- Once built, what does one do with this? Generally, these are fragile in the sense that moving them can cause parts of it to become disconnected or fall apart so you don't want to be moving it around to much. It's going to take up a whole lot of space. Your kids can't actually play with it. And if you intend to show it off, you aren't really showing any real skills except for the ability to follow pages and pages of instructions. I don't even want to think about what would be involved in disassembling it such that it could be rebuilt per the instructions.
- Why do people put up flowers? No skill (I think...?) involved in getting a bouquet and putting it a vase on a table. Or buying (not creating) art. Some people just like the look and it;'s hard to argue about taste.
If people have a Lego set on display, that is surely a conversation starter for me. Especially if it's a ginormous Minas Tirith or Sagrada Familia set, or an old Technic set.
Not for everyone I suppose.
- My wife took on building the plant inspired lego sets several months ago. They are OK in that they don't look that ugly scattered around the house. I like it because it is a hobby she enjoys a lot and it makes it easier for me to buy "the right" gifts haha.
I've never had the patience to build those. I think I have PTSD from my childhood, when my dat bought us a "cheap" brand of lego-like toys (called TENTE I think) for which the bottom pieces fell as you plugged the top pieces.
- In Germany there is a Lego subscription service.
Put sets on a wishlist, they send you one of them. You build it, unbuild it and send it back. One set a month.
- I feel like if I were just a little deeper on the Autism Spectrum I would really like Germany.
- that sounds awesome. sad that something like that probably would not work well in USA. don't have the culture for it. too many pieces would get lost.
- For me, when I was into legos, the answer would be: take it apart and add the pieces to my larger collection, from which I can build whatever I want.
- > Once built
If the LEGO are truly accurate to the real thing, that might take a while!
- Enjoy its presence. If that doesn’t sound like something you’d enjoy, then it’s not the right set for you. Not something I’d ever buy, but I’m sure many will.
- It's not about the result. Most people who build these sets get satisfaction from the build process itself. It's a form of therapy.
- With that said, as someone who put together the Big Ben set back in the day and had raw fingers for a week after, I have a somewhat PTSD-like reaction to this set. It looks like there are going to be a lot of steps dealing with making many of a subassembly that is itself made out of a bunch of tiny pieces that you need to make sure line up well.
These days I much prefer the large Technic theme sets because they are not so repetitive and require a deeper immersion to actually complete; harder to just space out while building the set. Certainly more meditative for me.
All that is to say that if you're going to consider this set, be aware that the build experience might not be the level of fun that the part count seems to indicate.
- > Once built, what does one do with this?
Are you asking about the church or the lego set?
- People treat giant lego sets the same way they treat other complex model sets, it’s not really for disassembling as much as it is for the fun of building and then having / being proud of, I guess, mostly. I mean you can never really speak for everyone but generally speaking.
- > Your kids can't actually play with it.
Good luck to anyone who builds a lego set and then tries to tell my kids we can't play with it or steal parts from it for another build.
LEGO has a wide audience. Some of these go to adults who build them and put them on display. Others will go to kids who build them and then take them apart to build the next thing.
I wouldn't buy this huge set for my kids because that price tag is crazy, but I like buying some of the mid-size sets for them because it's a nice injection of specialty pieces that they like to incorporate into other builds.
- $800 Lego sets with 12,000 pieces are for adults, mostly.
- kragle!
- If we scale it by height, a historically accurate building of this set should take you approximately 200 days.
- 12000 pieces over 200 days, means about 60 pieces per day. I'd say that is a reasonable about actually.
- I’m a little disappointed that someone beat me to this.
- Why would you scale by height and not volume?
- Because it doesn't appear to either be designed at a consistent scale or be a solid rectangular cuboid making volume feel like an even less accurate basis for my silly joke.
- When I was a kid I used to spend entire days building and creating new stuff once I built the designs from the booklets.
Today when I see a Lego kit is kind of another toy: is designed to build one and only one design, compared to the generic kits that were sold and also popular many years ago.
All these new kits pieces are just to accomplish one build. The Lego spirit of ever combining and creating with same pieces over and over again is gone.
- My kids have a ton of legos, it's their favorite thing. However, and this is the important part: you have to let go of the concept of a set.
Keep new assembled kits out, let them play with it as built from the instructions. But then as it falls apart with play, and the kids don't fix it the same way it was originally built, it eventually goes into a big box of former kits that are all jumbled together.
We did this, and without prompting to do so, the kids started building their own things out of the box, exactly as you did with your kits.
You just have to learn to let go of the set, and it becomes exactly what you want.
Edit: I'm not sure if a $800 set has that same property, but for the everyday $5-$40 sets, absolutely treat them as temporary collections, and life is great.
- This is exactly how it happens at my house. I purposely stick to to the $20-$40 boxes for this reason. Over $100, that's not a toy anymore for me. That price range becomes a collectors figurine.
- > When I was a kid I used to spend entire days building and creating new stuff once I built the designs from the booklets.
Kids still do this.
I don't know why this idea persists. There have always been sets with custom pieces. My kids go crazy over the custom pieces because it sparks new ideas for their other builds. My kids know every custom piece from every set they've ever built and will describe them in great detail so we can search through the bin until we find it.
> The Lego spirit of ever combining and creating with same pieces over and over again is gone
For you, maybe. The kids are still doing this and having a great time.
- A lot of the Lego builds we did when my son was little was exactly this: A set would spark an idea and there'd be endless castles that started with piece of a castle set but went in totally different directions and incorporated all kinds of other stuff, for example.
I can't but help think that people who assume that the big sets take away that haven't touched Lego in decades.
My sons sets got built "to spec" once, got played with like that for a few hours, and then never looked the same again ever, even though we still have the manuals in a box somewhere.
- That seems to be somewhat of an exaggeration. These $800 models are obviously not for kids. The creativity is still alive in the price brackets that aren't targeting collectors. Custom builds that involve scavenging other kits for pieces still go viral pretty often.
I'm not very tapped into it, but last month I saw a DIY Lego Rocky from Project Hail Mary going viral. I think this week I saw a very detailed jellyfish model doing the rounds.
- All new kits? Gone? I'm not so sure about that. I don't think the target audience of an $800 kit is a 10 year old, sure. There are still plenty of kits at the $100ish and below price range that are targeted for that sort of play.
- There's a recurring theme on the Lego subreddit where people build the millennium falcon out of any arbitrary lego set, so the spirit is not COMPLETELY dead, fwiw
- There was a period that was very true when Ninjago were a thing. But in the last decade while they sometimes still come out with new pieces there is still a tonne of reusability and creativity in Lego pieces.
- These are toys for adults, to be put on the bookshelf once complete.
- I mean yes, there are kits like this that are clearly meant for one kind of build, but nothing stops someone from just getting bulk kits or taking apart other sets? There's lots of other stuff on their catalogue which look just like the stuff I grew up with.
I swear every lego-related post you see people dooming about this when all they look at are the giant sets clearly targeted towards adults that _want_ this sort of thing and not the plethora of other stuff.
- you could not be more wrong
https://rebrickable.com/sets/alternates/
you just enter the number to find alternate builds, some sets can be built into dozens various creations
- You can still buy bulk Legos to mix and match from Lego. And similarly pricey and collector oriented Lego sets existed 20 and 30 years ago as well.
Legos releasing single build sets that are clearly targeted for adults (look at the 18+ age statement) does nothing to harm you - it's targeted a different consumer demographic.
It's like Taco Bells now serving alcohol or Costcos now selling Asian groceries. Companies will not stay stagnant and will look at additional opportunities to expand to new buyer demographics.
- Exactly, and like, if one literally looks up "Lego catalogue" and actually read it you'll get a bunch of sets - even the brand tie-ins, which aren't new at all - and these are basically the same types of sets I grew up with and would happily build and then take apart as a kid to do other stuff with...
- Lego also has "3-in-1" sets that come with dedicated instructions to build different possible configurations out of the exact same pieces, which seem like a cool way to encourage kids (or anyone :P) to then veer off into their own building experiments.
- There were also two 20-in-1 sets recently, both very reasonably priced. Those were huge hits in my house.
- Same here much to my parents chagrin - they thought buying me Lego sets would teach me to follow written instructions but joke's on them.
- It seems like this Lego set should also take 150+ years to build
- Wonder if it will take as long to complete the Lego version as it took to complete the real thing.
- Have they completed the real thing ? I thought it was still being built…
- They just finished the final tower after 144 years, although there is still another decade of (finishing?) work remaining.
- What's the smallest 360deg camera? Would it be possible to create a virtual tour of the inside of this model with such a camera?
Would interesting to use a quest and take a tour of the insides.
- One of the small Insta360 cameras would work well, but they only shoot ~180°. It would be a great excuse to use a probe lens!
- I'm sad that the building instructions link doesn't work. I'd love to see them.
- For the price tag I would have expected something bigger and more imposing (at least twice the size.)
- I like the idea of doing lego models, until I'm about 1/2 way through, then I think, "never again"
- What they really should have done is sell the kit in 7 stages, each for $99 each, such that you can slowly build it as you can budget money for the construction. :)
(This is how the Sagrada Família was built in case folks don't know its history)
- That would actually be really cool if each stage of the build reflected the actual construction history
- Looking forward to the expansion pack(s) for when they finish building the real cathedral
- It is not a cathedral, is a basilica: https://sagradafamilia.org/en/history-of-the-temple that will be finished next June 10th, coinciding with the 100th anniversary of Gaudi's death and the visit of pope Leo XIV to Madrid.
- I wonder when they'll release the Spanish Inquisition set. Nobody will expect that.
- [flagged]
- To all North Americans. The singular of Lego is Lego. The plural of Lego is .. Lego.
It's like sheep. Legos is a mis--spelled City in Nigeria.
- That's a strange way to spell Portugal
- Not to all, plenty of us call them Legos.
- And its GIF not JIF!
73 points by speckx 2 hours ago | 61 comments