Brick by Brick: More Bricks, Not More Boxes
More Bricks, Not More Boxes
Hi,
I went into the Rebrickable LEGO dataset expecting the obvious story — LEGO is releasing more sets every year. The data said otherwise: since 2019, the number of sets released grew just 14%, but the average piece count per set jumped 54%. LEGO isn't multiplying, it's densifying. That gap between "more" and "bigger" is the one idea the whole report is built to prove, and every page exists to carry it one step further, scale, evidence, cause, payoff.
Pages:
Read Me — the landing page states the whole thesis up front (the required Key Takeaway, under 50 words), so no one has to dig for it: more bricks, not more boxes, since 2019.
Sets — sets the scale before I make any claim: 27,069 sets, 77 years, 487 themes. One red KPI card teases "+54%" so there's already a question in mind before the proof shows up.
Complexity — the actual evidence. A dual-line chart runs average pieces/set against set count, 2019–2024: pieces/set climbs 173 → 266 while the set count barely moves. The synthesis line does the arithmetic live, complexity is growing roughly 4× faster than volume.
Themes — the "why." Adult-oriented lines (Icons, BrickLink Designer, Ideas, Technic) versus family lines (Star Wars, Marvel), against the all-sets average. The share of 1,000+ piece "big sets" almost doubles in five years. This is the page where I got to say the quiet part out loud: LEGO isn't just building for kids anymore.
Minifigures — the payoff, and my favorite page. If the complexity wave is real, it should show up even in the smallest thing LEGO makes and it does. The typical minifig is ~5 pieces; the biggest is 156, 29× bigger, a brick-built model in its own right, not a "mini" figure at all.
Under the hood, everything is native Power BI, built as a PBIP project (TMDL for the model, PBIR for the report), so every measure and every visual is plain text I could hand-edit and diff instead of clicking through a black box. Every headline number on every page is a DAX measure wired to a year slicer, not a hardcoded string, so the story still holds up if a judge changes the filter instead of trusting my default view. The backgrounds are hand-built SVGs, baseplate texture, brick studs, a color band per page, instead of a stock template, because a report about LEGO should look like it's made of LEGO.
Thanks for taking a look,
Mateus
Source: Rebrickable LEGO Database (https://rebrickable.com)
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