I was decades into my career as a modeller when the Modulex line came out and it was handy for us to create conceptual designs at that time. We secured hundreds of projects simply because these bricks can be refit to easily visualize the projects rather than spending months creating miniature models that would usually be torn down upon review by clients or regulators, it's what you would call rapid prototyping nowadays. And the colours were never an issue as many bricks were painted over so it would match the actual design upon final confirmation. Good to see it's still received positively today. I miss those days but CAD is really a better option now.
I had the opposite problem. I didn't know real Lego until I went to school, we had these little flat Modulex plates and we called them Lego. We all loved it, it was much better quality and the pieces stuck together really well... so after that I could never figure out why they stopped making these amazing flat plates and started making big ugly bricks that don't stick together :D . I tried looking for "real Lego" (which is Modulex in my mind) but I never found it until I saw this video.
I've never heard of this before, but honestly this design is perfect for the adult Lego market right now. There's so much more focus on recreating scenes, and Lego works for this but Modulex seems ideal for it. Sure, it's not compatible with Lego, but most of these sets are being purchased by adults to be constructed and never changed. I think they should bring it back for these "adult" Lego sets.
Tbf, the advantage of using "normal" bricks for everything is that you don't need to have as many molds. Like every modulex piece basically doubles the number of mold designs and upkeep you need to have for what is otherwise a single piece.
I’d guess that ‘most’ LEGO collectors wouldn’t want these to be brought back. If they aren’t compatible with what they already have, then they would be in a dilemma of wether or not to buy a Lego set that isn’t actually Lego compatible
hardly competes with the speed and ease of use of 3D CAD and a printer. Sure there IS a learning curve, but its a worthwhile curve for anyone to casually hill climb.
I like to think that somewhere in Europe there is an antiquated factory with wood panelled offices, terrazzo floors and an indoor fountain in the reception that still proudly displays its Modulex shop floor layout in the atrium.
My dad worked at Lego when they made wood toys. He grew up in a small town near Billund called Randbøldal. He said the factory was just starting to make plastic bricks while he worked there as a teenager. The Danish government sent him train tickets to go to jail because he did not want to join the military. So he went to Sweden and worked at a carpentry shop for a year and then got on a ship to Canada. He sadly passed in 2021 at the age of 84. Needless to say I grew up playing with Lego!!! Great video !!! I never heard about modulex bricks !!!
1:20 "The artist loft in a Parisian restaurant is such a small space no one could actually work there" well, that seems like a truer than life rendition of Paris then !
Honestly enjoying the sheer physicality of those 1970s wall plans, they feel a lot more impactful than yet another window on a computer display, with how they'd always be on display for the entire team.
As a lego fan i've seen 1000s of videos about Modulex, But this one goes to to depth and details I never knew and was genuinely fascinating! Good work! :)
I'm surprised none of the alternative brands have tried the 1x1x1 ratio. It seems so intuitive to have what we call a "plate" be simply half a cube. And the SNOT bricks would be so much more versatile in a cube system. Perhaps as 3D printers improve, people will experiment with a cube-based system that is compatible with Lego.
because alternative brands goal isnt to make a miniature design set. they're just copying lego's homework, and so they need to be on Lego's (not Modulex) standards
3D printers generally will struggle to create bricks as high quality as traditional lego, but as the technology gets cheaper, advancements in in-home injection molding could mean that hobbyists start experimenting with their own brick designs in the near future. And with a plastic shredder, these designs can even be made out of recycled 3D print material.
That explains why as a child I had a single 2x5 LEGO brick that didn't fit on anything! What I'm asking myself now is "Where did I get this brick from?" But I also "inherited" some really old Lego bricks from my older brother when they were still completely hollow inside!
@@Carewolf yeah, you mean the old "originals" yes I had a few, but when I grew up I donated everything to my old kindergarten.... The only thing I kept was the "LEGO Technic figure"....! I think it came with the forklift back then?! but unfortunately it disappeared at some point after all those decades.... you know? all the stuff you do (wrong) as an adult getting married, starting a family, getting divorced.... the usual crap
I often wish Modulex (or at least the core concept behind it) became the standard for Lego. It would make SNOT building a lot easier if I didn't have to constantly work out how many plates I need to compensate for the dimension ratios.
When I was in architecture school 5 yrs ago, one of my classmates modelled most of his designs with Lego. Mind you, these were not for officially graded presentations and reviews, and he used them exclusively to work through designs and discuss with our professors. He was arguably one of the best of our class.
I've used Legos (mostly Legon'ts) for a number of more industrial purposes where precision is important, and since they're still made of ABS you can glue them together with regular model cement. I can see why the creators believed in Modulex so much, they seem like a really great way of filling that specific niche. Having to measure bricks and studs with calipers to get the weird dimensions right is such a pain, I wish they'd gone with 1x1x1 from the start.
Thank you for this video! My dad has a couple Modulex bricks from the planning system that my grandfather sneaked home from work. He put them in my dad's and his brother's lego pile and when they were found told the boys that "oh no, the lego has the shrinking sickness, you have to isolate them or it'll spread!!" He definitely terrified them😆 Been trying to figure out what they were for ages, googling "lego notice board" hasn't givenme a lot so thanks for solving that for me😁
This is so interesting. At some point in the 90s my dad came home from work with a big box of "tiny LEGO" and one of those enormous base plates seen in the video. They had used it while planning an expansion of the factory he worked at (I vaguely remember the base plate still having something looking like the interiors of a factory on it). I ended up playing with these as much as my actual LEGO. There were like a thousand of the gray 4-by-2s so they were perfect for building castles. I also had like a ton of other types of bricks in weird shapes, but they were never really that interesting to me. I always assumed that they had nothing to do with LEGO because they had that little M on the studs.
🎶 Lego with.. an M on them 🎶 (In my part of the world we had an M&M-like sweet called _Smarties_ for decades before M&Ms got out here, so when they did, we used to sing a riff on the M&M advertising jingle at school "Smarties with an M on them...")
@@GirlWhoCriedAardvark That's interesting because in the US we also have a candy called Smarties, except they're little chalky fruit flavored disks that are nothing like M&Ms. They're a lot like Sweet Tarts in fact, except that doesn't quite work for the jingle: "Smarties with an...S on them"
My old school had a giant modulex baseplate on the wall and tiles of different colors to plan out the lessons for all different classes and the rooms needed. It was in the office of the principal. Actually quite clever. At least i think it was modulex and not just LEGO
I loved the factory layouting. In offshore opperations (Building wind parks, dredging, installation of drilling rigs) they still use models of the ship and the equipment on deck to do planning physically. The project managers and operations managers drive around little 3D printed cranes and containers to see if any operation hinders another operation. Seems perfect for this modulex.
Do they make machine noises? I'm gonna assume that somewhere there's a room of Very Important people in suits playing with brickbuilt forklifts and going "vroom vroom" for Serious Business Purposes.
Thanks to an old Lego pistol that used Modulex bricks for ammunition (there’s another thing they’ll never make again), I knew about this stuff, but I had no idea they got into bulletin boards or signs.
I honestly believed that this was a briliant "mockumentary" and that Modulex never existed (this is possibly the result of my having watched too many high-quality Adult Swim mockumentaries). I marvelled at effort made to create mockups of Modulex bricks and the detailed aging of the 60s and 70s printed materials. Imagine my shock when I learned that it is a sincere documentary about an actual product. Thanks for introducing me to this fascinating side-light in the history of Lego.
I wouldn't mind seeing knock offs of these at some point, assuming they're an alright quality. They really nailed the utilitarian color scheme. It's like if the soviets made legos.
I'd heard of these but had no idea what they were. I think I've seen a few MOC's that use Modulex as in-universe Lego bricks. Also, I can't lie, Modulex is a fantastic name.
At school years ago, we got to build with Lego for some reason. I was confused, when the bricks were small, oddly shaped and strangely coloured. Only took just under 20 years to learn what those were.
I would love to buy this. So many people love to build buildings with Lego, it’s a great option for those of us without a Lego basement to have a smaller scale option and of course those gorgeous colours!
yup, LEGO immediately buying them out essentially confirms it was to kill them before they could truly gain a new following and kill the adult LEGO market
i heard its half plastic, half bricks. doesnt really matter the material since cement are the ones holding it in place while obviously being way better than drywall
This was the single most interesting video that I've seen on this channel. A longer-form explanation of industrial history like this was really enjoyable. Thank you for sharing all of this!
My Uncle used to be CTO in the "old" Modulex before it was laid down. My aunt on the other side of the family work at what is currently Modulex making signs and she gave me a tour of the company ealier this year, pretty interesting.
Now I want some of these bricks xD I really would've liked for the lego family to let their lost relative back into the "owner family" and think about bringing modulex back :)
This brings back a memory from the '80s of one of my childhood friends having a chest of Lego bricks with some oddball 1x1x1 bricks in them. Lego or Molulex branded, I don't remember---I only remember the odd dimensions. I guess either his parents had some leftover stuff from work that was no longer used or he ended up with the "wrong" thing as a present from someone. This documentary finally explains what the heck that was. Thank you much for this history lesson.
From a business ethics position, I can also see how having two competing companies controlled by different people in what could be considered a family feud, probably breaches the sort of "conflict of interest" rules companies are supposed to stick to.
I used to work in production planning for a company that wouldn't invest in good planning softwares. You can't Imagine how many times i tought about using lego bricks and plates to visualize better the planning i was doing
The low-saturation Modulex colors are gorgeous. Even as someone who's never really cared much about Lego, the colors almost make me want to shell out way too much money for a mixed set off Ebay.
I think I know exactly what that guy was trying to do. Not only is Modulex a product that has a Lego pedigree, but its smaller size makes it kind of similar to another product: Nanoblock! They’d already been around for a few years at that point. He probably wanted to compete with those, using his and Modulex’s origins as a hook. If he beat Lego to the punch and they were successful enough, he could force a big buyout. Instead, Lego nipped it in the bud, but I’ll bet he still made a lot of money. 🤣
If that were it then LEGO themselves would have gone full steam ahead on re-releasing Modulex themselves to out-do Nanobloks. The fact they didn't means it was purely and solely to keep the brand name within LEGO's ownership and nothing else.
@@CommanderRedEXE if lego were to try to compete with nanoblocks, it would likely be with tinier but still compatible pieces (so not modulex pieces) without the modulex brandname.
Great story. My adult son still loves building with Legos and it was interesting to learn about Modulex. It would be interesting to know who Anders was planning on selling Modulex bricks to and whether Lego saw them as a potential competitor. Also, it would be interesting to know how Niels convinced Anders to sell him Modulex and what Anders got out of the deal.
Regardless of the Modulex branding or scale I would be more than happy if LEGO started making fully square bricks. It's always been a small peeve of mine that they just don't quite line up the right way in certain situations.
Wait, this was posted two days ago?? This feels like a video from a while ago in the best way possible- it's detailed, well researched, and incredibly interesting. Thanks for teaching me something new today!
Today we actually found an office drawer set full of Modulex, and thanks to your video me and my brother realised what it was! We only paid €3 for it, but it is definitely worth way more than that.
This vaguely resurfaced a memory I had of seeing the bricks being used in an office setting (either when I was very young or in some older media when I was also young) and asking my parents why they're using legos. And them telling me those bricks were technically not legos. And I could never remember if they told me the name of the other bricks, but now I think those must have been modulex bricks.
My grandparents had a bucket of these - While they were not MEANT to be fun, my brother and I had tons of fun building vast squadrons of tiny spacefighters (a triangle of 2x2 is the nose and stubby wings, and 2 2x2 form the cockpit and tail, tail and wings are the same colour, black cockpit and different colour for the nose - I make the same configurations with my kids DUPLO these days) and a spacecarrier to hold them.
24:00 My best guess is that Lego is used to their competition being seen as knock-offs that can't attain the same clutch power. Whereas if this were to go through, they'd have competition with pedigree, and bricks that provably clutch. Also perfectly even bricks would probably win over a very dedicated sub-set of Lego enthusiasts who would prefer that sort of thing.
Once you had a completed design, you glue it together to prevent accidents before you have the chance to show your client. Large lego models are prone to accidentally exploding when trying to move them long distances (ex: to a conference to present to your boss/client). When your job is on the line you take no chances.
i was given a huge box of legos as a hand me down present from older cousins and it had a few of these weirdly sized bricks with little "m"s on them just like these now we are 20 years later and the mystery is finally solved!
LEGO people popularized the smallest functional house trend long before Minecraft it seems? Of course those real life tiny apartments still have them beat, to which Minecraft is surprisingly accurate considering you can actually fit in a space half your size and still reach everything you need.😂 Of course it helps that it's a videogame in which you can reach over twice your body length.
Learning something new every day is one of my life's joys. Interesting content. It's kind of funny, just yesterday, my now grown son with my grandson picked up his old box of Lego pieces from my attic.
I now know I had quite a few modulex scattered in my inherited legos as a kid, huh interesting (even had some tiles from the office organizational systems)
Frankly, it would have been awesome if they kept that scale in favor of the current lego. Imagine having having large detailed sets taking half the space and using half the material to produce.
For regular bricks maybe but for newer sets with more specialized pieces I'm not sure how well it would work. Especially something like technic, imagine how small the axles would be. I would rather have the same size bricks but 1:1:1 instead of the 5:5:6, but the limitations are what makes it fun.
If you enjoy this video, consider subscribing to catch my next deep-dive into another unique LEGO topic! Thank you!
Definitely do more videos like this in the future
That’s an emoji of me
Wow
The artist's loft actually isn't that small considering the state of the housing market in Paris.
Yay 🙂
I was decades into my career as a modeller when the Modulex line came out and it was handy for us to create conceptual designs at that time. We secured hundreds of projects simply because these bricks can be refit to easily visualize the projects rather than spending months creating miniature models that would usually be torn down upon review by clients or regulators, it's what you would call rapid prototyping nowadays. And the colours were never an issue as many bricks were painted over so it would match the actual design upon final confirmation. Good to see it's still received positively today. I miss those days but CAD is really a better option now.
Are you 100?
@@ProjectAudrey they are probably in their 60s. Remember, 99 is the age limit for LEGO
@@MrMasterGamer0 they said they were decades into their career when module came out, and modulex is already 60 years old 🤣
When watching the part about color, I was surprised they didn't have primer grey, because I figured most of them would be painted-over anyway.
That's awesome. Thanks for sharing.
OMG, my school had 10,000's of these "tiny lego" in a massive bucket, we never worked out why they had "shrunk"
Go back and ask them? They might have it in the school basement collecting dust. Would be sad if they threw it out :)
@@brianher67 is that a realistic option? the school would've probably been confused if he revisited the school just to get tiny legos
@@dalmutbrothers Not really if he is a collector :)
How long ago? Could they have been Nanoblocks?
I had the opposite problem. I didn't know real Lego until I went to school, we had these little flat Modulex plates and we called them Lego. We all loved it, it was much better quality and the pieces stuck together really well... so after that I could never figure out why they stopped making these amazing flat plates and started making big ugly bricks that don't stick together :D . I tried looking for "real Lego" (which is Modulex in my mind) but I never found it until I saw this video.
I've never heard of this before, but honestly this design is perfect for the adult Lego market right now. There's so much more focus on recreating scenes, and Lego works for this but Modulex seems ideal for it. Sure, it's not compatible with Lego, but most of these sets are being purchased by adults to be constructed and never changed. I think they should bring it back for these "adult" Lego sets.
So glad more people are getting exposure to this awesome yet unknown lego product, fingers crossed they'll bring them back!
Tbf, the advantage of using "normal" bricks for everything is that you don't need to have as many molds. Like every modulex piece basically doubles the number of mold designs and upkeep you need to have for what is otherwise a single piece.
I’d guess that ‘most’ LEGO collectors wouldn’t want these to be brought back. If they aren’t compatible with what they already have, then they would be in a dilemma of wether or not to buy a Lego set that isn’t actually Lego compatible
It would be col if Lego themselves did it but, there are other companies currently making small "knockoff" mini Lego.
hardly competes with the speed and ease of use of 3D CAD and a printer. Sure there IS a learning curve, but its a worthwhile curve for anyone to casually hill climb.
I like to think that somewhere in Europe there is an antiquated factory with wood panelled offices, terrazzo floors and an indoor fountain in the reception that still proudly displays its Modulex shop floor layout in the atrium.
no ho crec, pot ser a l’europa de l’est… pero dificil
@@cesallent I think they use a different product called EasternBloc™
My dad worked at Lego when they made wood toys. He grew up in a small town near Billund called Randbøldal. He said the factory was just starting to make plastic bricks while he worked there as a teenager. The Danish government sent him train tickets to go to jail because he did not want to join the military. So he went to Sweden and worked at a carpentry shop for a year and then got on a ship to Canada. He sadly passed in 2021 at the age of 84. Needless to say I grew up playing with Lego!!! Great video !!! I never heard about modulex bricks !!!
Making travel arrangements for him to report to jail is a very Danish thing to do. 😆
1:20 "The artist loft in a Parisian restaurant is such a small space no one could actually work there" well, that seems like a truer than life rendition of Paris then !
Honestly enjoying the sheer physicality of those 1970s wall plans, they feel a lot more impactful than yet another window on a computer display, with how they'd always be on display for the entire team.
As a lego fan i've seen 1000s of videos about Modulex, But this one goes to to depth and details I never knew and was genuinely fascinating! Good work! :)
Thank you!
I'm surprised none of the alternative brands have tried the 1x1x1 ratio. It seems so intuitive to have what we call a "plate" be simply half a cube. And the SNOT bricks would be so much more versatile in a cube system. Perhaps as 3D printers improve, people will experiment with a cube-based system that is compatible with Lego.
because alternative brands goal isnt to make a miniature design set. they're just copying lego's homework, and so they need to be on Lego's (not Modulex) standards
It's mostly to be compatible with Lego, so you can get cheaper Lego Bricks, but they're not Lego Branded
3D printers generally will struggle to create bricks as high quality as traditional lego, but as the technology gets cheaper, advancements in in-home injection molding could mean that hobbyists start experimenting with their own brick designs in the near future. And with a plastic shredder, these designs can even be made out of recycled 3D print material.
Seeing those industrial design planning layouts built with these tiny bricks makes something in my brain go brrrr from satisfaction.
That explains why as a child I had a single 2x5 LEGO brick that didn't fit on anything!
What I'm asking myself now is "Where did I get this brick from?"
But I also "inherited" some really old Lego bricks from my older brother when they were still completely hollow inside!
I remember the hollow ones... lukewarm times...
Any minifigs with immobile fused legs and arms? Old LEGO is fun
@@Carewolf yeah, you mean the old "originals" yes I had a few, but when I grew up I donated everything to my old kindergarten....
The only thing I kept was the "LEGO Technic figure"....!
I think it came with the forklift back then?! but unfortunately it disappeared at some point after all those decades....
you know? all the stuff you do (wrong) as an adult
getting married, starting a family, getting divorced.... the usual crap
I remember seeing Modulex used in a mall map when I was little in the early 80s. I was fascinated by the "tiny Lego bricks."
I often wish Modulex (or at least the core concept behind it) became the standard for Lego. It would make SNOT building a lot easier if I didn't have to constantly work out how many plates I need to compensate for the dimension ratios.
When I was in architecture school 5 yrs ago, one of my classmates modelled most of his designs with Lego. Mind you, these were not for officially graded presentations and reviews, and he used them exclusively to work through designs and discuss with our professors. He was arguably one of the best of our class.
I've used Legos (mostly Legon'ts) for a number of more industrial purposes where precision is important, and since they're still made of ABS you can glue them together with regular model cement. I can see why the creators believed in Modulex so much, they seem like a really great way of filling that specific niche. Having to measure bricks and studs with calipers to get the weird dimensions right is such a pain, I wish they'd gone with 1x1x1 from the start.
Thank you for this video! My dad has a couple Modulex bricks from the planning system that my grandfather sneaked home from work. He put them in my dad's and his brother's lego pile and when they were found told the boys that "oh no, the lego has the shrinking sickness, you have to isolate them or it'll spread!!"
He definitely terrified them😆
Been trying to figure out what they were for ages, googling "lego notice board" hasn't givenme a lot so thanks for solving that for me😁
this video is probably the most comprehensive one I've seen about modulex. kudos
Thank you. I'm glad you enjoyed!
Never knew this existed before I am intrigued
GREAT SPITBRIX LEGO MODULEX VIDEO.
I never knew I wanted modulex bricks until today
sure it’s meant to be serious but imagine how much fun it would be to build with smaller bricks, you could do so much detailed stuff
@@tankadar for the Model making hobby Modulex is SO MUCH more workable, it's an absolute shame Lego never did get a Ratio that makes sense,
This is so interesting. At some point in the 90s my dad came home from work with a big box of "tiny LEGO" and one of those enormous base plates seen in the video. They had used it while planning an expansion of the factory he worked at (I vaguely remember the base plate still having something looking like the interiors of a factory on it). I ended up playing with these as much as my actual LEGO. There were like a thousand of the gray 4-by-2s so they were perfect for building castles. I also had like a ton of other types of bricks in weird shapes, but they were never really that interesting to me.
I always assumed that they had nothing to do with LEGO because they had that little M on the studs.
🎶 Lego with.. an M on them 🎶
(In my part of the world we had an M&M-like sweet called _Smarties_ for decades before M&Ms got out here, so when they did, we used to sing a riff on the M&M advertising jingle at school "Smarties with an M on them...")
Mego? ;-)
@@GirlWhoCriedAardvark That's interesting because in the US we also have a candy called Smarties, except they're little chalky fruit flavored disks that are nothing like M&Ms. They're a lot like Sweet Tarts in fact, except that doesn't quite work for the jingle: "Smarties with an...S on them"
@@z-beeblebrox Those chalky candies are called Rockets in Canada and Europe
Familly "drama" involves having usually a sole inheritor that gets 90-95% while the others get the rest.
My old school had a giant modulex baseplate on the wall and tiles of different colors to plan out the lessons for all different classes and the rooms needed. It was in the office of the principal. Actually quite clever. At least i think it was modulex and not just LEGO
I loved the factory layouting. In offshore opperations (Building wind parks, dredging, installation of drilling rigs) they still use models of the ship and the equipment on deck to do planning physically. The project managers and operations managers drive around little 3D printed cranes and containers to see if any operation hinders another operation. Seems perfect for this modulex.
Do they make machine noises? I'm gonna assume that somewhere there's a room of Very Important people in suits playing with brickbuilt forklifts and going "vroom vroom" for Serious Business Purposes.
Thanks to an old Lego pistol that used Modulex bricks for ammunition (there’s another thing they’ll never make again), I knew about this stuff, but I had no idea they got into bulletin boards or signs.
The pistol didn’t used Modulex for ammunition, but small wooden pegs.
It is just that the Modulex bricks are the same size.
Never heard of Modulex before. I’ve learnt something today.
EXCELLENT SPITBRIX WORK.
LEGO should bring back Modulex for the sake of enthusiasts and MOC builders.
I honestly believed that this was a briliant "mockumentary" and that Modulex never existed (this is possibly the result of my having watched too many high-quality Adult Swim mockumentaries). I marvelled at effort made to create mockups of Modulex bricks and the detailed aging of the 60s and 70s printed materials. Imagine my shock when I learned that it is a sincere documentary about an actual product. Thanks for introducing me to this fascinating side-light in the history of Lego.
watching mockumentaries as an entertainment sounds unhinged, i love my share of parody news (bless The Onion) but i wouldnt commit an hour for a bit
I wouldn't mind seeing knock offs of these at some point, assuming they're an alright quality. They really nailed the utilitarian color scheme. It's like if the soviets made legos.
I'd heard of these but had no idea what they were. I think I've seen a few MOC's that use Modulex as in-universe Lego bricks.
Also, I can't lie, Modulex is a fantastic name.
At school years ago, we got to build with Lego for some reason. I was confused, when the bricks were small, oddly shaped and strangely coloured. Only took just under 20 years to learn what those were.
I would love to buy this. So many people love to build buildings with Lego, it’s a great option for those of us without a Lego basement to have a smaller scale option and of course those gorgeous colours!
As a Warhammer guy, it would be amazing for this thing to come back
You say we'll never know but it's a painfully obvious case of Lego reaching into the cradle to strangle its potential competition.
This. It's also clearly a case of the now sole heir to Lego basically being a bully for sake of owning a brand name, which makes it 10x worse.
yup, LEGO immediately buying them out essentially confirms it was to kill them before they could truly gain a new following and kill the adult LEGO market
WOW. I'm GLAD I didn't know about this, or I could've gotten sucked into this collectable HARD.
Ironic that there are now several companies developing and using plastic interlocking bricks for actual building construction.
i heard its half plastic, half bricks. doesnt really matter the material since cement are the ones holding it in place while obviously being way better than drywall
This was the single most interesting video that I've seen on this channel. A longer-form explanation of industrial history like this was really enjoyable. Thank you for sharing all of this!
Thank you! I'm glad you enjoyed.
My Uncle used to be CTO in the "old" Modulex before it was laid down. My aunt on the other side of the family work at what is currently Modulex making signs and she gave me a tour of the company ealier this year, pretty interesting.
Now I want some of these bricks xD I really would've liked for the lego family to let their lost relative back into the "owner family" and think about bringing modulex back :)
This brings back a memory from the '80s of one of my childhood friends having a chest of Lego bricks with some oddball 1x1x1 bricks in them. Lego or Molulex branded, I don't remember---I only remember the odd dimensions. I guess either his parents had some leftover stuff from work that was no longer used or he ended up with the "wrong" thing as a present from someone. This documentary finally explains what the heck that was. Thank you much for this history lesson.
I found a bunch of the modulex bricks on eBay years ago, they’re so cool
I wish the LEGO movie included some Modulex reference, like some old grandma or grandpa living in Modulex house.
Is this a serious and fully loaded documentary? Damn, keep doing it, I loved it
From a business ethics position, I can also see how having two competing companies controlled by different people in what could be considered a family feud, probably breaches the sort of "conflict of interest" rules companies are supposed to stick to.
8:30 you should have said "highly sophisticated interlocking brick system" instead
“But the boxes say ages 12 and up”
@@Soundwave-115 that only says about the ages where its safe for consumption
It always bothered me that LEGO dimensions aren't 1-1-1, but Modulex bothers me even more despite being exactly 1-1-1 and I don't know why.
because you are used to see the lego dimensions way more, if you were first introduced to Modulex, you would find Lego to be weird
Did you just say “Lego Dimensions”? Talk about unfulfilled potential
I used to work in production planning for a company that wouldn't invest in good planning softwares. You can't Imagine how many times i tought about using lego bricks and plates to visualize better the planning i was doing
NGL, a 1:1:1 scale would make MOCs so much easier
Modulex deserves to be remembered and documented, that is for sure. That being said, I can't see the need to bring it back at all.
Almost completely forgot about modulex. Had a set in the early 80s. Before my first Lego set, that came with a "happy meal".
This is actually fascinating. Thank you for enlightening us about these!
The low-saturation Modulex colors are gorgeous. Even as someone who's never really cared much about Lego, the colors almost make me want to shell out way too much money for a mixed set off Ebay.
I would love more size acute builds. Bring it back!
Man its a gold mine thats just being slept on...
Lego 21042 Statue of Liberty set is 17 inches tall torch tip to ground and it is 1/200 scale the same scale as the Lego 10294 RMS Titanic set.
I think I know exactly what that guy was trying to do.
Not only is Modulex a product that has a Lego pedigree, but its smaller size makes it kind of similar to another product: Nanoblock! They’d already been around for a few years at that point. He probably wanted to compete with those, using his and Modulex’s origins as a hook. If he beat Lego to the punch and they were successful enough, he could force a big buyout.
Instead, Lego nipped it in the bud, but I’ll bet he still made a lot of money. 🤣
I actually did see the Nanoblock resemblance, it's an interesting hypothesis!
nanobloks doesnt look great on scalability though, which the 1:1:1 design was trying to target
If that were it then LEGO themselves would have gone full steam ahead on re-releasing Modulex themselves to out-do Nanobloks. The fact they didn't means it was purely and solely to keep the brand name within LEGO's ownership and nothing else.
@@CommanderRedEXE if lego were to try to compete with nanoblocks, it would likely be with tinier but still compatible pieces (so not modulex pieces) without the modulex brandname.
I have a bunch of Modulex pieces in my closet! All in lovely pastell colors! Oh, and some letters as well!
Modulex should absolutely be brought back
ngl, this is the second time I'm hearing this story; but man is it still cool AF.
Lego is nuts for not selling this today.
Having used Lego as a visualisation tool / prototype for serious but simple projects I love this story.
Great story. My adult son still loves building with Legos and it was interesting to learn about Modulex.
It would be interesting to know who Anders was planning on selling Modulex bricks to and whether Lego saw them as a potential competitor.
Also, it would be interesting to know how Niels convinced Anders to sell him Modulex and what Anders got out of the deal.
0:40 Did you say “LIGHT LIPPED”?
Their lips were light!
11:25 there’s no way you actually believe that like they’re just mini Lego that 99.9% of people would confuse with Lego
I'm interested in architecture. Gonna 3D print myself some Modulex-scale pieces tonight!
13:36 skyscrapers ruined everything once again.
Regardless of the Modulex branding or scale I would be more than happy if LEGO started making fully square bricks. It's always been a small peeve of mine that they just don't quite line up the right way in certain situations.
Very interresting and well researched!
Thank you. I'm glad you enjoyed!
ICFs (Insulated Concrete Form) are similar to Lego blocks used to build real homes.
There are also large concrete "lego" bricks used as road obstructions and temporary walls. And the best thing: they come in 5x2!
Awesome video, this shows us how efficient Revit is
cant wait for the Modulex Movie (in cinemas now!)
Only in arthouse cinemas, though.
Wait, this was posted two days ago?? This feels like a video from a while ago in the best way possible- it's detailed, well researched, and incredibly interesting. Thanks for teaching me something new today!
Holy crap! That's what those bricks are for?! I had maybe 7 of these mixed in with my hand me down lego collection. That's wild!
Great video. You really want into detail here. I knew about Modulex before, but so much of this was new. This was a very in-depth history!
Today we actually found an office drawer set full of Modulex, and thanks to your video me and my brother realised what it was! We only paid €3 for it, but it is definitely worth way more than that.
The planning boards and signage are so friggin neat, I would totally use them if I could.
THE KRAGLE
0:40 - _Light-lipped?_ Er... did you mean *tight-lipped?*
That's the Lego colour-pallet for you! 😛
This vaguely resurfaced a memory I had of seeing the bricks being used in an office setting (either when I was very young or in some older media when I was also young) and asking my parents why they're using legos. And them telling me those bricks were technically not legos. And I could never remember if they told me the name of the other bricks, but now I think those must have been modulex bricks.
The Parisian appartment is actually very realistic, something like this will easily cost you 2000€ per month. Paris is horendous.
Yet people want to pay that. That means Paris is wonderful.
My grandparents had a bucket of these - While they were not MEANT to be fun, my brother and I had tons of fun building vast squadrons of tiny spacefighters (a triangle of 2x2 is the nose and stubby wings, and 2 2x2 form the cockpit and tail, tail and wings are the same colour, black cockpit and different colour for the nose - I make the same configurations with my kids DUPLO these days) and a spacecarrier to hold them.
24:00 My best guess is that Lego is used to their competition being seen as knock-offs that can't attain the same clutch power. Whereas if this were to go through, they'd have competition with pedigree, and bricks that provably clutch. Also perfectly even bricks would probably win over a very dedicated sub-set of Lego enthusiasts who would prefer that sort of thing.
You never really explained the glue part.
Once you had a completed design, you glue it together to prevent accidents before you have the chance to show your client. Large lego models are prone to accidentally exploding when trying to move them long distances (ex: to a conference to present to your boss/client). When your job is on the line you take no chances.
Those M20 boxes are so clean
i was given a huge box of legos as a hand me down present from older cousins and it had a few of these weirdly sized bricks with little "m"s on them just like these
now we are 20 years later and the mystery is finally solved!
Now i really want it. Sounds like a cool idea
The signs with the LCDs sound pretty cool. I imagine they are pricey today, but it still makes me want some
Very cool history lesson.
Glad that now a days adults can have fun with LEGO. Had no idea these even existed. 😮
6:00 : 2x5 seems like the size of a concrete block (20x20x50)
6:52 MY EYES, MY EYES!!
Thank you! I thought I was the only one...
5:50 I thought I'd seen a modulex brick before, and THIS is it! That one stray 2x5 brick I had that didn't fit anywhere!
the type design is so dope
Actually a Modulex anniversary set of one of the Lego factory campuses would be pretty sick
LEGO people popularized the smallest functional house trend long before Minecraft it seems? Of course those real life tiny apartments still have them beat, to which Minecraft is surprisingly accurate considering you can actually fit in a space half your size and still reach everything you need.😂 Of course it helps that it's a videogame in which you can reach over twice your body length.
Learning something new every day is one of my life's joys. Interesting content. It's kind of funny, just yesterday, my now grown son with my grandson picked up his old box of Lego pieces from my attic.
You should begin whit opening mystery ninjago packs again. I really loved them
I now know I had quite a few modulex scattered in my inherited legos as a kid, huh interesting (even had some tiles from the office organizational systems)
Frankly, it would have been awesome if they kept that scale in favor of the current lego. Imagine having having large detailed sets taking half the space and using half the material to produce.
For regular bricks maybe but for newer sets with more specialized pieces I'm not sure how well it would work. Especially something like technic, imagine how small the axles would be.
I would rather have the same size bricks but 1:1:1 instead of the 5:5:6, but the limitations are what makes it fun.
Never heard of this, really interesting!