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.