[ttmb]

There are only a few pieces in that set that don't appear in hundreds of other sets:

The baseplate is custom and the most egregious example of what you are talking about, of course. The slope at the front with the swirl on it is also custom. There's a round tile with a snowflake on it, that appears in two other sets. The giant snowflake on top, about two dozen other winter-themed sets. The slide also appears in only a couple of dozen pieces, but this basically all pieces that include a playground or similar. The slide is functional for play so it can't be trivially made of smaller pieces without compromising that. There also an ornamental swirly translucent smoke-like piece that only appears in a handful of sets, again, all winter themed.

That's it, the rest of the pieces in the kit appear in literally hundreds of other sets.

[dave78]

It's not so much about whether the pieces are used in other sets - of course Lego is going to want to build molds and use them in multiple sets, dedicating a mold for just this set would not be smart.

I think my concern is more nuanced - if you're a kid and you only get sets like this one, when you get past the "let's build what's on the box" stage and they end up as just a pile of bricks, the number of more generically-useful pieces is low compared to all the specialty pieces. I think in an ideal situation, you have lots of generic pieces and a selection of custom (like the typewriter mentioned in another post), but these sets seem to be the opposite with lots of quirky custom pieces and few generic pieces good for general building.

I'm sure as another poster pointed out that this is a result of "gift-priced" sets, and trying to have something impressive while keeping the part count low. And for my kids it doesn't matter as I've bought them plenty of "just a bunch of brick" sets to go with all these specialty parts. But if you're a kid whose parents aren't willing to drop a lot of $$$ on Lego (which have always been on the pricey side), then you're more likely to end up with a collection made only from the $10-25 kits with an over-emphasis on specialty pieces.

When I was a kid (in the 80s), I remember getting lots of Lego sets along these lines:

https://brickset.com/sets/6375-2/Exxon-Gas-Station

Notice the cars - they are very blocky and do not look much like real cars because they're almost entirely made out of generic bricks. The gas pumps and roof and such are mostly just regular pieces, possibly with stickers or screen-printing. Compare it to something like this:

https://www.lego.com/en-us/product/fire-rescue-police-chase-...

Yes, there's still generic pieces in there, but my eye sees a lot more specialty pieces like the hoods, car roofs, fenders, motorcycle, etc. IMHO, the 80s set offers more potential for rebuilding into other things, but maybe I'm wrong and it is just nostalgia or something like that.

[wirthjason]

I had that gas station!

I agree with you on the blocky -ness of the cars. I wonder how the distribution of sizes changed. As the complexity of the design goes up you need different distribution of sizes, smaller for more detail and larger for bigger structures. I always had a good balance of blocks, never too many of one size and never running out of others.

[Talanes]

They had those style of vehicles by my childhood in the 90's, and I don't think having a few pre-built vehicle pieces really hampered creativity. I would just spend hours working out how to work those car parts into a giant mad-max monstrosity using as many bricks as I could.