My eldest turns 5 soon so I got him some Lego sets for Christmas. One of them was an X Wing. I had an X Wing Lego set growing up, so I thought it would be a nice parallel for him to have (my old X Wing set is currently going for about $200 on Ebay). We sat down to build it. I had the instructions open and I'd point to a brick and ask him to find it. He was doing great at that, and my main goal was getting him good at reading schematics since he's displayed an aptitude for other traits that engineers use on a regular basis. The thing is, these sets are far more complicated than the ones I grew up with. I actually had to focus to figure out how the more complex pieces went together in the schematic. The mechanism for expanding the wings on my childhood X Wing set were two bricks with a gripper and spokes joist that could expand the wings by "clicking" the joint to the open or closed setting for the wings. This new one had a pivoting set based on a very complex rotational chassis. I came to the conclusion that this thing was not designed for kids.
They've also gotten a lot more complex with the amount of parts they include so you can round off the squares and make the set resemble the actual thing it's supposed to look like instead of being blocky. I'd estimate that the parts in the average kit have gone up, leading to a rise in price. Also, a lot of the parts, like the lasers on the wings and the landing gear, were held on by a single piece and very fragile. It's like it's meant to be a static display piece instead of being able to stand up to the play that a normal kid 5-10 would engage in with a Lego X Wing. Past age 10, I built model kits. They weren't toys and they were complex and required discipline to paint and assemble. You didn't play with them. You assembled them and put them on a shelf to admire, whether it was a classic car or a Gundam. Seems kind of sad that Legos have turned into this. They were meant to be toys that required a little bit of ingenuity to truly enjoy while developing capabilities for reading and following schematics, but also engaging in free-form building and ingenuity.
One thing I will give to Lego is that they have an excellent site for getting replacement parts. You can enter the SKU for almost all of their more common parts, helpfully listed in the instructions on the inventory page, and they'll sell them to you for cents per part with free shipping over $35. I haven't seen K'nex in a while and think they probably went the way of the dodo. Legos, K'nex and a lot of other "intellectually stimulating" toys used to feature at a retailer called "Zany Brainy." It bit the dust hard in 2001, far prior to online retail demolishing brick and mortar stores and Toys 'R Us going bankrupt in 2017. The boomer urge to create "smart children" via getting them to play with complex toys seems to have died off as well with many millennial parents opting for passive entertainment from TV and tablets as they struggle to get some peace after getting burnt out at work.
My eldest turns 5 soon so I got him some Lego sets for Christmas. One of them was an X Wing. I had an X Wing Lego set growing up, so I thought it would be a nice parallel for him to have (my old X Wing set is currently going for about $200 on Ebay). We sat down to build it. I had the instructions open and I'd point to a brick and ask him to find it. He was doing great at that, and my main goal was getting him good at reading schematics since he's displayed an aptitude for other traits that engineers use on a regular basis. The thing is, these sets are far more complicated than the ones I grew up with. I actually had to focus to figure out how the more complex pieces went together in the schematic. The mechanism for expanding the wings on my childhood X Wing set were two bricks with a gripper and spokes joist that could expand the wings by "clicking" the joint to the open or closed setting for the wings. This new one had a pivoting set based on a very complex rotational chassis. I came to the conclusion that this thing was not designed for kids.
They've also gotten a lot more complex with the amount of parts they include so you can round off the squares and make the set resemble the actual thing it's supposed to look like instead of being blocky. I'd estimate that the parts in the average kit have gone up, leading to a rise in price. Also, a lot of the parts, like the lasers on the wings and the landing gear, were held on by a single piece and very fragile. It's like it's meant to be a static display piece instead of being able to stand up to the play that a normal kid 5-10 would engage in with a Lego X Wing. Past age 10, I built model kits. They weren't toys and they were complex and required discipline to paint and assemble. You didn't play with them. You assembled them and put them on a shelf to admire, whether it was a classic car or a Gundam. Seems kind of sad that Legos have turned into this. They were meant to be toys that required a little bit of ingenuity to truly enjoy while developing capabilities for reading and following schematics, but also engaging in free-form building and ingenuity.
One thing I will give to Lego is that they have an excellent site for getting replacement parts. You can enter the SKU for almost all of their more common parts, helpfully listed in the instructions on the inventory page, and they'll sell them to you for cents per part with free shipping over $35. I haven't seen K'nex in a while and think they probably went the way of the dodo. Legos, K'nex and a lot of other "intellectually stimulating" toys used to feature at a retailer called "Zany Brainy." It bit the dust hard in 2001, far prior to online retail demolishing brick and mortar stores and Toys 'R Us going bankrupt in 2017. The boomer urge to create "smart children" via getting them to play with complex toys seems to have died off as well with many millennial parents opting for passive entertainment from TV and tablets as they struggle to get some peace after getting burnt out at work.