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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

#121

Post by replicatorblog »

ebg13 wrote: post #33
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…

> 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.

This is accurate, but the sense I get is that there's a deliberate effort to move from licensed IP to Lego-created brands.

E.g. there are vastly more "Friends" kits, the Lego house brand targeted at girls, than Disney princesses.

Ninjago has become a perennial answer to the sword fighting action that Star Wars only delivers intermittently.

Lego's new "Hidden Side" brand seems clearly targeted at being a Lego-owned alternative to Harry Potter with alternative schools, trains, buses, etc.

I also get the sense that the 3rd party licenses are actually more focused towards the "Adult Fan of Lego/AFOL" community, e.g. the $200 Stranger Things kit, the $399 Disney Castle, and the $799 Millenium Falcon seem priced well above even what generous parents will spend on birthday/holiday gifts.

It would be interesting to see the sales breakdown between in-house and licensed brands and how it's shifting over time.

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

#122

Post by bhaak »

martin_bech wrote: post #78
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.

Thats not completely true, I know people at LEGO, and the best selling sets are Legos own Lego City and Lego Friends.

I would have expected LEGO Ninjago to be as well. That's their own very distinct IP and the models that are included feature the best original LEGO models you can get. And that on a constant high level for several years now.

Funny that you mention LEGO Friends. In the German adult LEGO community lots of people don't understand LEGO's strategy with Friends and often shop owners on YT videos claim that they don't sell well enough for them.

But they seem to get sold more elsewhere than in the LEGO specific shops.

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

#123

Post by varjag »

jonathanlydall wrote: post #95
sethammons wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Best selling doesn't necessarily mean most profitable.

It seems unlikely that they are making more profit per licensed set because they are likely having to pay a cut to a third party (for example, Disney gets a cut of each Star Wars set sold). So if their license free sets sell better, then it would stand to reason they make more profit off of these.

And a licensed set often has to amortize the cost of tooling made specifically for it.

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

#124

Post by replicatorblog »

xenocyon wrote: post #118
jncraton wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I grew up with Lego in the 1980s; back then they had zero or few tie-ins with branding other than Shell IIRC. There were also fewer specialized pieces, meaning greater emphasis on kids' using their imagination.

This is an often stated criticism of modern Lego designs, but I wonder if anyone has tried to test this empirically?

E.g. if you gave a group of kids a "classic" set and another a themed set, with no further instructions, would the first group produce more "creative" designs?

I think the critics of the branded sets undervalue the Piagetian concept of scaffolding, basically that having the Harry Potter superstructure allows kids to riff on a variety of concepts that actually may be more "creative" than the random geometric blocks.

E.g. "What if we built a jail around Voldermort instead of killing him" seems like an equally valuable expression of creativity as "I made a vaguely car-shaped thing, but it has six wheels instead of four and has those little lever bricks instead of a steering wheel."

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

#125

Post by mcv »

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…

What do you need guns for anyway? When I was a kid, I armed my Lego The A-Team with small, narrow plates or antennas with ring clips. Worked perfectly.

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

#126

Post by bookofjoe »

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…

Cf Mercedes-Benz: The best or nothing

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

#127

Post by mcv »

9nGQluzmnq3M wrote: post #11
Animats wrote: post #5

"Lego has become the world’s largest toymaker by sales..." Had no idea they'd grown that much. Mattel used to be on top. Apparently Lego passed them around 2014. The movie tie-ins seem to have done it. Even though Barbie had her screen moments in one of the Toy Story movies.

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.

Also important: parents today grew up in the 1980s, which I consider the golden age of Lego. I bet plenty of adults buy it for themselves.

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

#128

Post by mcv »

nf8nnfufuu wrote: post #59
tr3ndyBEAR wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

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…

It's not bullshit. In the 1970s, Lego marketed equally to all kids, but towards the 1990s, they were marketing increasingly towards boys and not girls. You can also see it in the selection of minifigs: originally they were fairly unisex, but as they became more gendered, female ones turned out to be quite rare.

When called on it, instead of making their general line more unisex again, Lego tried introducing lines specifically aimed at girls, with little success until the Friends line.

They're also now introducing more female minifigs in their main lines, which is great.

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

#129

Post by mcv »

mytailorisrich wrote: post #62
CannisterFlux wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not only the model quality, but the Lego bricks themselves are pretty disappointing too. 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…

> If you drop a normal brick on a hard floor the brick is likely to shatter. Are they really like that nowadays? When I was a child they were near indestructible.

I've never seen them just shatter. They're not indestructible, but I think they never were. More complex bricks are probably a bit more fragile, though.

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

#130

Post by bluetomcat »

replicatorblog wrote: post #124
xenocyon wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I grew up with Lego in the 1980s; back then they had zero or few tie-ins with branding other than Shell IIRC. There were also fewer specialized pieces, meaning greater emphasis on kids' using their imagination.

This is an often stated criticism of modern Lego designs, but I wonder if anyone has tried to test this empirically? E.g. if you gave a group of kids a "classic" set and another a themed set, with no further instructions, would the first group produce more "creative" designs? I think the critics of the branded sets undervalue the Piagetian concept of scaffolding, basically that having the Harry Potter superstructure…

Let's do a direct comparison of [1] "70412-1: Soldiers Fort" (2015) to [2] "6263-1: Imperial Outpost" (1995):

- Older set has a big baseplate which enables a child to start building a new structure easily

- Older set has well-pronounced architectural elements like arcs and slopes and feels like a solid structure, newer set feels airy and ad-hoc

- Older set has minifigs with a simple paint, newer set has cartoon-like characters

- Older set has a more realistic colour scheme, newer set again feels cartoonish

- Older set has a specially designed backside for playing and putting minifigs

[1] https://brickset.com/sets/70412-1/Soldiers-Fort

[2] https://brickset.com/sets/6263-1/Imperial-Outpost

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