Sunday, 17th July, 2022
I ordered a few little sets for the boys. I really wanted the Creator Ferris Wheel, but it’s expensive and still in being sold so there aren’t any used sets. Notice it was I want 😂.
It’s not surprising, but I hadn’t quite realised, just how extensive the custom Lego building “world” is. There are so many sites dedicated to custom builds, called MOCs (haven’t figured out what that stands for something original construction?), and so many programs to help you build, share and use other people’s creations. I’m curious to do something…
My friend and I have a common complaint that today’s Lego sets you buy have so many “custom” (they’re not strictly custom but they’re just so specific) pieces that it’s hard to do anything else with the set once you’ve build it. They go in for hyper realism and the whole set is 1/3 height tiny pieces put together. Back in our day 👴, there were still sets but the total number of discrete parts was much less and so you could rebuild more things a lot easier. I did have the classic pirate ship, which did have the custom boat pieces, but the cabin and other parts were just with normal pieces. My daughter likes the Harry Potter Lego, but they’re all just build once and sit on a shelf. Shop fronts or scenes from the movies. They’re not the best toys in my opinion. Maybe she does play with them when I’m not looking. But compared to the Lego Town or even Star Wars stuff, where it’s vehicles, planes, shops, etc. there’s more to do once they’re built. Of course, the building is the best part so what can I expect. Perhaps that’s why there’s so much custom creation online as people want to build more, and maybe all these hyper specific pieces makes the custom scene so much better.
I tried using on the github python scripts I found to compute the price of parts for the Ferris Wheel if you bought them separately. Unfortunately, most scripts I found (I didn’t look that hard) were quite old and various websites had changed their API or layout such that they didn’t work. I tried fixing them but doing it on an iPad, whilst SSH into my server, with split screen for terminal and the browser was not an enjoyable experience, so I stopped. I’m still interested though, and could be a fun project.
Looking at all this Lego makes me want to build my own “town” or scene across a table - like the Lego Movie! Get all the sets we have and build them and put them together. We just don’t have anywhere to keep it that the two year old won’t get to it. She’ll want to play with it but it’ll quickly get broken - and maybe that’s fine but the others would get upset.
I’m in a Q2 vs M10 circle at the moment. Although sometimes I step away from it and think they’re both hideously expensive and I should get neither.
