Toys that have lots of pieces

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When I was a kid, I always kept the pieces to my toys together and nothing went missing. To me, if a piece went missing, I would think about it constantly and worry about it, and also the original set it came from would now be ruined because it wasn't complete.

But, when I would go to a friends place, they always seemed to have these great sets, but some of the pieces were missing, and to them, it didn't matter. But to me, it would really irk me that a set wasn't complete anymore.

I see this with my friends kids too. Parts to sets of toys end up all over the house and to them it doesn't matter if a piece or two goes missing. Like if a set is packed up, they didn't count it before it went back in the box. If they got most of the pieces, that would be sufficient!

Is this just a generational thing? In that toys are more disposable these days, therefore the effort to keep the sets together is just not there because eventually the toy would get thrown away anyway?

Eee, I can never throw stuff like that out!

I am nuts about pieces myself. Not so much a box of nails as I find it hard to get over missing puzzle pieces and such. My wife says I'm OCD because I count things to myself like turns of a screwdriver or stirs of a spoon but I think quite a few people do that maybe.
But I agree ...what good is a deck of cards or stack of dominoes with one missing?
I don't comprehend why missing parts/pieces don't bother other people.

It definitely bothers me too. Relating to the deck of cards thing, we have a drawer in my house where all the mismatched cards go, waiting to be matched up with their rightful deck. But also in that deck are almost full decks, like 50 cards, and my mom would say we should just play with that deck. Or she would say we could cut out paper and write the number and symbol of the missing card... but then we would always know where that card is! How would that not bother people? That takes the mystery out of the game, particularly if you're playing something like Go Fish. You'd obviously know they have that card so you can just take it.

Missing puzzle pieces are a nightmare. How frustrating is it to get to the end of a puzzle and find you're a piece short! And it's always a piece right in the middle of the picture! GAH! I feel like all that time has been wasted if I can't finish what I've started.

My brother has a giant lego ship (like 3 feet long) and I decided to disassemble it and put it back together because I find that fun. It took me forever and then I get nearly finished and find he's missing the entire top of the ship! I figured it didn't have one to begin with but no, there's a whole little building that sits on top of the ship and it's missing from the set! I was still impressed with myself for building this massive lego ship, but part of me was so disappointed that I wouldn't get to make it whole.

It goes beyond toys too. For me it's dvd sets. I have to get the whole set of something or else it feels incomplete and not right. For instance, it kills me to look at my dvd shelf right now and see that I only have one season of Dexter, one season of Scrubs, and one season of Nip/Tuck. I need the rest of them so they can be complete! I'm even still buying the Saw movies despite the fact that they stopped being any good, but the set isn't complete so I'll buy whatever ones they make until my set is complete. And eventually I'll have to buy all the Harry Potter movies because I need the ones with Voldemort in them for my Ralph Fiennes collection. It never ends!

This post is long now... apparently the thought of incomplete sets hits a nerve in me.

I also can't stand when something is missing, even from a set of legos. Unfortunately, I was also the kind of kid who would always lose or break my toys. So I was basically screwed.

I love toys with lots of pices! I love to put them together. I do hate it when pieces are missing.

I had this with Lego and Bionicle. They had lots of pieces and I would obsess over one piece that was missing. I also like to take them apart and build new things and let my other things battle with it. In my mind the battles were always epic, in the sense of epic poems could have been written about how amazing they were to watch and I did this in my mind, too.