Lego to open 160 new stores as other toy retailers suffer
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If you've used and compared the various brands in this space, you'll be familiar with the quality variations. LEGO has put immense engineering effort into having the best plastic and tightest tolerances in the industry, and I can really feel the difference when building.
Here's one example comparing some of the clone brands to LEGO's own products:
https://uploads.brickset.com/docs/clonebrands_v1.7.pdf
Other brands do continue to improve, and there are many companies out there that make very nice building toys, but LEGO has done a nice job making sure that everything they ship is of good quality.
This makes no sense, otherwise only things that are high quality would survive. Everything proves otherwise.
Lego works because it is so versatile.
I'm sure that doesn't hurt, but these days LEGO thrives because of their relentless promotional brand tie-ins. It's not just LEGO anymore. It's LEGO Star Wars, LEGO Batman, LEGO Harry Potter, LEGO Disney's Frozen, LEGO Toy Story 4, and so on.
Its also worth noting that some of LEGO's competitors don't worry too much about IP laws. You can buy a clone brand X-wing for 50% of the cost of the genuine set, but the quality is significantly lower in my experience.
Admittedly a revolver and not a semi-auto, and I don't know if it's from a current or recently discontinued set. But it's definitely from a modern set.
edit: link to the specific piece: https://www.bricklink.com/v2/catalog/catalogitem.page?P=1356...
The BrickLink page lists the revolver as part of a bunch of western and cavalry sets, that is, historical sets. Click "Item Appears In: 7 Sets" to the right.
Typical police equipment are handcuffs, megaphones, walkie-talkies, traffic paddles and coffee cups. The criminals might carry gold, banknotes, dynamite or crowbars and other tools.
The most gun-like thing in current sets is the huge net shooter (larger than a minifig and not portable at all) that really isn’t very gun-like at all.
Not even the minifig prints include suggestions of guns.
0. https://www.amazon.com/PLAYMOBIL%C2%AE-6872-Police-Command-C...
https://www.quora.com/When-did-LEGO-set-start-containing-con...
The introduction of weapons was gradual, and except for Batman, they are either historical or futuristic.
From my observations as a foreigner in Denmark, historical or fantasy weapons like swords, spears, shields, clubs acceptable and common. A 6 year old might have a wooden one, and be seen anywhere in the city. A 16 year old might have a foam and fibreglass one, and be seen LARPing in the woods at the weekend. A gun that isn't clearly a water pistol is a rare sight.
Even though Lego sets do sometimes include weapons, even very gun-like weapons, to me there is still a pretty clear line Lego draws. Their City sets don’t include guns and guns are the exception, not the rule, otherwise.
Look at Lego’s competitors if you want to get an idea of what Lego could be doing. Obviously those are looking for their niche, so that’s to be expected. They have modern and 20th century military equipment sets and I could never imagine Lego releasing sets like that.
That line got me thinking. I think you are right and I've never seen a police minifig with a weapon.
Often the knockoff sets are around 25% of the Lego price—I bought a Lepin Porsche for >$80 instead of $300. And the quality was 85%-90% of Lego. So slightly lower, but at a quarter of the price—and price is a feature.
E.g. if you gave a group of kids a "classic" set and another a themed set, with no further instructions, would the first group produce more "creative" designs?
I think the critics of the branded sets undervalue the Piagetian concept of scaffolding, basically that having the Harry Potter superstructure allows kids to riff on a variety of concepts that actually may be more "creative" than the random geometric blocks.
E.g. "What if we built a jail around Voldermort instead of killing him" seems like an equally valuable expression of creativity as "I made a vaguely car-shaped thing, but it has six wheels instead of four and has those little lever bricks instead of a steering wheel."
- Older set has a big baseplate which enables a child to start building a new structure easily
- Older set has well-pronounced architectural elements like arcs and slopes and feels like a solid structure, newer set feels airy and ad-hoc
- Older set has minifigs with a simple paint, newer set has cartoon-like characters
- Older set has a more realistic colour scheme, newer set again feels cartoonish
- Older set has a specially designed backside for playing and putting minifigs
I was only about some plastic bricks, ecommerce would suffice. I really think it is the kind of fantasy/DIY/inspiration that you only get from direct experience.
LEGO is the new hardware store.
So if their license free sets sell better, then it would stand to reason they make more profit off of these.
It should be easy to determine if they are more profitable assuming some kind of percentage going to the brands. If the mark-up is lower than a small percentage they are likely not more profitable, otherwise likely they are more profitable on a unit basis (per set).
Funny that you mention LEGO Friends. In the German adult LEGO community lots of people don't understand LEGO's strategy with Friends and often shop owners on YT videos claim that they don't sell well enough for them.
But they seem to get sold more elsewhere than in the LEGO specific shops.
E.g. there are vastly more "Friends" kits, the Lego house brand targeted at girls, than Disney princesses.
Ninjago has become a perennial answer to the sword fighting action that Star Wars only delivers intermittently.
Lego's new "Hidden Side" brand seems clearly targeted at being a Lego-owned alternative to Harry Potter with alternative schools, trains, buses, etc.
I also get the sense that the 3rd party licenses are actually more focused towards the "Adult Fan of Lego/AFOL" community, e.g. the $200 Stranger Things kit, the $399 Disney Castle, and the $799 Millenium Falcon seem priced well above even what generous parents will spend on birthday/holiday gifts.
It would be interesting to see the sales breakdown between in-house and licensed brands and how it's shifting over time.
What all stories people tell themselves to shell out wads of dough on bullshit no one asked for. Apple and every other luxury brand in the world makes use of this story telling subset of the population as an external evangelizing church to keep the dogma flowing.
I have a bunch of Lego from decades ago that I am slowly offloading to kids of family and friends. I never bought any of my sets with this bonus usecase in mind caring about plastic quality or lifespan . I bought them because I like building stuff.
It's almost like consumers aren't basing their decisions on random dogma.
> I have a bunch of Lego from decades ago that I am slowly offloading to kids of family and friends
Surely even you have to admit that the engineering quality is what allows you to be able to hand down those bricks?
I think that proves the grand-parents point about quality just fine, even if you didn't buy it with that bonus in mind. People today do know that LEGO lasts for decades and it may factor into their decisions. It may also factor into yours now if you buy a new toy for a kid.
Just for the record, the phrase is »kun det bedste er godt nok«.
Your phrase would translate as 'the best is not too good', or in more natural English 'the best is bad' (which more accurately conveys the same meaning).
But I believe a large part of their success is due to being at the right place at the right time. They also had very good marketing. They keep themselves present with all their branded stuff, even if their standard palette is probably far more successful. And they seem to put a lot of effort in their models.
Curiously, some other hobby markets like miniature trains seem to allow for more competition, even if the market is so much smaller.
Now don’t get me wrong injection molding with sub 50um precision is cool. But that’s not the core of their success, they where doing that way back before they struck gold, and 4 year olds playing with their LEGO-hulk wouldn’t notice. Geeks who value quality engineering might appreciate it, but the LEGO-architects was never a blockbuster success, and even their NXT Robot series while fun, aren’t what’s pushing profits.
Had no idea they'd grown that much. Mattel used to be on top. Apparently Lego passed them around 2014.
The movie tie-ins seem to have done it. Even though Barbie had her screen moments in one of the Toy Story movies.
It was very definitely my parents' policy. My sister and I had Duplo, Lego, wooden blocks, Lego Technic, Mecanno, a train set (sorry dad, "model railway"), K'Nex and board games.
Someone once gave my sister a doll. It's still in the original box in a cupboard in her room, and she's almost 30...
When the characters we wanted were with other companies I would maybe buy a few but they never stuck together quite right, or would break too easily. So I wouldnt buy more, or if i did it was just the character and not the set.
You can buy Lego blocks anywhere in the world, and they click perfectly with Lego blocks purchased anywhere else in the world, and purchased at just about any time in the past or present.
Apart from the tolerances that also illustrates what their competitors rarely get right - Lego tends to opt for pieces that are generic enough to be reusable in as many contexts as possible where a lot of the competitors have sets full of pieces that are unmistakably one specific thing. That lets them not worry so much about the tolerances - if it works in that one context reliably, then it's fine. But the downside is it makes the sets even less flexible.
[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/lego/comments/4uv5tl/why_does_lego_...
I don't think that they used to be gender specific however with the Lego friends and elves sets they have definitely gone that way
Gender specific - well the market to both boys and girls. What else should they do? Try to sell "friends" to boys and "warrior robots" (or whatever) to girls, just to please the feminists?
I don't think they would mind girls buying the warrior stuff and boys buying the friends or elves stuff. More sales for them.
/me is still way ahead of his children, hah!
They even complain about modern "girl's Lego", instead of being happy that it brings girls to using Lego.
It also doesn't make sense to complain about a Lego car as enforcing gender stereotypes. Don't they want girls to build cars? It is so illogical. They claim girls are not interested in engineering (cars), because of Lego not catering to girls, and at the same time claim Lego cars don't appeal to girls.
As if company bosses would shun earning billions by refusing to market to girls, just to enforce gender stereotypes. Companies want to make money. That's it. The new "themed" sets apparently sell better than the "random box of colored bricks" from the past.
In the 1990s, almost no sets were "random boxes of colored bricks" and they were all themed, but the themes weren't the commercialized junk they are today. You had Castle, Pirates and Space without any references to movie characters and the structures were rather harmonic without too many special or overly-sized parts. The minifigs had serious faces and were not cartoonish. A child would be able to invent its own story and get creative with those themes, rather than using the toy to play when it's not watching the movie.
Some parents prefer not to have brands or advertising within their children's toys, and Lego used to be free from this influence.
Of course they were commercial. They did a space theme because they thought it would sell, just like they are now doing Star Wars because they sell.
Apart from the price, I personally can't really complain about the modern Lego sets, either. They are nice puzzles, and my kids like to play with them. After a while they fall apart, and new things can be built.
I don't think Lego wants to pay for expensive Hollywood brands. They always try to establish their own brands, too, like Ninjago, Lego Movie, Nexo Knights. Often it seems the Hollywood stuff simply sells better.
Sales slump in 1993 - I don't think that agrees with your thesis. Maybe they put out so much stuff out of desperation, to find something that sticks.
That's at least partly because Lego won't sell you coloured bricks unless you buy a certain number of their sets anymore. (source: my step-mother who owned a toy-store).
When called on it, instead of making their general line more unisex again, Lego tried introducing lines specifically aimed at girls, with little success until the Friends line.
They're also now introducing more female minifigs in their main lines, which is great.
FTFY
The Wiktionary definition for tyre is "The ring-shaped protective covering around a wheel which is usually made of rubber or plastic composite and is either pneumatic or solid."
More than close enough IMO.
First hit this year was that they sued a small Lego shop in Frankfurt called "Held der Steine". His logo was a standing brick, but it could have been any brick, no Lego logo was seen or whatnot. They sued him for infringement of their trademarks anyway. That gave quite a huge media wave, I think the video of "Held der Steine" on YouTube where he lays out what happened has seven figure views.
The next big hit happened yesterday when bailiffs walked in another small shop that is selling brick construction sets. Lego found that some of the figures from some chinese vendors look somewhat like their mini figures and obtained a restraining order for that shop. Bailiffs took some sets with them, the business owner was quite shaken when stating on YouTube what happened and that they will check which sets they can still sell and which not and that Lego threatened him with something like half a million Euro fine if he would violate the restraining orders. His company is called "Bluebrixx".
Besides this behaviour Lego is getting more and more expensive, while the quality of the models and the part count go down. Just look at some of the regular Star Wars models for example. The "bang for the buck" is pretty bad on those.
If you drop a normal brick on a hard floor the brick is likely to shatter. More models have special parts with narrow waist sections that easily snap. The c-shaped grips that hold poles either warp or snap and become useless.
More and more sets come with stickers rather than printing the pattern onto the bricks like they used to do. Stickers are really lame. They never go on right and peel off at the corners easily, but if you pull them off they'll definitely leave goop behind.
My kids and I still enjoy Lego despite this, but we haven't bought a new set for a long time.
Are they really like that nowadays?
When I was a child they were near indestructible.
If they shatter, they are defective. You can contact Lego[0], mail them the broken piece and get a replacement, no questions asked. Bricks are designed to last a decade with normal play and shattering would be a severe safety risk.
They take this sort of thing very seriously.
If those are actually Lego and not counterfeit or another brand, then it sounds like a defect.
I also can't find any examples of those narrow waist sections you refer to, which makes me think maybe it's a different brand?
For the SW Lego sets, Disney will be sure to take a big cut of that increased prices on the product. Can't really blame Lego for that either. I can't say for sure regarding quality, this might be a thing?
But with "Bluebrixx", I'm not so sure if this is all. There might be more about that. Look for example at this page: https://www.bluebrixx.com/de/bluebrixxspecials/scifi
This looks very much like something fishy going on. They call them "Bluebrixx-Specials" but they are clearly not original designs.
What does a "classical ambulance" do in a category called "SF"? It looks eerily similar to Ecto-1, that's why. I also suppose they don't have the license to do classical Battlestar Galactica models.
They should be very careful about such things.
I'm with you on that, but can you really protect designs like these?
Obviously they are trying hard to sail around paying licensing fees which I can understand and don't really see a problem with.
Paying those licensing fees is mainly for marketing reasons and if you want to keep marketing costs low I see no problem in selling a "classical ambulance" instead of "Ecto-1 from Ghostbusters".
But with the Ecto-1-look-alike, this is still very clear to me. That's not how a NY classical ambulance looks, that's how a classical ambulance looks after being modified by the Ghostbusters. That's a significant point.
Given that this is even a licensed model, I'm surprised that it isn't part of the provisional injunction.
He tried to trademark that logo and sell merchandise with it.
Using stuff that looks like LEGO trademarks is fine, trademarking it and selling your own merchandise with it obviously is not.
Which looks – except for colour and number of studs — exactly like the Held der Steine logo.
Held der Steine then tried to trademark it not just as logo for youtube, but also with the explicit purpose to sell merchandise, such as clothes, with it.
At this point, the trademarks conflict. The law, being horribly written, requires one of the trademark holders to either license from the other, or give up the claim.
As Lego wasn’t gonna give up their claim, and Held der Steine wasn’t gonna license their logo, there weren’t exactly few options left.
It’s a similar situation as with Apple vs. Apfelkind a few years back. A german store which used a silhouette of an apple as logo, which was fine. Until they tried to trademark it, not just for their store or for clothes as merchandise, but also for electronic products.
The LEGO brand is forever tarnished by this.
https://www.watson.de/imgdb/c6c7/Qx,A,0,0,874,491,141,7,629,...
I don't think that's generally true. I'm often checking price per brick when buying Technic sets and cheapest per brick came out in recent years.
Star Wars is expensive because when you buy them you volunteer to pay Mickey Mouse tax.
As a parent I don’t see many competition for LEGO: Duplo for toddlers, LEGO for kids, Mindstorms to teach kids programming, Technic for older kids. No soldering needed and can be used in relatively small apartments. And quality is a big topic here - LEGO uses molding equipment with pressure sensors, so they all bricks are the same. Cheap knockoffs frustrate kids, because every brick is different and sometimes one can’t join them at all. And you can build anything you want with couple sets since LEGO provides all the instructions online!
https://bricksandminifigs.com/
Noticed their Concord, CA (east Bay area) store from the highway a while back, and while I haven't been inside yet, was surprised to see they've got 20+ locations in the US and Canada.
The store was really cool.
https://nypost.com/2019/06/28/lego-strikes-deal-to-buy-back-...
https://www.newshub.co.nz/home/money/2019/07/lego-store-comi...
which luckily for me, is a 5 minute walk away from my work! Earlier this year my son (8) and I really enjoyed watching the Australian Lego Masters TV competition. https://www.thebrickman.com/lego-masters-australia/
Sales online and local retail shops are far better pricing wise.
Although I've visited the local Lego store, I don't really need to visit to get a good feel for a given product, and the prices mean I don't buy anything.
Also less competing products, distractions.
I think Lego stores are not for the price sensitive Lego buyer but for those buying for someone else. These are less informed buyers.
Bringing me around to the reason I mentioned this. It's nice to see Lego spread further. It feels like it's been a while since I saw them introduce a new line of toys though (like the mindstorm range). Would love if miniature blocks could become a thing.
And I am glad Toys 'R Us are gone.
You must have had a different Toys R Us to the UK then because they were dismal places over here.
Can’t tell if you think that’s a good thing or you’re being sarcastic?
To each their own of course. Not everyone has to like working at every company. I've never been unhappier than when I was in my own personal office.
I think of workspaces as "introverted" and "extroverted" and I think it's a mistake to say one is inherently better than the other. The reality is that the best workspace is the one that fulfills the needs of the team using it.
The room was set up like a computer lab, with a few rows of computers. Each was an iMac with an equal sized Apple Cinema Display that was mirrored, along with 2 keyboards and 2 mice.
The machines were reimaged occasionally to make sure everything was always the same and up to date. You never had to worry about setting up an environment or anything.
We all had personal laptops, but almost never used them.
and (some will disagree with that) buy clone-brands that are cheaper. the quality of the clone brands is catching up. the only downside with clone-brands is that the often actually clone lego designed sets instead of designing their own which is not really ethical. but many brands also have their own sets.
local flea-markets for example, thrift stores, craigs list, other auctioning sites...
on craigs list and newspaper classifieds you could even ask. some people keep their old lego, waiting for an opportunity to give/sell it to someone who deserves/needs it instead of selling it to someone looking to make a profit.
it takes some searching, patience and good luck.
That's less than one new store per country on average.
To put it in perspective there are 37,000 McDonald's and 11,766 Wal-Marts in the world. Even Levi's has 750 of their own stores worldwide.
I’m sure there’s plenty room for growth in a couple other markets as well.