LEGO Building Instructions (opens in new tab)

Yes, we archived the entire thing in 2020[0] (~100gb). Maybe it's worth running again.

[0]: https://archive.fart.website/archivebot/viewer/job/avlad

Edit: What this means is you can open any* link to lego.brickinstructions.com and see it in the wayback machine (IA ingests these archives)

*maybe not the mobile view you linked, not links after the job ran, not pages that couldn't be found in a crawl

Wow, that just gave me a crazy flash of nostalgia. I think I must have had this set, or at least a very similar one.

Thank you for sharing this. I’m going to show it to my 6 year old and he’s going to lose his mind. Great way to make use of my massive box of childhood legos and empty summer hours.

When brickinstructions goes belly up, or just messes up its URLs for shits and giggles, you will need to go through archive.org to find out what used to be at that URL.

Oh my god. I thought I was such a big deal when I first saw that one - It was marked ages 6+, but I was a solid 4 or 5.

> It also made me realize something: half the value of buying a kit these days is that you aren’t spending hours finding needles in a 300lb haystack.

What! That is the best part!

Wading through a mound of Lego has to be one of the most satisfying sounds I know, the clatter of a bajillion pieces of precision plastic, each with their different cavities and sonority, moving around each handful you scrape off to the side... Good times.

In the rare occasion I get a Lego set nowadays (no kids yet), the first thing I do is open every bag of pieces into a tray so I can do it on a smaller scale.

> It also made me realize something: half the value of buying a kit these days is that you aren’t spending hours finding needles in a 300lb haystack.

It's a bit of work but I found enjoyment in sorting my old childhood Lego. Don't do colors, do categories (bricks, slopes, plates, etc). Once done, I could complete my old childhood models even faster than the unsorted ones you buy new. It also lowers the threshold to break it down and build something else since it's so easy to find the parts. On the downside, it takes more space than a single bin.

>>*half the value of buying a kit these days is that you aren’t spending hours finding needles in a 300lb haystack.*

Are you NUTS?

Are you trying to shame my 1980s values with LEGO?

"I KNOW that FN piece is in here!!!! I JUST SAW IT!!!!"

You're robbing your kids of a life lesson. and better image recognition, memory, sorting processing thoughts, etc.

There are so many lessons embedded in working with LEGO that can only be learnt through the frustration of a F-ton of brix in a bin and your looking for that specific 1x2 -- or worse yet, 1x1 smooth piece.

I used to buy things in bulk from LEGO at the mall in San Jose and just have bins of smooth pieces and other were parts...

> ...half the value of buying a kit these days is that you aren’t spending hours finding needles in a 300lb haystack.

My guess is that is why techies keep inventing their own Lego sorting machines

You need a rule that you cannot mix more than 2000 pieces from different kits. Basically 1/3 of those organizer boxes. A balance between search ability and organization, otherwise you get in these situations where it’s not feasible to rebuild a kit that you have, it’s like mixing different engine parts and expect to build that same engine

> you aren't spending hours finding needles in a 300lb haystack.

I guess that's for people who have a specific thing in mind that they wanted to build. I find a lot fun just picking out random pieces and then thinking about where to attach them afterwards.

Get the brickit app, saves some time

My kids never want to build the instruction versions, they only want to make their own designs.

> Lego themselves have an archived copy of every instruction set going back to the 80s, available here - https://www.lego.com/en-us/service/buildinginstructions

This can't be true: I am very sure that there exist Lego Technic models from before 1996, which is the oldest year that can be selected.

In the past I've used that site to get instructions from the late 1990s and early 2000s and I thought they were proper archives (not scans).

For us growing up, the point of the sets was that you got a cool spaceship or whatever, which you would put your personal Lego guy into, park near your "base", and play with until some other project demanded the parts. Then it would be disassembled mercilessly and consigned to the bin as grist for the constantly evolving construction project laid out on our much-abused air hockey table.

If a set was a particularly cool build, we might disassemble it and then rebuild it - but most of the time, once something got taken apart, no one was ever going to bother trying to reconstruct it from the manual, since doing so would have involved finding all 500 necessary pieces in the mega-bin.

My own take:

Some people want to play with playsets. Some people want to display models. Some people want to create art. Some people want to construct machines. Some people want to assert allegiance. Some people want to collect.

All of these aims are valid. The diversity of ways to buy LEGO supports them all, while maintaining a high-quality, largely compatible, reasonably consistent medium.

I'm in my early forties but I still grew up with instructions and sets. Usually I'd assemble a set and probably learn a thing or two along the way, then I'd tear the sets down and build stuff myself.

As a father of three, that's exactly how I see my kids using the sets today. The sets get built once, then they get torn down and the bricks get reused.

I personally agree about the whole point of Lego being free form building - and I still have some Lego magazines from the days when that was explicitly encouraged by Lego - but you need kits and instructions to get to the point where you can do free form building. It's like composing music, you're going to have a very difficult time of it if you don't first study a whole lot of existing, well-constructed music.

Neither did I till I had a kid. My kid loves following instructions, builds a set a few times, then he goes into creative mode and builds his own way. Instructions helped my kid learn the basics of instruction following which is a good skill to have for a 5 year old.

The purpose of the instructions is to learn the techniques. First you build with the instructions, then you tear it apart and build what you want.

Not everyone is into the instructions -- my daughter follows them meticulously and will only build with instructions. My son refuses to follow instructions and will only "master build".

When I was a kid I'd build with the instructions, and eventually I destroyed everything and built a whole city from scratch.

Every kid is different.

Growing up, myself and my siblings built sets when we first got them as gifts, but after that they went in the pile. We would build whatever was in our imagination, from the multicolored heap.

Now I have my own kids, and they all want to build sets from instructions. The odd time we'll dive into the pile of orphaned bits and build a house or a boat or something, but mostly they want to recreate what they remember. My wife spends hours finding all the pieces of a set and bagging them up for the kids to build later (so she's gonna love this)

It's tempting to say "kids nowadays" but I think it's just different personality types. In other media, my kids are far more creative and imaginative than I ever was, but with Lego sets they prefer to recreate the perfect image than make a hodge podge thing that never existed.

The fun of building new sets off instructions is the satisfying-ness. You know the instructions are correct, that no pieces are missing and all pieces click together satisfyingly into the result, that looks and feels nice. Each click is satisfying.

It is a whole lot different from tinkering with arduino hats/sw, as frustration can creep in if things don't work as expected.

I like both. I think Lego sets are in many ways my first experience of technical documentation and I still use those skills. It also helped me learn about how sets went together so I could design my own. Finally, I wanted to play with what was on the box.

> The whole point of Lego was creative free form building. Remove that & it’s dull as hell.

The point is that Lego can be played with in a bunch of ways. It's parts that you can do whatever with, and it has instructions for one or more models that you can make. Some people like the sheer possibilities of making things up, and some people find that daunting. Lego supports both, and anything in between.

Following the instructions does teach you techniques that you can use on designing your own builds. It's a way to learn from experts.

I am in-between - so, the way I used instructions was for ideas on how things could be put together that were "non-obvious".

I would build it once, then play with that model for a bit, then deconstruct it, put it into my box of loose LEGO and then build whatever I wanted - sometimes it would look similar, but it was never the same way twice.

I fail to understand expensive sets that get built and sit on shelves or in glass enclosures... Might as well break out the Kragle (I think many people failed to see the point of that movie...)

I'm with you. I remember my childhood experience with Legos. Me and a friend down the road would drag out this big bucket full of random stuff. We'd build forts, and then crazy many-wheeled trucks that would assault them.

The whole thing was about those designs just springing from the imagination, and I really don't get what fun building toward a prescribed design would be, especially since it's so low fidelity.

Aimed more at adults, but the Architecture Studio was intended to be more free-form:

https://www.lego.com/en-gb/product/studio-21050

There are no 'models' to build, and the "instructions" that come with it are more a discussion of architectural principles, as adapted for Lego as needed.

Yeah we never had sets or instructions as a kid (of the 80s). But now doing sets it's pretty relaxing, fun, easy. It's a puzzle. Eventually everything ends up in a heap like other comments mention. I imagine once the heap is big enough we'll go back to creative free form building with the variety of generic and tailored pieces we've accrued.

Free building is great, but my experience is that my young son also wants to build his sense of competence - following the steps correctly, fixing mistakes, and making something exactly like the picture. Sure, he plays with it for a minute and then tears it apart to make something original - but, like you said, that’s the beauty of Lego.

I love following instructions. It's so relaxing for me to just follow without having to figure anything out. Building my own stuff with Lego would be a completely different thing and I never enjoyed that, probably because I'm not very good at it.

I agree.

It's like painting by numbers. Or drawing from one of those "how to draw a pirate" instructional guides.

It's a completely different thing.

I know a guy who prefers the instructions. He builds them and then keeps them on display, on shelves and such.

It gives you a core set of patterns for going off on your own and building. Think of it as lego practice that shows you a neat model at the end you can then scrap :)

Why did you buy the specific kit just to build your own stuff? The process of going thru the process and the satisfaction of finishing is rewarding

The whole point of LEGO is to "LEg GOdt" (Play great/good/well, however you want to translate that).

It's like assembling Ikea furniture. Some people like it.

I thought years ago Lego had a desktop program that let you build things with virtual bricks.

Then feed that model into a 3d printer and archive your built sets immutably in meatspace! :D

My manuals are sorted in folders by maker / brand name.

The 8880: https://brickset.com/article/20017/8880-super-car-the-best-e...

That was an amazing set. The first one I bought from my own hard-saved cash as a kid. Really fun to build and amazing (and informative) to see the working steering, differential, suspension, and gear train assemblies.

I have this set laying around, mostly complete. Should really rebuild it someday!

I was dreamed about this set back in mid-90s. Unfortunately my parents wasn't able to afford it, and I only had small and mid sets and not a single "technics" set.

So I was doomed to re-read a paper catalog countless times hoping someday I'll get it.

Do you know the set number? There is a "Super Car" in Technic with set number 8070, available in the archive. Not sure about the steering and differential, but it seems to feature a V8 and a stick shift.

That was a great set - it also featured double wishbone suspension supported by spring struts.

This is definitely a “get off my lawn” comment. Creativity with Lego has never been more vibrant. I encourage you to visit your local Lego fan convention, or explore one of the many online forums where people share their “MOCs.”

Those “specialized” pieces are incredible fodder for sculpting. Check out newelementary.com to see some examples.

Agreed - the constraints of a limited set of bricks really forced creativity.

However, there's been a huge paradigm shift in terms of what is "allowed" as far as odd brick placements so the realm of what's possible to build has expanded at least as much as the inventory of brick options.

You can try to find the parts that stand out on bricklink[0], which will point you to the sets they were used in. It's pretty quick, once you figure out what the part can be called or what category it fits in.

If you can't figure it out, you can ask for help on the "bricks" StackExchange site[1].

[0] https://www.bricklink.com [1] https://bricks.stackexchange.com/

I'm sure there was a brick scanning app that appeared a while ago, or try and find a number and enter it on Lego site [1], otherwise post a picture on BrickLink and I'm sure someone will know what it is! Then you can look on BrickLink or Rebrickable to find sets that it came from

[1] https://www.lego.com/en-gb/service/help/building_instruction...

Brinklink has list for each brick of the set it belongs too. I was able to use that to discover a set I didn't know my older brothers had.

There are typically numbers somewhere on bricks that you can lookup.

Or ... Reverse image search.

You may be able to (entirely legally) part out the sets on bricklink, buy the generic bricks from webrick, and buy the specific bricks from bricklink sellers. This will be substantially cheaper and it’s an onboard into non-Lego building bricks which have gotten really good in the last few years. The glut of vendors selling copied Lego sets has given the field a bad name, but the brick design is out of patent and there are many sellers designing their own sets as well as selling MOCs.

nostalgia is a helluva drug

What do you mean “we?”

Why don’t you do it? Or at least start the project? There’s already work in this space as well. I’ll be happy to contribute as well.