just have to learn to let go of the set, and it becomes exactly what you want.
Edit: I'm not sure if a $800 set has that same property, but for the everyday $5-$40 sets, absolutely treat them as temporary collections, and life is great.
I find it particularly endearing how a single system of toys can provide decades of experiences to a single human. I don't think I've ever encountered another toy that is like that on such a massive scale. Yes there's other construction toys out there that strive to do the same, Knex was another one that I was into for a while, but there's nothing that quite scratches that same itch that Lego does.
But I found that if the builds are out they will be played with and fall apart and eventually become loose legos and that’s all fine and good.
Loose Legos on the floor making random things is fun. But building with sets and instructions is a different skill set and is entertaining in its own right.
The newer Friends series has a short reward video at the end of some builds which sort of puts the cherry on top of the set builds.
Kids still do this.
I don't know why this idea persists. There have always been sets with custom pieces. My kids go crazy over the custom pieces because it sparks new ideas for their other builds. My kids know every custom piece from every set they've ever built and will describe them in great detail so we can search through the bin until we find it.
> The Lego spirit of ever combining and creating with same pieces over and over again is gone
For you, maybe. The kids are still doing this and having a great time.
I can't but help think that people who assume that the big sets take away that haven't touched Lego in decades.
My sons sets got built "to spec" once, got played with like that for a few hours, and then never looked the same again ever, even though we still have the manuals in a box somewhere.
I'm not very tapped into it, but last month I saw a DIY Lego Rocky from Project Hail Mary going viral. I think this week I saw a very detailed jellyfish model doing the rounds.
I swear every lego-related post you see people dooming about this when all they look at are the giant sets clearly targeted towards adults that _want_ this sort of thing and not the plethora of other stuff.
Legos releasing single build sets that are clearly targeted for adults (look at the 18+ age statement) does nothing to harm you - it's targeted a different consumer demographic.
It's like Taco Bells now serving alcohol or Costcos now selling Asian groceries. Companies will not stay stagnant and will look at additional opportunities to expand to new buyer demographics.
https://rebrickable.com/sets/alternates/
you just enter the number to find alternate builds, some sets can be built into dozens various creations
Older sets are offered and sold on eBay for substantially more oney that they cost when originally sold.
Would interesting to use a quest and take a tour of the insides.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jFZ0MFYup-o
(Personally, I've also enjoyed unit origami, which involves folding the same module many times over and assembling them.)
(This is how the Sagrada Família was built in case folks don't know its history)
Bricklink has a wonderful feature that you can take a set and then part it out into a wanted list, and then search seller inventory to find those parts. That's how I built that giant Imperial Star Destroyer set from the aughts for a little over $200 instead of the like $1000 that used copies of the set were going for at that time (it's probably even more now.)
Just for funsies, I looked it up, and you can get the whole 21050 set for about $150 now on bricklink, which is a pretty good $/psc price. Considering what the set is, and the lack of stickers, means it should be easy to wash a used set to get all the pieces nice and clean; a laundry bra bag with a fine mesh works great for this.
It's like sheep. Legos is a mis--spelled City in Nigeria.