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.
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.
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...
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.
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_...