Lego Ideas Typewriter
lego.comA lot of people in this thread are forgetting that it’s not necessarily about the actual completed object but more the process of putting it together that often brings the most joy with LEGO.
I don’t think I’m more at peace than the few times a year I sit down with a new LEGO kit and build it. It’s a delightfully enjoyable break from just about everything else that keeps my mind busy and is such a calming activity.
This is my problem. I very badly want to build some of these (particularly the Saturn V and some of those huge Technic supercar models), but I really don't need another tchotchke collecting dust on a shelf.
In Germany we have two companies that will send you a set (or 3, depending on plan) every month. It's like the old Netflix DVD model. Each sets gets washed, they added extra pieces and there's insurance for loosing pieces. (https://www.bauduu.de/)
That’s a brilliant idea! Is there something like this in the US? How has your experience been using it?
LEGO is vastly more popular in Europe than in the US.
I believe there was a US based company doing it at one point but they went out of business.
There are a few US offerings: https://www.verywellfamily.com/best-lego-subscription-boxes-...
I believe those are all "recurring purchases", so your collection accumulates, where the European one upthread is "loaned and then returned", so you get the joy of building without the storage problems.
Have children. Then you get to buy as many Lego sets as you want, but they're really for them... honest.
The Saturn V set is excellent, BTW.
I has nice building techniques, but unfortunately, it's all hidden behind a rather sparse exterior and doesn't look very exciting at first glance.
The playing features are cool (several stages that can be separated and put back together), but way too fragile to actually have children play with it.
It's a very fine display model, though. I've put it on a bureau right when you enter my apartment.
The ISS is superb, too (and rather cheap), but the new Space Shuttle was where I eventually drew the line. My pocketbook is very thankful for that.
I just ordered the Space Shuttle (with model Hubble telescope). It's totally for my kid... really.
My oldest, 3.5ish, is just starting to get into the little LEGO sets. To say I’m not beyond excited to uh… buy more kits for “him” would be a huge lie.
Any kid I'm sure will gladly accept a pre-built Lego set once you're tired of looking at it. Many adults would too.
Buy - build - sell.
Used in box sells quite well - especially if you sell after they’ve gone from store shelves. eBay or BrickLink.
What do people usually do, just break it down and put all the bricks in one bag? I feel like it'd take even longer to do that than put it together...and then to put it back together when you have to sort through thousands of pieces?
Usually, yes. Most people just dump all the pieces out anyway when building.
It’s actually not as bad as it seems especially if you have space to spread out and roughly sort while working (special memory works well).
My wife gave me the LEGO grand piano this past Christmas. It was an absolute joy putting it together, seeing how the designer made everything work.
That Piano was awesome. Everyone's amazed when they see it. There have been so many great "Ideas" kits.
To me, the greatest joy of LEGO sets is seeing brilliant engineering up close. There's brilliant engineering inside an iPhone, but I can't see it. It's all locked inside a boring looking little 1cmx1cm gray chip.
When you assemble something like a working pneumatic articulated motorized digger, 99% made out of the same basic 200 interchangeable parts, it's incredible.
It really becomes apparent when you attempt to build your own creation to the same standards of some of the sets geared to older builders.
I'm confused by the hate too. Like I wouldn't care to have yet another thing on a shelf that's just more plastic waste, but I don't have an issue with people enjoying this. It's not like something that takes a bit of effort to put together and then is just an art piece is anything new.
I believe a lot of people who buy one are mostly thinking of how hot this is going to be on eBay.
That's a lovely piece of kit, and I am sorely tempted to put in an order, but LEGO's promotional video and associated text descriptions seem to be a little deceptive.
As far as I can tell, the model - which has a "LEGO first" - Black and red ink spool ribbon is a new fabric element. - and each key has a letter, and the carriage moves, etc ... doesn't actually type.
This may shock you, but none of those lego ships are sea worthy either.
Some of them are. I had one as a kid. The base allowed the boat to float in water.
-Then you misplaced the keel and suddenly had an enforced lesson in vessel stability in the comfort of your bathtub...
Good times.
The Germans had access to a motor - always described in the manual but not available to the US.
WHAT. this changes everything, as I was planning on taking the summer off to take my Saturn V into orbit.
The Lego Pop-up book does pop up though.
It has one (singular) typing element that moves and hits the 'tape', which you might consider as typing. But, it indeed is not functional for the whole alphabet, nor does it have functional shift keys to shift cases.
Oh yeah good catch; they should probably add a disclaimer that it's not functional.
Same. The video shows a typed letter in the machine too, leading me to believe it actually worked. But further digging reveals this is not the case. A ton of people are going to actually buy this thinking it works, and it won't and they will be pissed.
The same thing happened with the piano. I assume it’s people who are interested in the subject matter (pianos, typewriters) and not that familiar with what functionality to expect from a LEGO set.
I think you'd have to be a little gullible to think it's a real typewriter, especially if you've ever used a real one.
I’m struck by the post-modern, non-working reflection that costs significantly more than the functional object that’s still readily available. LEGO has truly crossed into the art world. Like a painting of a soup can.
When wasn’t Lego art? I display my Lego dinosaurs next to my TV. I think they look cool. They weren’t meant to be functional dinosaurs.
The "conventional" Lego builds are meant to be a non-functional miniature of a real-world or a fictional object, with some playing features. This creation crosses this boundary because it tries to replicate a real-world object in its original scale, with its inner mechanisms, and yet it doesn't achieve the purpose of the original object. Seems somewhat wasteful, cynical and purposeless.
Yeah but I get to build this typewriter... I derive value from the act of building and replicating the inner mechanisms of a typewriter that I could not build before. Isn't all entertainment somewhat 'wasteful' or 'purposeless' beyond enjoyment?
I'm 35 and am a keen collector of 1:18 scale diecast model cars. The sense of enjoyment for me comes from seeing their intricate details exactly replicated, from putting models from a similar age/brand/model next to one another and comparing them, from knowing that they can endure a long time without degrading and I can pass them to my son.
I fail to understand the appeal of "adult non-toy" Lego sets like these, however. It's impossible to replicate real-world stuff at any serious level of detail (the smallest brick is far too large), as mechanical devices they are flimsy (no greasing, no bearings, clumsily-weighed movements), separate sets do not stand well next to one another due to different scales and wildly varying subject matters. I do know that it is fun to build a Technic race car with steering, suspension, differentials and pistons, but such model-like stuff doesn't bring much value, IMO.
No, Legos don't and can't exactly replicate all the real world details of the things they model. It's no surprise that different hobbies have different pleasures. But surely you see that you have a niche hobby that to many (most?) people would superficially appear to not "bring much value"?
The joy of Lego is taking generic bricks and figuring out how to represent the thing you want to build out of them. With pre-designed kits like this, many people find pleasure in seeing how the designer figured out how to use piece X to represent object Y, or used a particular building technique to create a particular effect. e.g. the Lego Empire State Building uses the generic grille to great effect to render the windows of the building, and generic yellow tiles to make convincing little taxis, and some neat building tricks to create the setbacks in the tower without making it look 'lego-like' (with abrupt, brick-size shifts).
I got a sense of enjoyment from diecast model cars because I could open up the doors and pretend they transformed into airplanes. I also hated them because any steering or suspension components were generally plastic and flimsy by toy standards. I didn’t see the appeal to these things you couldn’t really play with.
People like different things for different reasons. Guitar Hero is not the same as playing a guitar, and comparing the two with the expectation that they will offer the same rewards will lead to disappointment. But, some people like both.
Only as wasteful, cynical and purposeless as my dinosaurs. I look at them and feel happy. That’s pretty much it. If I assembled this typewriter, I’d look at it and feel happy.
Seems different in kind, not degree. A 3 year old plays with Duplo to make planes and rockets. Yes, art in the sense that drawing on paper is a form of art. But a close to realistic rendering of a soup can that now sells for $millions is / was reflecting back a reductive sense of nostalgia for a premium. Kudos to LEGO for capitalizing for a premium, just a different product for a different consumer that could buy and appreciate an actual typewriter. This consumer centric version of art forms is perhaps the same reflection by which Warhol was dismissed by some early critics. Just not the version of LEGO that reflects the endless design iterations in any one box.
A pastel green Olivetti Lettera 32 cost about 100€ used, so that's totally true
Ah I'm not the only one who sees that as a Lettera 32! (which I own, and is still awesome)
They are definitely not “solving a problem”. That’s for sure.
Instead, Legos is obviously fulfilling/creating a need.
What they are creating is a market for a third party innards substitute that replaces the mechanism for driving the page carrier with something that speaks BLE HID. A toy collectible that you can nondestructively convert into something you can actually use on your job and back? They can run a victory lap before even starting!
I don't know, they're fun. Why is there so much hate for such a simple enjoyment in the comments?
I don't hate them! I love LEGO, played a lot as kid.
It's a different object with different functionality. You can't use it to actually type, but you can use it to easily and conveniently create something unique to your liking, mixing and matching pieces from any LEGO set in the company's history.
if you think the typewriter is bad, have you seen the new lego adidas shoe?
Are you saying I can buy a $200 typewriter somewhere?
Yes, there are a lot of used typewriters for sale. I just did a search for "typewriter working" on ebay.com, narrowed it down to offers below $70 and got multiple pages of results.
We have reached Baudrillard Condition 3.
This is really the opposite of what I always loved about Legos as a kid. All these complex kits seem more like jigsaw puzzles--only one way to go together. What I loved about Legos as a kid was making my own creations.
You can still buy those sets: https://www.lego.com/en-gb/themes/classic
The highly detailed sets really takes nothing away from those.
It is also my understanding that those free play sets sells well, so they really are complimentary.
I see your point but even when I was a kid 30 years ago Lego had specialized kits (castle with horses, space modules, car races) and even today they sell "just bricks" boxes.
There's certainly been a shift in marketing (e.g. Ninjago) but if you want the raw build your own experience it's still there, the offer has just expanded.
Most (not all!) new kits, even the ones that are marketed at kids (not the obviously-intended-for-adults ones) try hard to minimize exposed nubs, and use tons of itty bitty bricks in ways that feel like they fell out of some kind of automated CAD process.
The result is smallish, expensive, huge-brick-count sets that're cramped (hard even for kid-hands to play in), hard to non-destructively add on to (you have to rip bricks off to find nubs to attach to, sometimes doing a lot of damage before you've got much useful nub-area exposed), and really hard to repair without the manual and a ton of time if part of it gets smashed.
Some of my older castle sets have a brick count similar to modern structures (again, ones aimed at kids, not architectural models or whatever) but are over twice the size and came with like a dozen minifies and horses. The per-piece price may not be much different on modern sets, but there's been some serious size deflation.
The new ones look better (I'm guessing they sell better, too, for that reason, especially to adults making the buying decisions). The old ones were much better LEGO.
Just fyi, there was a time when lego kits and minifigs did not exist... just lego blocks. More than 30 years ago, so before your time.
This set is from Lego Ideas, a site where people can add their own ideas and vote for them. The sets coming from there are usualy for adults, collectors, fans. They had single set from franchises like Voltron, WALL-E, Doctor Who, Mickey Mouse. But also have Artful sets like a Piano, this typewriter. Or even sets of real space-stuff like Saturn V-Rocket, ISS or Apollo Moonlander.
For kids they still have their regular simple or mildly complex sets, depending on age and franchise.
So don't follow the instructions and just make your own.
I don't know when you were a kid, but when I was a kid Lego sets _were_ like jigsaw puzzles. Lots of big single-use pieces that were hard to adapt into something new.
Modern Lego sets may look like they can only go together one way, but they are made of a bunch of smaller general-purpose pieces. There is much more room for reusing those for your own creations than there used to be.
Nothing stops you from doing that today. Your best bet for buying bricks is ebay, $9 / Kg or so is pretty good pricing for heirlooms ;)
At least the keys are printed. Those would have been a nightmare to center. Only two stickers in the set.
(You can't take that for granted, even the 700 Euro set #75252 comes with a sticker)
All printed keys, and a new fabric element. I couldn't believe today's Lego would splurge like this, until I got to the "Includes Note from Chairman Thomas Kristiansen, based on the typewriter of founder Ole Kristiansen". I guess the executive still gets nice models without stickers.
Printing LEGO is one of the modern improvements that they’ve implemented - it is substantially easier and cheaper to print an element than it was twenty years ago.
I should probably clarify that I meant "splurge" as in "spending where they normally don't", not as in "spend beyond a reasonable amount"
Yeah - just pointing out that in general LEGO has been printing prices that would have been stickers 20 years ago.
Part of is also that they did a study and realized that stickers piss kids off because they’re hard to apply correctly.
As a kid, stickers were the bane of my existence for everything; Legos, Transformers, etc.
I had to decide between doing it myself and having it look like crap, or getting my parents to do it and feeling embarrassed that I didn't do it myself.
As an adult I still have difficulty and often leave them off entirely.
Supposedly the best way is to float them on with a bit of water and use a pin to arrange it before it dries.
Omg now I wish they’d do an enigma machine!
Ooh, how long until someone inserts a Teensy microchip and a USB cable to make this a functional computer keyboard?
Either way I really want one!
Or just take those keycaps for a lego-compatible switches:
https://hackaday.com/2017/12/12/connecting-cherry-mx-key-swi...
Retro Recipies / Perifractic did that with a C64, sortove: https://youtu.be/1Fb0Kn2bVtM
Opening this link with my Firefox iOS 34 crashes the browser reliably. Anyone else seeing this issue?
That’s odd as I posted it using Firefox on iOS (version 34) as well). Clicking it works for me.
I don’t develop for iOS, so I’m speculating here, but could it be a URL handler for YouTube URLs exists and you don’t have the app it’s set to? (As in, iOS says YouTube urls get opened in the app, but you don’t have the app?)
Does anybody know if the creator of a "Lego Idea" gets royalties if their kit ends up in stores?
per wikipedia, 1% royalties
It took me a long while to see the LEGO-ness in it. It's so well finished that you can't tell it's LEGO. Certainly you know because you assembled it. But then again the pieces are so specialized that you lose a lot of the creativity that LEGO inspires.
Interesting. Just watched this (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bs5TEuZPQl8)
Dang that's wild
I wonder if the moderator of HN gets a ping every time his name is mentioned like this. “Why did someone summon me on a Lego thread? Oh ok, just an exclamation.”
Um, if I click "Continue" am I agreeing to their cookie policy?
Is this popup a GDPR notice?
For anyone who doesn't see it: There's a giant blue box on the left that just says continue to lego.com, and then a giant yellow box on the right for going to their "Play Zone" for kids I guess.
Then in microscopic text underneath they only describe their cookie policy but say nothing about what you're agreeing to.
[EDIT] Okay, it seems there is a cookie-control thing underneath after you click. Only discovered it by meddling with the Inspector. But that whole first thing just really looks like a dark pattern.
I'm somewhat depressed by how explicitly Lego is marketing towards 30-something man-children who build things to put them on the shelf.
The worst part is that this model-kit design style is spilling over and infecting their actual toy themes. It's harder for kids to repurpose a set that's built 40% out of small tiles and cheese wedges and little greebly bits.
My dad complained about modern specialized lego bricks 30 years ago. I got some of his old bricks from the 50's. They got some weird shapes too. Nothing changed.
Totally agreed. I have several single function pieces from sets from the late 70s and early 80s:
Not to mention all the doors, windows, trees, wheel axles and pulleys that can really only do one thing.- spring actuated forklift loaders - boat hulls that actually float in water - airplane/helicopter rotors (incompatible with technics because they predate it)There was a period in the late 90s/early aughts when Lego really went adrift with the single function pieces. I got my kids a Lego airplane set from that era that consists basically of plane parts. No matter what you do with those pieces they look like they're parts of an airplane. It's pretty sad.
Fortunately, Lego corrected course. They still make specialized pieces, particularly the minifigs. When you're working at that scale, nearly all the minifig tools are going to consist of a single piece. But most of the sets now consist of largely of pieces that are flexible enough to be assembled into anything. Sets from the Creator line come with a booklet to assemble whatever is on the box (eg. a robot or a dinosaur), but none of the pieces are so specialized that they can only be used for one thing.
This argument is about a decade out of date, and I'm completely uncomprehending how someone could not come up with a way to repurpose doors and windows and wheel axles...
There was a terrible period in the late 90s/early 2000s when they did make a bunch of really chunky large pieces that were impossible to do much with. Now the pendulum has swung to the other extreme, and designs are littered with a ridiculous number of miniscule pieces, which do little but bulk up the part count and add baroque detailing.
A terrible example of this style of design is the most recent X-Wing (https://www.lego.com/en-us/product/luke-skywalker-s-x-wing-f...). Clearly a model marketed at children. But the whole thing is incredibly fragile, made up of fiddly bits, with a couple spring-loaded shooter thingies tacked on to give it a modicum of play features. The entire segment aft of the cockpit is a complicated mass of technic beams and pins with a facade over the top, to make the wings fold open, except that the wings don't actually lock open. It looks really pretty, but as a Lego set, it's a big failure.
Yes, and it almost killed the company. I read an article a while back how they had no accounting from the designers to production, and literately had 8 different chef minifigs (also, making star wars sets helped them out as well)
The trouble with the modern sets isn't specialized bricks, it's that 3/4 of the brick count is short 1x1s and tiny flat cladding pieces used to cover all the nubs. They're worse for play than the old ones with more large pieces (so, a chance of actually repairing the damn thing from memory if part broke) and exposed nubs to add on to. Older sets also had way more interior space or surface area for a similar brick count, for ones where that mattered (buildings, vehicles).
This is true, but what changed is that Lego is now filling the inside of their models with ugly colored bricks, which makes changing the models much harder than in the past.
Fun fact: some of the oldest plastic Lego is H0 scale vehicles. I have a bunch of these they are ridiculously valuable today.
There still are lots of classic boxes of "normal" pieces:
– https://www.lego.com/en-us/product/bricks-bricks-bricks-1071...
It’s even better now than it was, since now you can get those basic bricks from IKEA for cheap: https://www.ikea.com/us/en/p/bygglek-201-piece-lego-r-brick-...
That's not cheap. Ebay bulk buys are cheap. And they come with the free surprise factor too. Why not recycle?
Plenty of Lego sets for the kids as well. Just avoid these sets if it's something you worry about.
Buy Lego Minecraft. Lots and lots of 2x2, 2x4 and 2x8 bricks in sensible colors.
Might have to look at this. The Classic boxes don't actually have the classic colors in much sufficiency, and are likewise full of tiny 1x1 and 1x2s to bulk up the part count
e.g. https://www.lego.com/en-us/product/creative-building-bricks-...
It's a less than useful selection of pastel colors to really do anything with.
My mother, who is in her 70s, loves to build these new sets! She also loved to build all the old Lego sets from her children again for her grand children. Just to see if all the pieces were still there, she said :-)
I like living in a society where playtime isn't just for kids!
I still remember as a child loving the “customized” pieces - printed, rare - much more important that the normal bricks
They still make the “classic” sets of just basic bricks in assorted colors. Around the holidays you can get a giant box at Costco for $20 and I think Ikea might have a classic set even cheaper. The classic bricks come in bright yellow boxes while the dedicated builds are usually in blue boxes and the duplo sets (classic brick sets for toddlers with extra large pieces) are in green boxes. I think it’s sometimes easy to miss the yellow boxes in the lego aisle when you’re so focused on the blue boxes.
The kids spilled over their Lego box a few days ago - so many unusable and pointless 1x1 round pieces, special weird shapes, etc. Its all the sets which are fun to build but seem more like a puzzle than a Lego set which you can really reuse, rebuild, etc. I'm not normally nostalgic, but my box as a child used to be all real blocks and I could build great stuff. Now its more marketing to sell more and more branded sets. Worst is the Lego city stuff though.
If you think a 1x1 round piece is unusable/pointless, you are truly lacking in imagination.
Even the varied array of "one-off" weirdly specific pieces always find an unexpected application in a pinch somewhere. I've been recently quite entertained by the creative work of a Dublin lego-er making pubs (with many many small 1x1 round pieces, and a selection of weird one-offs for signage/etc.) https://snapwidget.com/embed/927292
> If you think a 1x1 round piece is unusable/pointless, you are truly lacking in imagination.
I think you're underestimating the percentage of bricks in modern sets that can be described like this. They're very hard to mash up (e.g. "I'm going to use these two castle sets to build a totally different GIANT castle!" or "Now this pirate base is an oceanographic research center!"), to add on to, and to repair if damaged. Plus they're just damn tiny for the part count.
They do sell the buckets still, which is always the retort to complaints about modern sets, but it makes me sad that the entire way I played with LEGO sets when I was growing up is nearly impossible with (most) modern sets (the ones intended for kids, I mean—I don't care if the ones plainly marketed to adults aren't good for those things, of course).