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What happened with LEGO

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Re: What happened with LEGO

#51

Post by colomon »

acheron wrote: post #45
acabal wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My beef is that Lego have become so highly branded. I would rather my kid play with generic space and castle and pirate blocks, than with Star Wars and Harry Potter and Pirates of the Carribbean blocks. As a product of the 80's I can say I spent a lot of time playing with highly branded and marketed toys, so it's not necessarily a bad thing; but there's something special about Lego that makes me feel like they should…

Totally agree. I hope Lego will move back to the more generic themes by the time my kid(s) get old enough. (Currently my 1.5 year old loves Duplo blocks; apparently there are even licensed Duplo sets though he doesn't have any of them.)

You can get all the generic Lego blocks you would ever want. The "problem" is kids want all the fancy sets.

For instance: http://www.amazon.com/LEGO-Bricks-More-Builders-Tomorrow/dp/...

Re: What happened with LEGO

#52

Post by nhebb »

As the father of two boys, I'm amazed people are willing to pay these prices. After buying a couple of sets, I refused to do it again. The pieces come apart easily and wind up as vacuum fodder in the carpet. And in my experience, they didn't actually get played with very much. The plain bricks, though, got played with a lot over the years.

Re: What happened with LEGO

#53

Post by gala8y »

chaostheory wrote: post #44
acabal wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My beef is that Lego have become so highly branded. I would rather my kid play with generic space and castle and pirate blocks, than with Star Wars and Harry Potter and Pirates of the Carribbean blocks. As a product of the 80's I can say I spent a lot of time playing with highly branded and marketed toys, so it's not necessarily a bad thing; but there's something special about Lego that makes me feel like they should…

> My beef is that Lego have become so highly branded. The problem was no one bought general Lego blocks. This is still the trend today. I guess not many people remember, but Lego was in deep financial trouble during the 90s and early 2000's. Until they started creating licensed packages and video games based on 3rd party franchises like Star Wars, Lego wasn't selling anything.

As a seven years old, all I wanted (and saved up for) was the biggest, most generic set I could possibly have. I still remember running like crazy to see my mom coming back from the city, carrying LEGO 733 Universal Building Set.

Highly branded sets probably push children more into playing roles and sticking to, probably still imaginative enough, scenarios rather than into creative process of building.

Re: What happened with LEGO

#56

Post by gee_totes »

fduran wrote: post #43

A little off-topic but I find LEGOs are usually over 50% more expensive in Canada than in the US :-( http://www.amazon.ca/LEGO-Star-Imperial-V-wing-Starfighter/d... http://www.amazon.com/LEGO-Star-Imperial-V-wing-Starfighter/...

That is bizarre. I always attributed the higher Canadian prices to the fact that the Canadian dollar was weaker than the US dollar, but nowadays they're about equal.

Re: What happened with LEGO

#57

Post by speeder »

ufo wrote: post #34
speeder wrote: post #2

Again this post? Well, at least this time I can comment. I must say that Lego in Brazil is ABSURDLY expensive, it is just ridiculous. And this is very bad, since I love Lego!! And I miss "Tente" (a Lego clone that existed here, and had some nifty stuff, like wheeled blocks with metal axles)

Everything imported has ridiculous taxes here in Brazil. I wonder if Lego is just "normally" absurdly expensive or if its even worse.

Good question.

I don't know either, but it is a very good question.

Re: What happened with LEGO

#58

Post by acheron »

colomon wrote: post #51
acheron wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Totally agree. I hope Lego will move back to the more generic themes by the time my kid(s) get old enough. (Currently my 1.5 year old loves Duplo blocks; apparently there are even licensed Duplo sets though he doesn't have any of them.)

You can get all the generic Lego blocks you would ever want. The "problem" is kids want all the fancy sets. For instance: http://www.amazon.com/LEGO-Bricks-More-Builders-Tomorrow/dp/...

There's a difference between generic blocks and the non-licensed theme sets. I've got a couple Lego stores nearby, I know that the generic blocks are available, and that's definitely great. I was talking about, e.g., a fancy castle set, but just with a generic "knights" theme, rather than something from the Lord of the Rings or Harry Potter movies or whatever.

However, I realize it's working out for Lego, and if the licensing is what's necessary to keep them going, then I'm not faulting them too much.

Re: What happened with LEGO

#59

Post by rm999 »

Tloewald wrote: post #13

I don't have a problem with the price of lego, having — as a child in the 70s — saved my own pocket money to buy lego. The real criticism of lego is that it's gone from being a collection of parts that can make the thing on the cover of the box but also many interesting variations, to something that isn't very malleable. First, lego no longer has a consistent color scheme, so only pieces from one genre go with other…

This is not a new trend, it extends back to at least the late 70s. As a child of the 80s my 'bag of legos' is full of specialized pieces like castle flags, pirates, and spaceship hoods. I still fondly remember building futuristic space pirate ships with medieval horses on the deck - the diversity really helped my creativity.

That said, if you want large sets of generic pieces look into a creator bucket. They come out to something like 5-10 cents a piece and sound like what you are talking about. They're fairly new so I haven't used/bought them, but I think they're basically the same thing as the 'basic' buckets I had as a child.

Re: What happened with LEGO

#60

Post by EdwardMSmith »

acheron wrote: post #58
colomon wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can get all the generic Lego blocks you would ever want. The "problem" is kids want all the fancy sets. For instance: http://www.amazon.com/LEGO-Bricks-More-Builders-Tomorrow/dp/...

There's a difference between generic blocks and the non-licensed theme sets. I've got a couple Lego stores nearby, I know that the generic blocks are available, and that's definitely great. I was talking about, e.g., a fancy castle set, but just with a generic "knights" theme, rather than something from the Lord of the Rings or Harry Potter movies or whatever. However, I realize it's working out for Lego, and if the…

This generic knights theme?

http://kingdoms.lego.com/en-us/default.aspx?icmp=COUSFR33Kin...

And this fancy castle?

http://kingdoms.lego.com/en-us/Products/Default.aspx#7946

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