Where I think this analysis is wrong is using the general inflation number. If your inflation basket of goods was full of products similar to Lego – plastic toys – the real price of Lego would not appear to be going down. Well, "wrong" isn't perhaps the right word, but it doesn't address the perceived price of Legos in a world where plastic goods are constantly going down in price relative to other goods.
What happened with LEGO
81–90 of 127 posts
Re: What happened with LEGO
#82I 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…
Go look at bricklink.com sets from around the 1970's. They were ALL just a bunch of blocks. An airplane was basically a long rectangle. Then the 80's brought in some really nice "Legoland" sets. The lego airport from that era was the sweet spot. Not too many specialized pieces, but enough to build proper airplanes and a control tower.
Re: What happened with LEGO
#83A little off topic but last weekend I had the privileged of watching an FLL (First Lego League) event. This is a robotics competition for kids ages 9-16. And it's AMAZING. The energy from the kids and parents was exhilarating. Details are here http://firstlegoleague.org/. There are also a lot of videos from the competitions posted on YouTube (search First Lego League). If you have children I definitely encourage you to introduce them to FLL. And if you don't have kids consider volunteering to coach one of the teams.
Re: What happened with LEGO
#84I think any perception that LEGO has become more expensive is because other toys have become cheaper. Or more correctly, cheap low quality toys have taken a larger part of the market.
Re: What happened with LEGO
#85I 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…
> I remember getting a lego cargo ship as a kid (the hull was four specialized pieces — bow, stern, and two mid sections and thinking this was awful.
From an aesthetic point of view it was indeed awful, yet necessary: those ships were meant to float in real water, so they had to be sealed surfaces. I remember trying to build ships out of regular pieces; they were nice, but when put in the sea, the result was not funny at all.
Re: What happened with LEGO
#86Unfortunately, with the 3D printers on the raise, the faith of a LEGO(r) brick is doomed.
In the near future, there will be printers especially designed to print small LEGO pieces. Of course none of those 3DP will market as "print your own LEGO bricks", but kids will figure this one quickly.
It will work a bit like a baking machine. Turn it on, leave it overnight and bunch of blocks roll out when you wake up in the morning. theLegoBrickBay.se will arise where kids will be able to download any STL file for any brick, LEGO set, minifig, etc, and LEGO with their tiny revenues (comparing to MAFIAA) will not be able to shut down the site.
Even if, arguendo, price of that printer will be $2,000 or more, its a cost of couple StarWars sets and any parent understanding the basics of financials will go with "print your own" instead of "keep buying new sets" thought.
Material will be cheap and reusable. After you are done with playing or simply dont need so many 1x4 bricks in grey color, you will put them all in a "melter" and within couple of hours all your grey bricks will become one solid cartridge ready to be used in printing new bricks, trees, horses, flowers, or whatever you want to.
You will see this coming in 5 years. Whatever the future holds, its probably wise NOT TO buy LEGO stock nowadays.
Re: What happened with LEGO
#87Earlier 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…
1. They still have the generic sets. 2. You can go to places like bricklink.com to buy almost any block or set that you want. 3. Branded sets usually mean more specialized pieces which only increase the source material you have to draw from when building things. 4. Lego also puts out stuff like this: http://www.eurobricks.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=67132 . Highly specialized pieces that aren't tied to a brand. Whe…
When I was a kid, one of the things on which I spent a fair amount of time was trying to figure out how to make a Lego vehicle with independent front suspension (and steering). Nowadays, they have specialized pieces that have effectively solved that problem.
I don't know whether I ever came up with a decent solution back then, but I do know that trying to come up with one was an excellent exercise, one that I probably would never have embarked on if I'd had the pieces they make today.
edit: grammar fix
Re: What happened with LEGO
#88The question should be what happened to the US dollar not lego. Lego is manufactured in Denmark, where they managed to spare themselves from several rounds of quantitative easing.
The author could really spare herself all the time and effort and just post a chart of dollar. He/she took it from the wrong end.
Re: What happened with LEGO
#89Unfortunately, with the 3D printers on the raise, the faith of a LEGO(r) brick is doomed. In the near future, there will be printers especially designed to print small LEGO pieces. Of course none of those 3DP will market as "print your own LEGO bricks", but kids will figure this one quickly. It will work a bit like a baking machine. Turn it on, leave it overnight and bunch of blocks roll out when you wake up in the m…
That seems unlikely to me, given the precision required to make a LEGO brick that's actually fun to play with. I bet it will be quite a while before we get commodity 3D printers that can produce bricks that consistently hold together and come apart.
Re: What happened with LEGO
#90Earlier quoted context omitted.
Have you been to a lego store ? http://farm6.staticflickr.com/5215/5460874051_7fbf9e4bf3_z.j...
No, but that'd be great.
I've been to the lego stores in Germany and England and the "pick your own bricks" has been in all of them (although the smaller ones have fewer different types).