„Some of the really old ones just had a spot the difference thing going on.” LEGO set from the 70s perfectly illustrates how instructions have improved

LEGO bricks only seem to get more and more popular with age. A large part of their magic and versatility is due to the fact that those little pieces of plastic are perfect for recreating scenes or characters known from pop culture, such as the recently announced popular Transformers character. This is not the first set from this series either, as it was preceded by a model of the most recognizable Autobot - Optimus Prime. As the LEGO company assures, "the model will take us back in time to the 80s."

Fortunately, this only applies to the genesis of the Transformers universe - animated films and comics that debuted in those years, not necessarily the quality of the instructions included with the sets. These rightly belong in an age long passed, as their readability often left a lot to be desired.

Instruction type - guessing game

This matter was once again brought up by a Reddit user with the name Bokononismatism, who published photos of one of the old instructions for the 948 model from 1978, that being a small, blue go-kart. He drew the readers' attention with how complex the instructions were, surprising inexperienced builders with tips amounting to: "now build a reciprocating piston which we won't tell you how to build, you'll figure it out!"

Although the piston itself is not that difficult to construct, it shows the general way of creating instructions for set building - huge jumps between steps. Other commenters also note that in the past, the instructions often didn't even feature a list of required parts. The others, however, directly compare them to modern catalog photos - that's how little information they had.

Some comments, meanwhile, were nostalgic towards the old, hard-to-crack instructions. There are also those who believe that instructions devoid of "hand holding" make it more understandable why each part has to go where it goes, while simplifying the instructions spoils some fun of putting the models together.

Source: brickset.com / another set from 1978

The reason for such a change, although it was warmly welcomed by most of the building community, is likely the desire to reach a larger audience. Lowering the entry threshold for such a hobby is natural from the producer's point of view, although from the consumer's perspective, it would probably be better to lower the price, not the difficulty of assembling the model.

The fact is, however, that some of the old instructions were abstractly difficult to figure out and required constant page flipping to make sure we chose the right part. And to think all of this had to be done just to later find out we've made an error and have to take half the model apart to fix it.

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