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Lego to open 160 new stores as other toy retailers suffer

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Re: Lego to open 160 new stores as other toy retailers suffer

#101

Post by bildung »

tr3ndyBEAR wrote: post #20
9nGQluzmnq3M wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lego is also widely (and IMHO not incorrectly) viewed as "educational" in a way that virtually all the branded crap sold by Mattel & co is not. And who buys most toys? Parents, not kids themselves.

Sad that legos were/are traditionally thought of as boy toys and a generation of women grew up without them. It's basically what happened with computers too. Many of the most important early computer pioneers were women

Of all toy companies Lego is probably the last one to be criticized like that. Lego has famously worked against that impression for decades, e.g. [0] from the 70s and [1] from the 80s.

[0] https://imgur.com/gallery/XmlDUox

[1] https://imgur.com/gallery/xwAsW56

Re: Lego to open 160 new stores as other toy retailers suffer

#102

Post by whenanother »

jdkee wrote: post #26

Toys 'R Us used to sell Legos at a roughly 10% markup over MSRP. I always wondered how they got away with this. And I am glad Toys 'R Us are gone.

they are gone because the company decided to dump their pension obligations via bankruptcy. they are magically coming back and the dumb and stupid thinks it is due to some efficiency improvements.

this scam of people taking over a company and selling profitable assets to hide the elimination of pension obligations needs to stop. the government should control pension just like healthcare.

Re: Lego to open 160 new stores as other toy retailers suffer

#103

Post by MidnightRamen »

hos234 wrote: post #70
tehbeard wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You come off really, really salty in that opening paragraph. > I have a bunch of Lego from decades ago that I am slowly offloading to kids of family and friends Surely even you have to admit that the engineering quality is what allows you to be able to hand down those bricks?

Well I am salty. And I can't stand what how consumerist LEGO has become. Plus I don't like evangelists. Instead of allowing kids to figure out the value of something themselves, they fill their heads with bullet points about what they are supposed to like about a product.

Kids may not care about product value. But the people who buy the stuff for them do. I know I prefer to buy LEGO over competitor products for my children because I know they won't ever have difficulties building due to parts not fitting well.

Re: Lego to open 160 new stores as other toy retailers suffer

#104

Post by raxxorrax »

jncraton wrote: post #24

IMO LEGO thrives thanks to their relentless focus on product quality. The phrase "det bedste ir ikke for godt" (roughly "only the best is good enough") has a long history in the company. The fact that they have been able to thrive like this in a market with many competitors cloning their product is a a testament to their product quality and related brand strength. If you've used and compared the various brands in thi…

I don't think success like this can be explained by company slogans. They do indeed have very impressive quality and creating parts with the required precision cannot be achieve with a random deep-drawing plastic process.

But I believe a large part of their success is due to being at the right place at the right time. They also had very good marketing. They keep themselves present with all their branded stuff, even if their standard palette is probably far more successful. And they seem to put a lot of effort in their models.

Curiously, some other hobby markets like miniature trains seem to allow for more competition, even if the market is so much smaller.

Re: Lego to open 160 new stores as other toy retailers suffer

#105

Post by mcphage »

jncraton wrote: post #35
ebg13 wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> IMO LEGO thrives thanks to their relentless focus on product quality. I'm sure that doesn't hurt, but these days LEGO thrives because of their relentless promotional brand tie-ins. It's not just LEGO anymore. It's LEGO Star Wars, LEGO Batman, LEGO Harry Potter, LEGO Disney's Frozen, LEGO Toy Story 4, and so on.

You aren't wrong, but the two are tightly related. LEGO's competitors are also selling many licensed products, but LEGO's position as the best quality brand in the market has allowed them to secure contracts for the most popular IP (Star Wars, Marvel, Minecraft, etc). Their competitors are left with less popular or less family-friendly IP such as Halo or Star Trek. Its also worth noting that some of LEGO's competitor…

> You can buy a clone brand X-wing for 50% of the cost of the genuine set, but the quality is significantly lower in my experience.

Often the knockoff sets are around 25% of the Lego price—I bought a Lepin Porsche for >$80 instead of $300. And the quality was 85%-90% of Lego. So slightly lower, but at a quarter of the price—and price is a feature.

Re: Lego to open 160 new stores as other toy retailers suffer

#106

Post by nf8nnfufuu »

bluetomcat wrote: post #76
nf8nnfufuu wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's just bullshit, a narrative feminists peddled by posting selective pictures and ads of LEGO sets. 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), becau…

> 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 part…

Apparently the "commercialized junk" sells better, though. Lego was close to going bankrupt in the 90ies.

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.

Re: Lego to open 160 new stores as other toy retailers suffer

#107

Post by scotty79 »

MidnightRamen wrote: post #103
hos234 wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well I am salty. And I can't stand what how consumerist LEGO has become. Plus I don't like evangelists. Instead of allowing kids to figure out the value of something themselves, they fill their heads with bullet points about what they are supposed to like about a product.

Kids may not care about product value. But the people who buy the stuff for them do. I know I prefer to buy LEGO over competitor products for my children because I know they won't ever have difficulties building due to parts not fitting well.

I had an opportunity to help a kid in the family put together lego-like model. Parts fitted so bad. One or two were not even fully shaped as if not enough plastic was injected into the mold.

Re: Lego to open 160 new stores as other toy retailers suffer

#108

Post by scotty79 »

martin_a wrote: post #55

Lego is becoming more and more of a scumbag company. 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 happe…

> Besides this behaviour Lego is getting more and more expensive, while the quality of the models and the part count go down.

I don't think that's generally true. I'm often checking price per brick when buying Technic sets and cheapest per brick came out in recent years.

Star Wars is expensive because when you buy them you volunteer to pay Mickey Mouse tax.

Re: Lego to open 160 new stores as other toy retailers suffer

#109

Post by tomatocracy »

arrrg wrote: post #66
dbcurtis wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

pfft. Built any “City” theme sets lately? All the police minifigs pack pretty realistic-looking semi-autos.

I don’t think that’s true at all. I looked at every police set Lego is selling currently and not a single one of them included even a suggestion of a gun. Typical police equipment are handcuffs, megaphones, walkie-talkies, traffic paddles and coffee cups. The criminals might carry gold, banknotes, dynamite or crowbars and other tools. The most gun-like thing in current sets is the huge net shooter (larger than a mini…

At the other end of the spectrum, you have Playmobil's police sets which include sub machine guns, rifles with sniper-scopes and attack dogs eg [0]

0. https://www.amazon.com/PLAYMOBIL%C2%AE-6872-Police-Command-C...

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