I still look at most of the modern, themed Lego sets with a sense of sadness. They seem to inspire the "you have to follow the instructions" mentality so apply demonstrated in the father in the Lego movie. The older sets did include instructions, but the older blocks seemed more generic to building a wide variety of things, versus the "this is a piece for the Batmobile engine."
I agree to a point, but unlike other pop-culture tie-in toys, the Batmobile etc. Lego set can be broken down and combined with other bricks. In my experience about half of the themed sets are quickly absorbed into my son's common pool for building other things, while others stay more or less whole (sometimes with some upgrades and repairs). Overall the experience is very good, I think - they are toy which can be mastered (well enough) by children, can build (fairly) durable things, and then recycle cleanly.
That was one of the points of this article—people see their themed lines, or their Friends line, and say "why can't it just be like when I was a kid?"—when what Lego said was "why can't we do both, and more?"
Funny, I remember having these complaints 20-25 years ago.
It's more likely the reality is the more specialized blocks come and go, and you only remember the more useful ones that survive the generations. There were junk pieces back then too.
It's kinda like saying "all music nowadays is trash, not like the old days". Sturgeon's law applies: 90% of everything is trash, and you only remember the best parts of the past.
When I was a child, the sets I received usually had some sort of theme, even if it wasn't a branded theme. Pirates, space, race cars, whatever. Also, as other articles have pointed out, the majority of the specialized-looking pieces in modern, branded models, are actually creative re-uses of pre-existing pieces. Re-contextualization.
One thing I remember distinctly is that my sets always came with two sets of instructions - one would build the model featured on the box, the other would use a subset of the same parts to build something related but different. Personally, I would usually build the intended model, play with it a bit, then disassemble it for the alternate model. Eventually that would get disassembled as well, added to the big box of unsorted Lego, and would be fodder for modeling some other random idea.
That said, I think I did more experimentation with the Technic line of Lego, which is more like a plastic erector set, than I did with the regular bricks. At least, I remember more of the experimentation with those, probably because it was at a later point in my childhood.
I'd do roughly the same. I would build and play with the main model, perhaps the secondary designs if they looked like fun. Then I'd break it down and use the pieces for whatever I felt like at the time.
But then roughly once a year I would break down everything I'd built and sort every piece. Then I'd rebuild all the original models.
Funnily I have trouble swallowing medication, but I once put a flat 1x4 piece in my mouth for storage, but accidentally swallowed it. After that I'd always be bummed out when building my fire truck because it would be missing a piece. Back then in the 80's you couldn't get replacement pieces (at least where I lived).
I stopped buying Lego for a while because that's what it felt like to me, too. But a LOT of the newer sets now are built with very generic pieces. Each set might contain a unique piece or two.
Also, I've noticed that my kids (<8yo) both get new Lego, build following the instructions, then within minutes they will be moving pieces around to better suit their style. Or completely destroying it and making something they want to build instead.
Thats somewhat true. But my kids always build the themed project first, play with it, then bust it apart and the pieces are merged into the greater pool for general builds. My kids come up with some crazy uses for those specialized blocks!
The instructions in the older sets are also noticeably harder than the instructions are now. The new sets probably have, on average, four or five times as many steps, for the same number of pieces. And forget about listing which new pieces are used in each step, or showing multiple angles to help illustrate the alignment - you'd better be really good at counting studs in the isometric renderings on some of the old instruction sets.
