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What happened with LEGO

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Re: What happened with LEGO

#71

Post by swah »

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.

You have to import stuff under 50 USD to get it without taxes, but then the shipping gets (proportionally) expensive.

Re: What happened with LEGO

#72

Post by failrate »

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…

Oh, even the weird pieces turn out to be more malleable than you might first imagine. I've even seen a game based on making LEGO robots by using surprising combinations of pieces (http://mobileframezero.com/mfz/). That's inspired me to take custom pieces from my kid's LEGO sets and put them to all kinds of new uses.

Re: What happened with LEGO

#73

Post by T-hawk »

Lego prices were my introduction to economics and budgeting as a kid.

My parents worked out and explained that you should look for value per brick in the sets when choosing purchases. I learned how to rapidly estimate mental arithmetic largely from wanting to get the most Legos for my allowance. The benchmark was 10 cents per brick (in the mid 80's), sets which worked out below that were good buys, sets above that were a ripoff. Surprisingly, it didn't correlate much with set size, bigger sets weren't always so economical. There were quite a few very small sets in the Space line, things like one figure and a spaceship composed of about thirty pieces for $2.49, which were good buys and I accumulated several.

Side note, I actually didn't play with Legos as much as with a different builder set called Construx. Anyone else remember that?

Re: What happened with LEGO

#74

Post by Persephone404 »

It would be interesting to see price per brick variation with pack size - those $500 dollar sets have prices per brick under $0.05. The increase in volumes of larger sets could be balancing the increased pricing of small sets, leading to the stable average.

Re: What happened with LEGO

#75

Post by bentcorner »

acabal wrote: post #38
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…

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…

The reason why Lego makes sets that are branded is because other companies make good-enough lego-compatible blocks that are cheaper than legos. If lego stuck with the "generic sets only", they'd be history by now. Who would bother buying a pack of lego-branded red bricks when you could get the megablocks-branded one that is 90% as good for half the price?

Re: What happened with LEGO

#76

Post by rdouble »

bentcorner wrote: post #75
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…

The reason why Lego makes sets that are branded is because other companies make good-enough lego-compatible blocks that are cheaper than legos. If lego stuck with the "generic sets only", they'd be history by now. Who would bother buying a pack of lego-branded red bricks when you could get the megablocks-branded one that is 90% as good for half the price?

Only the dorky neighbor kid whom everyone hated to play with thought megablocks were an acceptable substitute for Lego.

Re: What happened with LEGO

#77

Post by hugs »

bonsai80 wrote: post #29

Profitable companies charge what the market will pay for their products. http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5039567

... and leave room for new entrants at the low-end. (This is why I think (someday) the Maker/3d-printer market will be trouble for LEGO (someday).

Re: What happened with LEGO

#78

Post by jeffbarr »

stusmith1977 wrote: post #69
DanBC wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm 42. I tend to agree with you that I dislike over-specialised pieces. But then people are creative (which is the point of Lego, after all) and they use the thing for something else entirely. I would like there to be a few good base sets. Luckily, there are, you just have to search to find them, I'd really like to be able to buy blocks by the kg - 200 g of 2x1, 300 g of 2x4; etc.

Lego Education does a spare parts catalog - but not sure if you can buy from it as a private individual. I used to use something similar when I was a kid - I couldn't afford (say) a complete new pneumatic set, so I just bought a pneumatics parts pack from a mail-order catalog and used those bits with my generic technic stuff. (Another great resource is the ideas magazines they used to print - not sure if they still d…

They fulfilled my order for a pair of the Education Resource Sets ( http://www.legoeducation.us/eng/product/lego_mindstorms_educ... ), I'm sure they'll be happy to take your money.

Re: What happened with LEGO

#79

Post by sbarlster »

bentcorner wrote: post #75
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…

The reason why Lego makes sets that are branded is because other companies make good-enough lego-compatible blocks that are cheaper than legos. If lego stuck with the "generic sets only", they'd be history by now. Who would bother buying a pack of lego-branded red bricks when you could get the megablocks-branded one that is 90% as good for half the price?

The megablocks stuff we have bought either has nobbly extra molding bits still stuck to the bricks meaning they just don't work OR the bricks are not of a uniform enough size so they don't stick together for any length of time.

I would estimate at 40% as good as logo. Which puts it down in the play with it a bit and then ignore 'while the cat (or hoover) eats it' camp.

Re: What happened with LEGO

#80

Post by rhplus »

The average price per gram chart is interesting, as it shows price fluctuated quite wildly 1980-1995 and then smoothing out to a much more stable curve 1996 onwards.

http://therealityprose.files.wordpress.com/2013/01/priceperg...

I have some possible ideas:

1) There's more data in recent years, so the smoothness is just reflecting less variance in the data 2) The author didn't consider currency exchange rates when most production was done in Denmark 3) LEGO got better at managing shock from fluctuations in supply costs (i.e. buying futures in petroleum) 4) LEGO got better at managing production costs with more larger, cheaper factories (central Europe, Mexico) 5) It's harder for the supplier to experiment wildly with retail costs because everyone (distributor, retailer, consumer) has access to year-on-year comparison information now (no need to look up last year's prices in a huge catalog)

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