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Subject: 
Re: A curious way in which Lego designs its models
Newsgroups: 
lugnet.general
Date: 
Sat, 18 Nov 2000 03:47:26 GMT
Viewed: 
792 times
  
In lugnet.general, Larry Pieniazek writes:
In lugnet.general, Paul Davidson writes:
I bought and was putting together the Lego Millennium Falcon the other day,
and looking at the large number of pieces laid out on the floor, I noticed
something.  Lego tried to use as few kinds of pieces as possible, even
though the set was a large and expensive one.  For instance, all the1x2
bricks used were tan.  All the 1x8's were blue.  All the 2x2's were black.
All the 1x3's were dark grey.  All the 1x3 plates were brown.  You get the
idea--not one single piece appeared in more than one colour.

Why do they do this?  It tends to make the model too colourful and silly
looking (half of the above-listed pieces should have been grey!), and
greatly reduces the alternate uses for the pieces.  I.e., having only one
colour of each piece limits what else can be built.  And building a model
around the pieces chosen, instead of choosing pieces to fit the model, seems
like a poor way to design something.

Is this phenomenon consistent in other themes?  When did it start?

I don't think that it is consistently so. I have example sets (the soccer
buses for example) that have the same part in more than one color.

However it is a valid observation and I think some explanation can be had if
one contemplates what we know of how sets are produced. The total number of
different parts you can put in one bag is limited by the number of different
cassettes on the parts bagging line and speculation has that at 16. Go over
that and you need another bag in the set.

When I looked at my 6543 sets (I was resorting two of the sets I had packed
into one box for the transatlantic flight) I was taken by how many different
bags of parts there were... vintage 1994. The same price point set today has
less bags I think, and it's because of this color compression that Paul
refers to. Not consistently so, but it is a trend that's increasing.

++Lar

Couldn't just be to make it easier to build?  When I noticed this while
building the Millennium Falcon, it made it a lot easier to build.  For exampe,
I could concentrate on a small black piece instead of just a black
whatever by whatever piece.

Jimmy
concentrate on a



Message has 1 Reply:
  Re: A curious way in which Lego designs its models
 
(...) Could be. I never mix all the bags together, though... first thing I do with a large set build is sort everything into related items. Part of the fun. (but I don't WANT it easier to build... :-) ) ++Lar (24 years ago, 18-Nov-00, to lugnet.general)

Message is in Reply To:
  Re: A curious way in which Lego designs its models
 
(...) I don't think that it is consistently so. I have example sets (the soccer buses for example) that have the same part in more than one color. However it is a valid observation and I think some explanation can be had if one contemplates what we (...) (24 years ago, 18-Nov-00, to lugnet.general)

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