Legos then and now

Growing up I always enjoyed playing with Lego's. Started out with Lego Duplo blocks and went to the standard size blocks as I got old enough. I remember my first set of the regular Lego's It was the 6671 utility repair lift set. This set included a small truck with a trailer that had a mounted scissor lift. the set came with one mini figure and a couple of tools. The set was released back in 1989 but I am not sure as of when exactly I received this set from my parents.

I have had several more sets since then, one Christmas I received almost the entire series of the western sets from my parents and sisters. I tried to keep the sets together but eventually everything ended up in a huge bin all mixed together. Looking back I wished I hadn't done such a thing, since now I have no knowledge as to where this container of childhood treasure may be buried.

Recently I rediscovered my love for the little building blocks and have purchased the 6671 set off of eBay just to have the set complete. I have also discovered that Lego has made two sets very similar to the old utility repair left set. One is the 3179  repair truck, which was released in 2009 and it is a stand alone truck instead of having the lift on a trailer. the lift itself is different with it being a cherry picker style boom lift. The other set is the 60054 light repair truck which came out in December 2013. I just kicked this set up at Wal-Mart since it is in the current Lego product lineup. I really like this set as a model, very nice looking truck modeled after a pickup, very well thought out.

Now with having all three sets I really like that Lego keeps introducing great sets and continues to produce new exciting ways to make things. But I see a growing problem with the way they design their sets. Most will agree that the older sets it was fun to build the intended model shown, but the back showed that there was potential within the set to make much more, the back showed a couple examples of what else you could build out of the set. With the specialized parts and reducing the number of pieces I feel that Lego is really limiting the imagination capability of their sets. As an adult I am buying the set for just that the set to display, building a model that is made from bricks. But what about the kids that wants to play with these, you build the set and play with them as if its a over sized matchbox or hot wheels vehicle. There is no replay value once the kid grows bored of that particular set.