![\"\"](\"http:\/\/totfc.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/tiny_legos.jpg\")
<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Growing up, among my favorite toys were Legos.\u00a0 Frankly, that fandom hasn\u2019t changed, considering the small collection of nostalgia Lego sets that I\u2019ve purchased within the last few years that I\u2019ll never actually put together but protect with fervor at the thought of not having them because it\u2019s better to have and not need than to want and not be able to get and maybe one day when I have a nice big room of dedicated me-space, I\u2019ll be able to set up a table and actually put these sets together but anyway.<\/span><\/p>\n Much to my delight, my children have grown to like Legos in their own right, and over the last two years or so, we\u2019ve been occasionally putting Lego sets together and they get decent entertainment out of both the building as well as playing with the finished products.\u00a0 Sure, they\u2019re expensive as F these days as the cost of official Lego products have inflated as much as petroleum throughout the passage of time, and it is interesting to see the alternate yet compatible brands that are out there now, much as Tyco were the off-brand of my childhood that got mixed into the brick piles, but Mega Bloks and some cheap bootlegs from Daiso have been good ways to subsidize entertaining my children, and once disassembled, nobody has any clue and for the remainder of this post I will continue to refer to all bricks as simply Legos, much like the term for sodas have a generalized term.<\/span><\/p>\n Over the last few Lego projects with my kids, there\u2019s always a finite amount of time in which the kids\u2019 focus wavers and eventually breaks, and lately it\u2019s typically gone from, let\u2019s build together with dad<\/em> to, distractions from the other kid making it hard to focus on continuing, to ultimately zero participation with dad is it finished yet<\/em>?<\/span><\/p>\n What doesn\u2019t help is the seemingly massive difficulty spike in build complexity with today\u2019s general Lego sets, and it doesn\u2019t seem nearly as basic as my own childhood, going from Duplos into set #6954 Blacktron: Renegade<\/em><\/a> although perhaps that\u2019s a bad example but I wanted to make that nostalgic deep cut.\u00a0 But the point remains that there\u2019s a pretty wide difficulty curve in Legos in general that seems to be a stark contrast to the gradual increase in builds from when I was growing up.<\/span><\/p>\n Like, in my elder child\u2019s room, she has two bins full of Duplo blocks, and on almost a daily basis, she builds the most expansive castles and structures that she, and I are so proud of her imagination skills at creating such things.\u00a0 But come downstairs, and we\u2019ve got all the Lego kits we\u2019ve been amassing over the last two years, and regardless of the suggested age written on each box, I just figure it\u2019s more important to get them based on the concepts and properties that the kids like, seeing as how their dad is an adult Lego enthusiast with decades of experience putting these things together.<\/span><\/p>\n Except the thing is, and which is probably the chief reason why Legos are harder now than they were when I was a kid, is the fact that just about every Lego kit now has 400% more small and intricate pieces than the kits I grew up with.\u00a0 I don\u2019t know what terminology the \u00a0Lego community uses to describe Legos today, but for lack of a better term, the amount of pieces that are sized beneath 2×4 and even 2×2 peg pieces AKA a whole shitload of tiny pieces, is tremendous; creating scenarios where they get lost, easy to miss,* resulting in an increased probability of build failure.<\/span><\/p>\n *and easy to end up stepping on, which many know that nothing is a greater pain in the galaxy than barefoot stepping on Lego bricks<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n Furthermore, as impressively creative as lots of today\u2019s Lego builds are nowadays, many end up with suspect connection points, weak joints and integrity ill-suited for elementary school aged kids who want to play and imagine and simulate, instead of dorky adult builders who want to build and display and not actually play with them.<\/span><\/p>\n All this being said, my kids and I will put together various Lego kits, only for them to be played with for 5-10 minutes, immediately forgotten until a corresponding kit is created, added to the world of completed kits, and maybe another 5-10 minutes of play is created.<\/span><\/p>\n In between play time, small components break off, go missing, mixed together, and it becomes impossible to put things back together. \u00a0Thankfully, I have the experienced wherewithal to not toss any instruction booklets in the rare event anyone actually wants to reassemble anything, but as we get more sets, and more sets get built and fall apart, inevitably things get to the point where they have to be fully disassembled, and all bricks get put into the dreaded Lego Bin<\/strong>, where everything is tossed into a communal tub in the name of space conservation.<\/span><\/p>\n And it was in the latest episode of dad waits until the kids are in bed<\/em> to start breaking down idle and incomplete and broken up kits and putting them into The Lego Bin did I really realize just how intricate and full of small tiny pieces that today\u2019s kits all seem to be comprised of, and how I feel like this really impacts the overall replay-ability of Legos in general, with kids probably favoring to get brand new kits instead of playing with communal piles of micro-parts, and writing that out, perhaps that\u2019s the goal of Lego corporate to begin which makes those cocksuckers evil geniuses.<\/span><\/p>\n Either way, I\u2019m glad my kids like building with Legos, but the shade of adulthood continues to look at things from my childhood in their modern incarnations with skepticism of accusatory greed and intentions to bilk consumers before providing a source of entertainment and happiness.<\/span><\/p>\n Plus I\u2019m just getting tired of stepping on all these goddamn bricks, which isn\u2019t so much Lego\u2019s fault for scattering them on my floors, but at the same time it is, that they keep making sets that have nothing but 1×1 and 2×1 micro-bricks that are real easy for young children to misplace and end up scattered.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Growing up, among my favorite toys were Legos.\u00a0 Frankly, that fandom hasn\u2019t changed, considering the small collection of nostalgia Lego sets that I\u2019ve purchased within the last few years that I\u2019ll never actually put together but protect with fervor at the thought of not having them because it\u2019s better to have and not need than … Continue reading Dad Brog (#172): The Lego difficulty spike is real<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[79,100,193,76,191,192,129,83,99,49],"class_list":["post-51395","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-brog","tag-cashmoney","tag-comparison","tag-dad","tag-geeks","tag-greed","tag-kids","tag-nostalgia","tag-observations","tag-reminiscing","tag-wtf"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51395","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=51395"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51395\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":51397,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51395\/revisions\/51397"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=51395"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=51395"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=51395"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![#6954 Blacktron: Renegade<\/em><\/a> although perhaps that\u2019s a bad example but I wanted to make that nostalgic deep cut.\u00a0 But the point remains that there\u2019s a pretty wide difficulty curve in Legos in general that seems to be a stark contrast to the gradual increase in builds from when I was growing up.<\/span><\/p>\nLike, in my elder child\u2019s room, she has two bins full of Duplo blocks, and on almost a daily basis, she builds the most expansive castles and structures that she, and I are so proud of her imagination skills at creating such things.\u00a0 But come downstairs, and we\u2019ve got all the Lego kits we\u2019ve been amassing over the last two years, and regardless of the suggested age written on each box, I just figure it\u2019s more important to get them based on the concepts and properties that the kids like, seeing as how their dad is an adult Lego enthusiast with decades of experience putting these things together.<\/span><\/p>\nExcept the thing is, and which is probably the chief reason why Legos are harder now than they were when I was a kid, is the fact that just about every Lego kit now has 400% more small and intricate pieces than the kits I grew up with.\u00a0 I don\u2019t know what terminology the \u00a0Lego community uses to describe Legos today, but for lack of a better term, the amount of pieces that are sized beneath 2×4 and even 2×2 peg pieces AKA a whole shitload of tiny pieces, is tremendous; creating scenarios where they get lost, easy to miss,* resulting in an increased probability of build failure.<\/span><\/p>\n*and easy to end up stepping on, which many know that nothing is a greater pain in the galaxy than barefoot stepping on Lego bricks<\/em><\/span><\/p>\nFurthermore, as impressively creative as lots of today\u2019s Lego builds are nowadays, many end up with suspect connection points, weak joints and integrity ill-suited for elementary school aged kids who want to play and imagine and simulate, instead of dorky adult builders who want to build and display and not actually play with them.<\/span><\/p>\nAll this being said, my kids and I will put together various Lego kits, only for them to be played with for 5-10 minutes, immediately forgotten until a corresponding kit is created, added to the world of completed kits, and maybe another 5-10 minutes of play is created.<\/span><\/p>\nIn between play time, small components break off, go missing, mixed together, and it becomes impossible to put things back together. \u00a0Thankfully, I have the experienced wherewithal to not toss any instruction booklets in the rare event anyone actually wants to reassemble anything, but as we get more sets, and more sets get built and fall apart, inevitably things get to the point where they have to be fully disassembled, and all bricks get put into the dreaded Lego Bin<\/strong>, where everything is tossed into a communal tub in the name of space conservation.<\/span><\/p>\nAnd it was in the latest episode of dad waits until the kids are in bed<\/em> to start breaking down idle and incomplete and broken up kits and putting them into The Lego Bin did I really realize just how intricate and full of small tiny pieces that today\u2019s kits all seem to be comprised of, and how I feel like this really impacts the overall replay-ability of Legos in general, with kids probably favoring to get brand new kits instead of playing with communal piles of micro-parts, and writing that out, perhaps that\u2019s the goal of Lego corporate to begin which makes those cocksuckers evil geniuses.<\/span><\/p>\nEither way, I\u2019m glad my kids like building with Legos, but the shade of adulthood continues to look at things from my childhood in their modern incarnations with skepticism of accusatory greed and intentions to bilk consumers before providing a source of entertainment and happiness.<\/span><\/p>\nPlus I\u2019m just getting tired of stepping on all these goddamn bricks, which isn\u2019t so much Lego\u2019s fault for scattering them on my floors, but at the same time it is, that they keep making sets that have nothing but 1×1 and 2×1 micro-bricks that are real easy for young children to misplace and end up scattered.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Growing up, among my favorite toys were Legos.\u00a0 Frankly, that fandom hasn\u2019t changed, considering the small collection of nostalgia Lego sets that I\u2019ve purchased within the last few years that I\u2019ll never actually put together but protect with fervor at the thought of not having them because it\u2019s better to have and not need than … Continue reading Dad Brog (#172): The Lego difficulty spike is real<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[79,100,193,76,191,192,129,83,99,49],"class_list":["post-51395","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-brog","tag-cashmoney","tag-comparison","tag-dad","tag-geeks","tag-greed","tag-kids","tag-nostalgia","tag-observations","tag-reminiscing","tag-wtf"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51395","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=51395"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51395\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":51397,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51395\/revisions\/51397"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=51395"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=51395"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=51395"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}](\"https:\/\/static.wikia.nocookie.net\/lego\/images\/c\/ce\/6954_Renegade.jpg\/revision\/latest?cb=20090423203002\"){kind=link}