For me personally, Legos peaked from about 89-96.

I began collecting with the Space sets. The earlier Space sets were a little too generic, but when they started adding actual personality to each branch of the Space squads, it was really cool. You had M-Tron, Blacktron, Space Police, Ice Planet, Spyrius, Unitron and the Exploriens. All of which had specific color palettes and cool gimmicks such as magnets, rockets or robots. And while I loved Space, I think I liked the Pirates even more. I still have my Skull's Eye Schooner sitting in my room, which I consider one of the best sets ever made. Sure the Black Seas Barracuda and Red Beard Runner were cool, but the Skull's Eye Schooner is the only one I felt truly got it right. Castle was another cool series, but I never had any of the castles, since I didn't have a lot of money. I'd still love to go back and get 1996's Royal Knight's Castle, that is a thing of beauty.

From that point, they started getting a little too articulate with the characters, as well as branching off and doing stuff such as Star Wars. I've gone on about this before, but it always pisses me off that they changed the style of faces on the characters. They always seemed so cool how they could build a character around the basic smiling design, they might add hair or a mustache, but overall, it was basic fun. Unless you count the Spyrius' droid or the skeleton, Lego started changed the Lego face concept in late 1996 with the launch of the Western sets. They made the three bad guys with evil smug faces. Honestly, those sets were awesome, especially the lego fort, and since the only three bad characters were changed, I didn't have a huge problem. But then, they did more in 1997, and by 1998, they started appearing on almost everyone. Also in 1998, they discontinued the Pirates and the Wild West. The Space sets really sucked...I mean Rock Raiders? Seriously? Even the Town sets started to suck, and they began to throw whatever they could out there, especially themes that lasted for maybe 2 or 3 years tops such as Adventure.

And while I agree that most Legos have gone downhill, I will disagree that it's getting worse. With the new modular sets, Lego is going back to it's roots to an extent. They also even did a very well done Imperial ship recently. Another thing that does bother me, is that a lot of times anymore, they'll manufacture pieces that only serve purpose to one or two sets.