Yeah, if anything, the peak of "special pieces" LEGO was in the 90s.
If you want to complain about the current direction of lego, at least pick something that's still going on, like lego's increasing commitment to IPs. These used to be all licensed (Star Wars) but now there are a lot of sets that are on lego-owned IPs like Bionicle.
What there is is much less emphasis on traditional lego lines like "city". There is, if anything MORE availability of basic pieces at different prices. Other than size, why would you need lots of basic sets? The point is that they are basic.
Also, inflation adjusted, bulk purchase of lego basic pieces is historically very low right now, because it mostly seems to track the price of raw materials (mainly oil). I'm not 100% sure of this but I read someone making this case with some analysis on one of the lego collector boards.
Anyway, if you like plain, generic lego, this is probably the absolute best time to be into lego: extremely cheap basic lego in the constructor sets, very reasonable priced SPECIFIC lego in the bulk orders, ability to export from lego cad, the best range of technic parts and computer integration of all time...
lego is in much better shape than it was in the dark days of 2001.
If you want to complain about the current direction of lego, at least pick something that's still going on, like lego's increasing commitment to IPs. These used to be all licensed (Star Wars) but now there are a lot of sets that are on lego-owned IPs like Bionicle.
What there is is much less emphasis on traditional lego lines like "city". There is, if anything MORE availability of basic pieces at different prices. Other than size, why would you need lots of basic sets? The point is that they are basic.
Also, inflation adjusted, bulk purchase of lego basic pieces is historically very low right now, because it mostly seems to track the price of raw materials (mainly oil). I'm not 100% sure of this but I read someone making this case with some analysis on one of the lego collector boards.
Anyway, if you like plain, generic lego, this is probably the absolute best time to be into lego: extremely cheap basic lego in the constructor sets, very reasonable priced SPECIFIC lego in the bulk orders, ability to export from lego cad, the best range of technic parts and computer integration of all time...
lego is in much better shape than it was in the dark days of 2001.