Lego to open 160 new stores as other toy retailers suffer

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

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.

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.