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What happened with LEGO

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Re: What happened with LEGO

#21

Post by panacea »

wglb wrote: post #19
alanctgardner2 wrote: post #14

What I find amazing in the linked article (from the footnotes[1]) about Lego's financial situation was that every product engineer used to have carte blanche to go out and acquire tons of resin, just to make one set. That, and the effort they went to to service small, local stores. It's both amazing and depressing; obviously it doesn't scale at all, but it really sounds like a kickass corporate culture. Wired had a s…

I have an acquaintance who by profession is a toy designer. She is independent and highly thought of, but all the work is speculative. If your design doesn't make it past the first review, all your work is for naught. She is very creative and bright and is quite resourceful in putting ideas into prototype phase and has had some big wins. But there is a certain stress level associated with any creative endeavor. The s…

When swapping a plastic cat in place of a plastic iron makes BBC news because 'social media', I reckon the market is saturated by nostalgia trips and unless you get the gig to design a plastic cat and social media strategy? Nostalgia tralalala

Re: What happened with LEGO

#22

Post by koralatov »

shocks wrote: post #18

I've always called them Lego. Not Legos. Is that an American thing? (UK citizen here). Just curious.

I'm in the UK too, and it's always been `Lego' for both singular and plural, so I suspect `Legos' is something they say Across the Pond. I'm pretty sure I've heard it used in American films in the past.

Re: What happened with LEGO

#23

Post by dalke »

shocks wrote: post #18

I've always called them Lego. Not Legos. Is that an American thing? (UK citizen here). Just curious.

It's a bit of an annoyance. The company really wants people to say "Lego", not "Legos", out of trademark concerns. Starting in the 1980s, "Susan Williams" from Lego included a message in the catalog saying that they don't use the name "Legos" but instead "Lego bricks or toys." As http://english.stackexchange.com/questions/10839/legos-not-l... says, it became a shibboleth; if someone said "Legos" then they weren't a true fan.

This was in Miami in the 1980s. Others at that link tend to say that "Legos" is an Americanism. My information could easily be insular and outdated.

Re: What happened with LEGO

#24

Post by arrrg »

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…

What? Using a great diversity of pieces is what’s fun! I never understood this view on Lego – plus specialized bricks are very much out these days.

Re: What happened with LEGO

#25

Post by bmj »

stoolpigeon wrote: post #17
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…

It's all rather subjective and I can't say you're wrong. But I have a 9 year old son who loves lego. When he gets a set he builds what is on the box, that usually lasts a couple hours (maybe longer if it is a bigger/more difficult set) and then it gets torn down and put into the bin. Then all kinds of different stuff comes out. He and his friends have a great time with that bin. I do too. I don't think there are many…

I agree, and this is my experience with my own kids. Some sets stick around longer than others (the Quinjet comes to mind), but they are happily building new things with the more specialized pieces from other sets.

Re: What happened with LEGO

#26

Post by alanctgardner2 »

wglb wrote: post #19
alanctgardner2 wrote: post #14

What I find amazing in the linked article (from the footnotes[1]) about Lego's financial situation was that every product engineer used to have carte blanche to go out and acquire tons of resin, just to make one set. That, and the effort they went to to service small, local stores. It's both amazing and depressing; obviously it doesn't scale at all, but it really sounds like a kickass corporate culture. Wired had a s…

I have an acquaintance who by profession is a toy designer. She is independent and highly thought of, but all the work is speculative. If your design doesn't make it past the first review, all your work is for naught. She is very creative and bright and is quite resourceful in putting ideas into prototype phase and has had some big wins. But there is a certain stress level associated with any creative endeavor. The s…

I can imagine in her case, it would require a very well-rounded individual to design the toy, come up with marketing/branding, build it and pitch it. I was definitely thinking of working in the pipeline at a larger company, like you said, where someone could be more specialized and focus on one aspect of the design.

Does she have any interest in moving to a big company? As in, doing spec work until she demonstrates she's competent, and gets hired on? Or is there a career in freelance toy design? Like any self-employment it would be stressful, but you'd be more exciting at parties than the millionth person building FarmBookVille Freemium.

Re: What happened with LEGO

#28

Post by algorias »

> There is no way LEGO sets have always been this expensive; it is just molded plastic.

This is the worst kind of fallacy. First of all, plastic is more expensive than you think when many different pieces in many different colors need to be produced, stored and packaged in a precise manner. Secondly, the cost of development obviously gives huge added value to those pieces of 'just' plastic.

What happened to lego prices? The company is figuring out ways to stay viable in the market, that's what happened.

Re: What happened with LEGO

#30

Post by desas »

user24 wrote: post #16
DoubleCluster wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Scraping a website is absurdly easy. You can have the data before you'd have finished writing the email.

But it's not very polite to do (someone runs that website that you're hammering), and it doesn't open you up to a conversation that might get you even more access/data than you originally thought was accessible.

You don't have to hammer a website to scrape it. You can write scraper programs to limit the number of HTTP requests per second.
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