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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."
Try this link.
That's the product line that has REALLY saved The Lego Group. The sales figures for that line alone are staggering. And as an AFOL, I can verify that the design quality and playability of their recent products have improved substantially. My kids continue to go back to their Lego collection to play with long after the novelty of the latest toy that they've received for their birthday\Xmas\whatever has worn off. As a friend of mine has always said, it's a thousand toys in one.
"Klaatu, verada, necktie!" -Ash
So, what you're telling me is Lego sold out. And for the Harrison Ford retirement fund--I mean, movie, no less.
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My son is 6 and right smack in the middle of the kids they are shooting for. He is obsessed with Star Wars, and loves playing Lego Star Wars. He's collected a few sets now for birthday, Christmas, etc. We have a lot of fun building the kits to the directions, but spend just as much time figuring out new things to build. There are a lot of different shapes that go well beyond the idea of a 'block' and I think it involves a lot more imagination to figure new ways to connect them.
It's something we can do together and have a lot of fun with it. When he's a little older we'll start working with the Mindstorm kit together.
It's hard to believe that's how Micronians are made. Why don't we see it right now by having you both kiss one another?
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.
I am becoming gerund, destroyer of verbs.
Wait... a gun for indiana jones is new? When I was a kid (20 years ago), we had pirate sets with guns in them... medieval sets with swords and cross bows... weapons everywhere.... how is violence in lego anything even remotely new?
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?
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.
It's hard to believe that's how Micronians are made. Why don't we see it right now by having you both kiss one another?
Some sets are that way - but most are still incredibly flexible. There are a lot of cool things that can be done with the new sets that couldn't be done with the old. There are a lot more mechanical parts in the basic sets now. My sons Imperial Shuttle kit had some very cool gears and other parts to allow the wings to move up and down. The hinged doors are pretty slick, etc. We've been able to incorporate that into a lot of fun designs of our own.
It really still is an open ended toy for exploration, especially once you have 4 or 5 kits worth of pieces on hand.
It's hard to believe that's how Micronians are made. Why don't we see it right now by having you both kiss one another?
Who gives a crap!!? Go out and buy yourself a set! Be a kid for a little while. Don't hold yourself back because of what others might think about you. And if you want to justify it to yourself in some way, then consider there are far worse things you can spend your time and money on... cigarettes, alcohol, drugs, porn, guns and on and on. Most "adult" things are also considered vices. I see nothing wrong with doing something fun that is harmless and nice.
And if it helps you to feel less weird, "give it away" to some 'needy kids' or to a school, a day care, a church or some such place.
. I'd think they could easily cut their prices by 25-50% and still be making a tidy profit.
Probably not whilst delivering the quality and safety that they do. If you look at some of the Meg@#$%# lego clones, have a feel at how they fit together; See how the bricks start breaking up and how Lego seems to last and last, you know what I mean. In the end the Lego is cheaper because it lasts and it still gets used. When I get told that my kid "needs" a rescue helicopter or something instead of buying it, we just build it together.
When I buy random cheap Chinese toys I really feel I could be poisoning my child. I don't think the manufacturer wants to poison my kids any more than I want to do that to his, but I'm sure he has little way to control the quality of the quality of the plastic coming in and no come back if he does find someone has done something bad. Look at the chinese milk scandal. The key thing there is not that the milk companies were cheating and failing to test. Someone was deliberately working around their testing. With that kind of garbage; better buy Lego.
In this case; you get what you pay for.
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You might THINK that there are a bunch of specialized pieces that are tailored to make one specific thing, but that's not necessarily true. Yes, there are more different kinds of pieces and some are rather unique. But it is actually hard to find a particular piece that isn't also used in other sets. It may be painted differently or be made of a different color, but that's the way it goes. These more unique pieces enables even more creativity, not less. Go browse "www.mocpages.com" and just look at what people have made using these "specialized pieces." They make everything you can imagine from them. One of my favorite Lego creations of all time is the Futurama Lego set someone created. (Just Google for Lego Futurama) It is most certainly NOT an official Lego set. It uses a lot of specialized pieces and is extremely creative work.
Lego may have started out being "blocky" and only good for making houses with roofs at 45 degree angles, but it is much more than that now, and it is largely thanks to the availability of these "less basic" parts.
There have been several Bionicle movies now, I have the first one on DVD.
I reject your reality and substitute my own.
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.
You're absolutely right. My lego pieces from nigh on two decades ago still fit and hold. The very few occasional weak pieces have failed, but the rank and file pieces still fit and still hold their colour. Nobody but nobody can tell me that Lego bricks were shoddy. A toy that lasts, and is still played with, for 10-20 years is frankly worth paying the premium.
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I'd think they could easily cut their prices by 25-50% and still be making a tidy profit.
I'd rather have them keep the uncompromising, legendary quality instead. I encountered exactly 1 bad brick in 10000$ MSRP worth of Lego. I think the fact that the set will not break or wear out in 5, 10, 15 years is a big consideration for families which have more than one child. I have a lot of Lego bricks that survived my entire childhood and are still in very good shape, even though I used to play with them very frequently. The Technic line is essentially precision machinery made of plastic.
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Here: http://ldd.lego.com/
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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.
This is my sig.
Lego is clearly in charge of the business. Here's how it works. A kid sees a lego kit. The branding (Star Wars, Indiana Jones, etc) sells the kit. The child assembles the X wing fighter, or the Pirate ship. The toy then flies/sails to the corner of the room with all the other legos. The pirate ends up in the X wing. The cannons from the pirate ship end up on the x wing fighter but the nav console from the x wing becomes part of something else. The Ferrari mechanic is wearing a horned helmet and in the battlements of the castle. By the time the child is done, the "branded toy" has morphed and blended with all the other legos. Our lego chess set is guarding a castle. Bits of X wing and Imperial Walkers are outbuildings. From the children I've observed, the branded lego kit is a way to sell the blocks at the highest possible price. To the adult. The kids play with the blocks like kids. Lego is still one of the few toys with real play value, not just a prepackaged fantasy with no where to go. Also, for those of you worried about the "gun" issue, kids can make guns out of anything....and do.
Now, LEGO needs to make the next step and allow people to build their own kits online. I think that would be even bigger than LEGO Star Wars.
Seriously Lego, where are you?
It's called Lego Degital Designer. If you've got a complaint, at least take a couple of minutes to figure out if it's valid.
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
"I may be synthetic, but I'm not stupid." -- Bishop 341-B
Otherwise I wouldn't have enough pieces that are in grey to make Star Trek Starships out of LEGO.
Tsukasa: All I really want, is to be left alone...
Actually they now have some grown-up collector sets. The Eiffel tower, a Beetle. I found them in a recently-opened special Lego store in Frankfurt
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Having specialized pieces and 4 or 5 kits is cool. My kids have around 50 of 60 kits (around 20K pieces), so specialized pieces are just lost in the mess.
Fun thing is that my kids turned to bigger scale reuse, where functional blocks of 10 or 20 bricks are reused from kits to kits. That gives most of their work a weird Tetsuo feel...