LEGO® sets have been getting expensive. Not "birthday treat" expensive. "Second mortgage" expensive. The Eiffel Tower set costs more than a weekend in Paris. The Titanic costs nearly as much as a small boat.

LEGO® Goes Grey: Every New Set Will Ship With Only Grey Bricks to Cut Costs (4168) — brick.news

We have grumbled, parents have winced, and AFOL's have quietly opened savings accounts labeled "bricks." LEGO® heard every single complaint, sat down with their best engineers and accountants, stared at the full rainbow of 180+ official colors that has defined the brick since 1958, and decided: grey. Just grey. All of it.

Why Grey? (Glad You Asked)

Here is the brilliant, if deeply unsettling, logic. Producing bricks in over 180 colors requires separate dye batches, dedicated mold cycles, and color calibration for every single shade. Eliminate all of that, and raw plastic in its natural state, which is a profoundly unremarkable grey, becomes the only piece you ever need to manufacture.

LEGO® Goes Grey: Every New Set Will Ship With Only Grey Bricks to Cut Costs (1926) — 4f9b a0ad 6d2f140e62cb

LEGO® Goes Grey: Every New Set Will Ship With Only Grey Bricks to Cut Costs (4478) — 0b39 bea0 57e79afc45f2

The savings, LEGO® claims, will drop set prices by up to fifteen percent. Fifteen percent off the any sets is still an extraordinary amount of money for grey bricks, but LEGO® would very much like you to focus on the percentage.

Early prototypes show the LEGO® City beach set in grey, the LEGO® Botanicals Rose in grey, and with exception of the entire LEGO® Star Wars collection where the actual price remains the same (we are still to find out why by the time of this publishing). 

LEGO® Goes Grey: Every New Set Will Ship With Only Grey Bricks to Cut Costs — 5e2e 4a26 b762 635ad76a1b42

Minifigures will also arrive in full grey, which creates what the community is already calling "the hat problem." Every figure looks identical. The police officer has a hat. The chef has a bigger hat. The villain has a slightly more angular hat. Build your imagination, LEGO® says. Work with the grey.

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(New Collectable Minifigure #29 - Bionicle Mask guy)

Online forums and the all the nice people in Facebook, responded with the measured, calm energy you would expect. A small faction of MOC purists has already embraced the news ("color was always a distraction from pure construction," wrote GrayScaleGus) and already join the social networks to rebut everyone who says "but other brands have colors". Everyone else is holding their colorful existing sets a little tighter tonight. The bricks are still fantastic, and your wallet thanks you for sure!

Published April 1st. We'll let you connect the dots.