How Hollywood Tie-Ins Saved Lego

MBCook writes "The New York Times published an article on Saturday profiling Lego, and how tie-ins with movies have helped save the company. 'Even as other toymakers struggle, this Danish maker of toy bricks is enjoying double-digit sales gains and swelling earnings. In recent years, Lego has increasingly focused on toys that many parents wouldn't recognize from their own childhood. Hollywood themes are commanding more shelf space, a far cry from the idealistic, purely imagination-oriented play that drove Lego for years and was as much a religion as a business strategy in Billund.' The article also mentions coming Lego Stores, a Lego board game, how Lego now allows sets with violence (like a gun for Indiana Jones), and how since 2004 Lego has cut part count nearly in half by encouraging re-use of parts and stopping one-off pieces."

Comments

Where's Technic?

[wiredlogic]

The tie-ins are tolerable even though they're still horribly dependent on using special pieces. What I want to know is why have they gutted the much more interesting Technic line? You rarely see the sets that are still produced on the big retailers shelves in the US anymore.

That's just the trick isn't it?

[BaronSprite]

While it is annoying to have 500 different versions of ____ summer movie theme represented in toy form, the best trick that lego has going for it is that you can usually rip it down and change it into something else when you are bored of it. LEGO recognizes that their product can still fit in with the imaginationland scheme while still appealing to a current market trend, so why not?

Re:I really like Legos

[stoolpigeon]

Not when you are playing with LEGO Mindstorms NXT. I got my set ( the older version ) when Ed Nisley, writing for Dr Dobbs at the time, recommended them as a way to learn about embedded programming. Here is a great example of how awesome the robots can be.

Non-Violence was Missed on me

[thepainguy]

Pretty much everything I made out of Legos was war-related. Tanks and planes mostly, but I made some pretty cool howitzers back in the day. They'd fire the four-side black rods with a couple of rubber bands.

Re:So, in short...

[Quothz]

So, what you're telling me is Lego sold out.

I wouldn't say that. Lego is renowned as one of the best companies in the world to work for: They treat their employees well, pay them well, give them good bennies, and don't nickel and dime 'em. They don't shift jobs to countries where they can exploit workers. If selling out their brand name lets 'em avoid selling out their employees, then I'm all for it.

Has anyone actually -bought- Legos?

[tjstork]

A lot of people complaining about some of these Lego sets seem to think that you can only really build the thing on the box when you get the set. There's a ton of parts for even the tiniest Lego model and you have a lot of options. If you have more than one set, you can genuinely make some really interesting displays. You need to think differently out of the box. My four year old autistic son taught me this. I buy them for them and he puts together all sorts of stuff. At first, I put the sets together and then let him have at them, but I had gotten lazy and just handed some stuff to play with, and felt pretty bad about it, so I bought a fairly complicated set to put together with him, and found that, by the time I'd got the basics of the first page done, he'd already built something very cool. For him, the picture on the box isn't the thing to build, but is representative of a sort of world he plays in with those pieces. I think right now Princess Lea and Han Solo Lego people are wearing pirate hats and are carrying knight swords on top of a steam engine (sad end for a Bachmann set).

Still, if you must have the ultimate in "suggestionless" Lego design, you need to go to a Lego store. Lego stores have all the theme sets, for sure, but they also have a huge wall in the back where you can just fill up a big cup for $15 and get anything you want. Wheels, different shape blocks, they are all there.

Legos On Mars

[DynaSoar]

My scientist's heart sinks when I remember the hopes I had and that the following would re-popularize the space program as well as science in general, then lost when nobody noticed...

So you've got these guys who built these robot car things and they're going to send them to Mars. One of the cool things they did was collect peoples' names and messages to the New Planet to send along. They burned the messages to CDs and then started looking for a way to attach the CDs to the 'dashboards' of their robots. How about... oh, I dunno... maybe some interlocking plastic blocks with the CD trapped between a pair of them, and a screw or two to hold each of the 3 pairs in place? I'll bet some of these guys even have some of these things laying around and would be glad to donate them to the cause.....

From the left science panaorama camera on each Mars Rover, taken on Sol 2 of each mission:

Spirit:
http://marsrovers.nasa.gov/gallery/all/2/p/002/2P126556804EFF0200P2205L1M1.JPG
http://marsrovers.nasa.gov/gallery/all/2/p/002/2P126556727EFF0200P2205L4M1.JPG

Opportunity:
http://marsrovers.nasa.gov/gallery/all/1/p/002/1P128365194EDN0100P2205L5M1.JPG
http://marsrovers.nasa.gov/gallery/all/1/p/002/1P128365248EDN0100P2205L6M1.JPG