Lego nearly went bankrupt in the early 2000s. Part of the problem is that they had way too many colors of way too many bricks (and way too many patterned bricks). Each unique brick/color/pattern had to be binned/stored separately. So the inventory took up a lot of space, all those warehouses cost $$$.

So Lego re-tooled to reduce the overall number of bricks in inventory. Instead of building bricks in many colors and patterns, they now build bricks in a fewer colors and even fewer patterns.

A big part of what they do to plan for the year is figure out what bricks/colors/patterns will be used. The designers are then told "design sets using these color bricks". If you pay attention, you'll notice that the colors of the Modular City sets change yearly, mainly to keep up with the colors being chosen for the other new Lego sets.

This is why there are so many stickers in the newers sets. Lego can't afford to make every part in a printed pattern -- it's a lot cheaper for them to keep sheets of stickers on the shelf than full bins of printed bricks.

This is where the idea of "frames" comes from -- it's their internal credit system that lets the designers budget for what bricks/colors they really need, and at what expense to the other sets they're making.

The designers likely spend big on special parts for the new Star Wars or Marvel set. As I said before, this comes at the price that the other sets have to be designed using the bricks that are on hand.

It's part of the great "brick reduction" done in the early 2000s because the number of simultaneous parts was getting too high. So they hand out "chits" called frames to the teams that they can "spend" to get a part in a color that isn't available yet, etc.

The teams can swap and barter frames if they convince another team it would be useful. There was a good description of it in https://unbound.com/books/lego - the Secret Life of Lego Bricks.

> Yet all of the internaly come in all colors available

Since those already exist, they probably don't count as new frames. It seems like you "spend" frames on new pieces you want to introduce, but there's a large stock of evergreen pieces you can pick from.

Yeah, I think the best way to think about the frames is "do we already have a mold for this piece / have we done the engineering for it" if so then it's not new, just a new colorway.

According to the article, a new color requires spending a frame:

> Want a part in a different color? That costs designers a frame. A new piece? Spend some frames. Bring back an old out-of-print piece? That’s a frame, too.

This makes sense, since a new color requires dedicated storage space (which frames are intended to control).

> I am confused by the statement about "frames", where each design team gets a limited amount of "new" bricks they are able to introduce. Yet all of the internaly come in all colors available.

LEGO has a large part catalog -- a lot of different molds that define the shapes. They also have each part available in some selection of colors. If you need an existing part in a new color, it's not terribly expensive to spin up a production line for it because the molds are ready. There may need to be adjustments to the color chemistry for the specific part (some colors are more brittle/fragile, others may require different processes -- transparent parts for example.)

If you need to spin up a new mold, that's where it gets complicated and expensive.

As for the internals, they largely come from the existing part:existing color matrix. Over the years LEGO has created a lot of colors, but in reality not every part is available in every color, and if you buy enough LEGO sets you notice that a lot of the internals tend to actually use similar color schemes. Technic axles and pins are now even largely standardized to specific colors. High friction 2x pins are always black, low friction 2x pins are beige..etc.

> In my mind having two blue bricks where there should only be one is unacceptable for the price that lego is inevitably going to charge.

LEGO used to do a lot more custom one-off pieces for sets in the 90's and early 2000's, and it was one of the factors in them nearly being bankrupted. Reducing their part catalog and going to using more small pieces to build up assemblies instead of just molding them as a single piece helped them get out of that predicament. And as an AFOL, I prefer that they use more pieces to 'brick build' things -- not only do you see some really cool building techniques, but there's also so much more that you could possibly use them for. There's also a large spectrum of complexity in the sets. Smaller sets for younger children will use larger simpler parts and less complicated building techniques. The sets that really go all out on details with tiny pieces are usually designed for adults (and a few very lucky kids.)

> This, the colourful internals, are what defines lego for me nowadays

The internals used to be much more monochrome, but one of the things LEGO tries to improve is the build experience. It's much easier to tell which pieces is supposed to go exactly where when they're all different sizes and colors. Heck, it's still a problem sometimes with sets that heavily use a single color, like some of the batman ones in recent years. There are places in the instructions manual where it's almost impossible to tell the placement of pieces because it's just one big nearly-black mass of bricks both on the table in front of you, and in the pictures in the instructions.

> LEGO used to do a lot more custom one-off pieces for sets in the 90's and early 2000's, and it was one of the factors in them nearly being bankrupted. Reducing their part catalog and going to using more small pieces to build up assemblies instead of just molding them as a single piece helped them get out of that predicament.

it was hard to collect and build through that period, especially as so many specialty parts just kept appearing with every set. the intervening years, except for the constant changes of motors and electrification, seemed to put this into check and make for some fun and interesting builds.

unfortunately, from the perspective of someone who puts together 10-12 sets/year, it appears that we are heading back into that specialized time again; maybe not as bad with intricate specialty parts, but the number of new (2023) parts in the last two sets that I've put together has been quite high. those sets were the bat cave shadow box and the orient express.

I understand the appeal of SNOT, but the sheer number of new SNOT elements is craziness.

> The internals used to be much more monochrome, but one of the things LEGO tries to improve is the build experience. It's much easier to tell which pieces is supposed to go exactly where when they're all different sizes and colors.

they've also improved the printing of the instructions over the years, as well as better differentiation through outlines of what is new. that was very obvious when my father and I put together 7 holiday sets I had collected over 20 years last holiday season. each newer set was a good improvement.

> they've also improved the printing of the instructions over the years, as well as better differentiation through outlines of what is new. that was very obvious when my father and I put together 7 holiday sets I had collected over 20 years last holiday season. each newer set was a good improvement.

They have, but they still have problems with sets that have large chunks of the same color, especially when it comes to stuff like tiling or greebling, like the UCS Batman Tumbler. And certain colors still seem problematic. The old UCS Sandcrawler set is the one that stands out in my mind, that reddish-brown color made a lot of the instructions very difficult to read; That was like 10 years ago now, but even the more recent Bonsai tree also had that problem.

> They have, but they still have problems with sets that have large chunks of the same color, especially when it comes to stuff like tiling or greebling, like the UCS Batman Tumbler.

the batcave shadow box definitely suffered with it a bit, but at least it was an interesting and challenging build. unlike the new orient express train, which was ... not what I'd expect from lego.

> unlike the new orient express train, which was ... not what I'd expect from lego.

Incidentally, this is how I've felt about a lot of the bigger sets from LEGO recently. A decade or so ago, I used to basically buy every >$100 set LEGO put out every year, sans a few themes -- I've got a few large storage bins filled with just the instructions from these sets. But some of the massive sets LEGO has been putting out recently, like the Coliseum or the new Eiffel Tower set just don't seem like particularly fun builds. I think the first time I noticed this was putting together the 10253 Big Ben set. It just didn't feel like fun stacking those tiny pieces together, repeated like 30-40x for each little subassembly. But since then, there has definitely been a creep of the builds for larger sets being a little less fun and more tedious. It can be a good way to relax if you just want to kind of zone out for a while and do stuff with your hands, but that's not my style.

Of course, then they put out something like the Concorde which looks like a very fun build, so at least some of the LEGO designers got their heads on straight.

I built both the Titanic and the Eiffel tower. They both felt pretty repetitive.

On the other hand, these models are a marvel. Particular the Eiffel Tower. Everytime I look at it im just awed at how beautifully intricate it looks.

I think there's sets and sets, the lion knights castle was incredibly fun to build and had so many secrets and mechanisms.

So all in all, I'm really happy with these big Lego sets. I really like the Eiffel Tower. Once you see it in person you see how impressive it is. Also, I don't particularly mind the repetition... It took me a few days to assemble the tower, I watched tv, listened to podcasts, etc.

Despite my braying, I largely agree with this still. That's also what I ended up doing while putting together these sets. We managed to squeeze in all 4 seasons of Battlestar Galactica while putting together the Titanic and Eiffel Tower sets.

I have mostly built the modular sets (and designed my own), but missed a couple in the 2010's. also a big train fan (have built many of my own train cars), or have built more fun things like the ghostbusters fire station and car. I never got into the architecture sets though.

I plan on taking some time one of these weekends to build a large outdoor track layout to run on, but am waiting on some more after-market track to arrive.

By outdoor track, I assume you mean still a LEGO one? What after-market track are you using?

still l-gauge. I have tracks and motors running back to the 9v days, plus the newer non-powered track. outdoor (covered patio area) for the extra room, because I want to build a pretty large layout for fun.

as for after-market track: https://trixbrix.eu and https://www.bricktracks.com/products (they have very little in stock right now). quality seems good on both.

Those extremely expensive sets depicting famous things are all beginner sets, building-wise.

If some regular person just had their first and only trip on the Orient Express, or has always dreamed about making that trip: this is the target market. You cannot in general expect these people to have build a single Lego set, yet, so they are huge, sprawling, expensive, but totally uninteresting if you've ever built more than "put this 2 by 4 brick on that 2 by 4 brick".