Behind a paywall, however in case it’s helpful to anyone else, you should be able to Google the title of the article and access it from there. This often works for other publications, as well (e.g., WSJ).
Wasn't / isn't that the case in Europe and North America as well? At least for middle class families.
It was very definitely my parents' policy. My sister and I had Duplo, Lego, wooden blocks, Lego Technic, Mecanno, a train set (sorry dad, "model railway"), K'Nex and board games.
Someone once gave my sister a doll. It's still in the original box in a cupboard in her room, and she's almost 30...
I'm pretty sure that's they're main advantage over other toy block companies now that their patent has expired. (It might have more info in the article but I don't know because the paywall.)
As a parent whos been buying various blocks over the last decade I think the main advantage lego has is the level of quality.
When the characters we wanted were with other companies I would maybe buy a few but they never stuck together quite right, or would break too easily. So I wouldnt buy more, or if i did it was just the character and not the set.
Lego has an extremely low manufacturing tolerance which makes it very expensive to produce, but also is responsible for the quality you see. Most people wouldn’t assume such precision manufacturing goes into something that’s sold as a toy.
Absolutely. We have a bunch of Megabloks mixed in with our Legos and I can separate them even without looking. The difference in tolerances is pretty interesting.
I seem to recall a post on the front page of HN discussing the incredible tolerances they achieve, at an almost unthinkable scale.
You can buy Lego blocks anywhere in the world, and they click perfectly with Lego blocks purchased anywhere else in the world, and purchased at just about any time in the past or present.
I think one of the best illustrations is the connecting pins [1], as the link shows people don't even always realize why they specifically distinguish them. But the black one has a fraction of a mm indentation that produces extra friction, and so makes structures connected with it more rigid, but they still fit in all the same holes.
Apart from the tolerances that also illustrates what their competitors rarely get right - Lego tends to opt for pieces that are generic enough to be reusable in as many contexts as possible where a lot of the competitors have sets full of pieces that are unmistakably one specific thing. That lets them not worry so much about the tolerances - if it works in that one context reliably, then it's fine. But the downside is it makes the sets even less flexible.
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.
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 cherry picking, or a set up. Girl "now" could just as easily have built any other number of sets.
Gender specific - well the market to both boys and girls. What else should they do? Try to sell "friends" to boys and "warrior robots" (or whatever) to girls, just to please the feminists?
I don't think they would mind girls buying the warrior stuff and boys buying the friends or elves stuff. More sales for them.
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), because of Lego not catering to girls, and at the same time claim Lego cars don't appeal to girls.
As if company bosses would shun earning billions by refusing to market to girls, just to enforce gender stereotypes. Companies want to make money. That's it. The new "themed" sets apparently sell better than the "random box of colored bricks" from the past.
> The new "themed" sets apparently sell better than the "random box of colored bricks" from the past.
In the 1990s, almost no sets were "random boxes of colored bricks" and they were all themed, but the themes weren't the commercialized junk they are today. You had Castle, Pirates and Space without any references to movie characters and the structures were rather harmonic without too many special or overly-sized parts. The minifigs had serious faces and were not cartoonish. A child would be able to invent its own story and get creative with those themes, rather than using the toy to play when it's not watching the movie.
Apparently the "commercialized junk" sells better, though. Lego was close to going bankrupt in the 90ies.
Apart from the price, I personally can't really complain about the modern Lego sets, either. They are nice puzzles, and my kids like to play with them. After a while they fall apart, and new things can be built.
I don't think Lego wants to pay for expensive Hollywood brands. They always try to establish their own brands, too, like Ninjago, Lego Movie, Nexo Knights. Often it seems the Hollywood stuff simply sells better.
Lego was actually flourishing in the early 90s particularly with Castle and Pirates. Each year brought new sub-themes and factions, and newer sets coexisted nicely with older ones. It started to go downhill with the advent of PC and PlayStation gaming in the late 90s. Kids suddenly had their attention elsewhere. Lego then changed the formula to launching short-lived flashy themes with spiced-up minifigs and unusual parts, and the old spirit of calm playfulness was largely gone.
> The new "themed" sets apparently sell better than the "random box of colored bricks" from the past.
That's at least partly because Lego won't sell you coloured bricks unless you buy a certain number of their sets anymore. (source: my step-mother who owned a toy-store).
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.
The minifigs are themselves an interesting departure from the figs that preceded them. The figs were simply too large, they stood about twice as tall as a minifig. But there were all the elements of a family in there, including grandmothers and babies. The first time a female minifig was made came a long time after the first male minifig.
If they did so, then presumably because they had more success with boys. The "Friends" line example seems to show that marketing it to girls successfully wasn't trivial.
Of all toy companies Lego is probably the last one to be criticized like that. Lego has famously worked against that impression for decades, e.g. [0] from the 70s and [1] from the 80s.
lego strikes the best balance between a construction and a colorful toy. all other construction set alternatives (such as fisher-technic and many others) are more boring because they have less decorative elements that make the models actually beautiful and fun to play with. and all other "beautiful" toys are mostly useless for any kind of contruction. only lego strikes the right kind of balance here, to the point that in my home pretty much no other toys survive. (and yes, i grew up with lego too, so i am quite content with only choosing lego or lego-clones as gifts)
In your opinion, in what way does a Lego tire differ from a regular tire?
The Wiktionary definition for tyre is "The ring-shaped protective covering around a wheel which is usually made of rubber or plastic composite and is either pneumatic or solid."
Lego is a really cool company. One fun fact: At least the "techy" parts don't have assigned desks. They're also investing in cool new tech, like compostable lego (of course, no easy feat given the requirements on durability). It's also extremely test/research driven. (source: a friend who works there)
I think of workspaces as "introverted" and "extroverted" and I think it's a mistake to say one is inherently better than the other. The reality is that the best workspace is the one that fulfills the needs of the team using it.
Yup, we did all pair programming, all the time. Even mostly did test driven development. It was pretty awesome.
The room was set up like a computer lab, with a few rows of computers. Each was an iMac with an equal sized Apple Cinema Display that was mirrored, along with 2 keyboards and 2 mice.
The machines were reimaged occasionally to make sure everything was always the same and up to date. You never had to worry about setting up an environment or anything.
We all had personal laptops, but almost never used them.
Noticed their Concord, CA (east Bay area) store from the highway a while back, and while I haven't been inside yet, was surprised to see they've got 20+ locations in the US and Canada.
Had no idea that was a chain. Saw one open up a few years ago in the somewhat small town of Monroe WA. It's far enough outside of Seattle that I wouldn't expect it to be thriving, but it's apparently still there.
which luckily for me, is a 5 minute walk away from my work! Earlier this year my son (8) and I really enjoyed watching the Australian Lego Masters TV competition. https://www.thebrickman.com/lego-masters-australia/
That ability for adults and children to share in the fun has got to be part of their success; that and customers that potentially never grow out of the product.
I really look forward to taking my son and two daughters to our local store. All three kids are really different but they always find something that interests them. I love helping them put the sets together too.
I predict they’ll close 1/2 of those in five years time. There will eventually be a recession and I don’t think they’ll be able to support that many stores.
China is becoming one of LEGO’s biggest markets, but their store presence here is still minimal. According to the article, 140 of the new stores will be in China.
I’m sure there’s plenty room for growth in a couple other markets as well.
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 this space, you'll be familiar with the quality variations. LEGO has put immense engineering effort into having the best plastic and tightest tolerances in the industry, and I can really feel the difference when building.
Here's one example comparing some of the clone brands to LEGO's own products:
Other brands do continue to improve, and there are many companies out there that make very nice building toys, but LEGO has done a nice job making sure that everything they ship is of good quality.
I'm not saying nothing else survives. Mega Bloks have been around for 30 years and are still filling their market niche well as far as I know. I'm simply saying that quality has been what sets LEGO apart from its competitors. They make great products and target wealthier populations. Their prices (and likely also margins) are higher than their competitors. They're basically the Apple of toys.
Check out Blox bricks for a scary good clone for regular bricks. I can tell every other clone from LEGO bricks with my eyes closed but that one is very good, even the color is fine and they age well too.
> 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.
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 competitors don't worry too much about IP laws. You can buy a clone brand X-wing for 50% of the cost of the genuine set, but the quality is significantly lower in my experience.
I read this, believed it, and repeated it to a friend in a Lego store. My friend then pointed out that there are tons of models with guns and many other weapons. I think the actual policy is that their original nonlicensed models don't feature modern day guns or military vehicles, but they are totally fine making models with guns and weapons of war so long as they are from the fantasy world or they are not modern.
I still don't see it. There are sci-fi guns like blasters, historical guns like flintlocks, and there are guns used in superhero sets, but nothing for Lego City or any other set that claims to represent real life.
Admittedly a revolver and not a semi-auto, and I don't know if it's from a current or recently discontinued set. But it's definitely from a modern set.
In the first picture, is that from an actual Lego City set, or has someone added the revolver to the police officer from another set?
The BrickLink page lists the revolver as part of a bunch of western and cavalry sets, that is, historical sets. Click "Item Appears In: 7 Sets" to the right.
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 minifig and not portable at all) that really isn’t very gun-like at all.
Not even the minifig prints include suggestions of guns.
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.
The introduction of weapons was gradual, and except for Batman, they are either historical or futuristic.
From my observations as a foreigner in Denmark, historical or fantasy weapons like swords, spears, shields, clubs acceptable and common. A 6 year old might have a wooden one, and be seen anywhere in the city. A 16 year old might have a foam and fibreglass one, and be seen LARPing in the woods at the weekend. A gun that isn't clearly a water pistol is a rare sight.
Even though Lego sets do sometimes include weapons, even very gun-like weapons, to me there is still a pretty clear line Lego draws. Their City sets don’t include guns and guns are the exception, not the rule, otherwise.
Look at Lego’s competitors if you want to get an idea of what Lego could be doing. Obviously those are looking for their niche, so that’s to be expected. They have modern and 20th century military equipment sets and I could never imagine Lego releasing sets like that.
I happen to own Lego sets of pirates, which also happen to be my favorites. They have cutlass, pistols, muskets, barrels of rum, jugs of moonshine and other piratey/armada things.
> You can buy a clone brand X-wing for 50% of the cost of the genuine set, but the quality is significantly lower in my experience.
Often the knockoff sets are around 25% of the Lego price—I bought a Lepin Porsche for >$80 instead of $300. And the quality was 85%-90% of Lego. So slightly lower, but at a quarter of the price—and price is a feature.
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."
Yes, and also their shops are more like a DIY warehouse/hardware store, where you get inspired.
I was only about some plastic bricks, ecommerce would suffice. I really think it is the kind of fantasy/DIY/inspiration that you only get from direct experience.
also it seems they thrive on their focus on price - I'm sure a fair part of that is in the licencing of the tie-ins - but you never see them in a race to the bottom
Profits are certainly higher with Friends and City than with Star Wars. Lego saves a lot on licensing there. And the Star Wars sets are a bit more pricey, but per piece the difference isn't that big.
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.
LEGO is very good at recycling shapes in different colors as special parts for sets. The biggest tooling costs are in the minifigs for special sets, those are almost always there because custom minifigs are an easy way to make a set unique. That way you drive sales because people can't make the set from loose parts.
It should be easy to determine if they are more profitable assuming some kind of percentage going to the brands. If the mark-up is lower than a small percentage they are likely not more profitable, otherwise likely they are more profitable on a unit basis (per set).
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.
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.
As the parent of a Lego-consuming youngster I have to agree - but it's also interesting to watch Lego try to create lines that fail to thrive (compare Chima to Ninjago, both started at about the same time, only one remains...) Partly that seems to be about story-telling, maybe ninjas just easier to work with.
Lego Ninjago cartoon is actually quite good. Its on season 9 if i am not mistaken and the movie was pretty good too. Considering its an own brand - it's doing well.
What all stories people tell themselves to shell out wads of dough on bullshit no one asked for. Apple and every other luxury brand in the world makes use of this story telling subset of the population as an external evangelizing church to keep the dogma flowing.
I have a bunch of Lego from decades ago that I am slowly offloading to kids of family and friends. I never bought any of my sets with this bonus usecase in mind caring about plastic quality or lifespan . I bought them because I like building stuff.
Well I am salty. And I can't stand what how consumerist LEGO has become. Plus I don't like evangelists. Instead of allowing kids to figure out the value of something themselves, they fill their heads with bullet points about what they are supposed to like about a product.
Kids may not care about product value. But the people who buy the stuff for them do. I know I prefer to buy LEGO over competitor products for my children because I know they won't ever have difficulties building due to parts not fitting well.
I had an opportunity to help a kid in the family put together lego-like model. Parts fitted so bad. One or two were not even fully shaped as if not enough plastic was injected into the mold.
> have a bunch of Lego from decades ago that I am slowly offloading to kids of family and friends.
I think that proves the grand-parents point about quality just fine, even if you didn't buy it with that bonus in mind. People today do know that LEGO lasts for decades and it may factor into their decisions. It may also factor into yours now if you buy a new toy for a kid.
> The phrase "det bedste ir ikke for godt" (roughly "only the best is good enough") has a long history in the company.
Just for the record, the phrase is »kun det bedste er godt nok«.
Your phrase would translate as 'the best is not too good', or in more natural English 'the best is bad' (which more accurately conveys the same meaning).
I don't think success like this can be explained by company slogans. They do indeed have very impressive quality and creating parts with the required precision cannot be achieve with a random deep-drawing plastic process.
But I believe a large part of their success is due to being at the right place at the right time. They also had very good marketing. They keep themselves present with all their branded stuff, even if their standard palette is probably far more successful. And they seem to put a lot of effort in their models.
Curiously, some other hobby markets like miniature trains seem to allow for more competition, even if the market is so much smaller.
The quality of LEGO products has been constant across the period when they almost went bankrupt to the point where they are now. It’s not the quality that explains their ups and downs. A huge factors is their branding strategy. When they almost went bankrupt they where paying tons of money to make branded sets that just didn’t push them anywhere, now they have better deals and are doing both Marvel sets, DC sets and also have all the LEGO games, the movies and the LEGO animations putting them at the forefront of every child’s attention. They also have a meme division that’s watching social media full time, and trying to push LEGO variants of everything that goes viral. When the dress of indeterminate color was going around they had a LEGO version the same day. At the same time they’ve managed to create some extremely effective store fronts that sell their brand as much as just the products taking a hint from Apple/Disney.
Now don’t get me wrong injection molding with sub 50um precision is cool. But that’s not the core of their success, they where doing that way back before they struck gold, and 4 year olds playing with their LEGO-hulk wouldn’t notice. Geeks who value quality engineering might appreciate it, but the LEGO-architects was never a blockbuster success, and even their NXT Robot series while fun, aren’t what’s pushing profits.
Toys R Us charged higher prices because they were offering a shopping destination, something closer to Disneyland than Walmart. Their customers knew their prices were higher but shopped there for the experience. They didn’t last forever, but they did last much longer than their competitors like KB and Playco that had lower prices but a more ordinary shopping experience.
they are gone because the company decided to dump their pension obligations via bankruptcy. they are magically coming back and the dumb and stupid thinks it is due to some efficiency improvements.
this scam of people taking over a company and selling profitable assets to hide the elimination of pension obligations needs to stop. the government should control pension just like healthcare.
In my experience the actual Lego stores ... are terrible price wise. Everything is solidly MSRP, I've yet to see a good sale from them.
Sales online and local retail shops are far better pricing wise.
Although I've visited the local Lego store, I don't really need to visit to get a good feel for a given product, and the prices mean I don't buy anything.
This means though it is great for their margin. There is no distributor cut and usually no discounting. Thus they have likely identified that they make the most profit from their own stores rather than from other distributors (WalMart, ToysRUs) and thus they should increase flow in their own stores.
Also less competing products, distractions.
I think Lego stores are not for the price sensitive Lego buyer but for those buying for someone else. These are less informed buyers.
As a parent I don’t see many competition for LEGO: Duplo for toddlers, LEGO for kids, Mindstorms to teach kids programming, Technic for older kids. No soldering needed and can be used in relatively small apartments. And quality is a big topic here - LEGO uses molding equipment with pressure sensors, so they all bricks are the same. Cheap knockoffs frustrate kids, because every brick is different and sometimes one can’t join them at all. And you can build anything you want with couple sets since LEGO provides all the instructions online!
They recently also bought back of the Legoland parks, which they have not owned since 2005 where they had to sell it because they were not doing so well doing that time.
This is unrelated to the stores but related to Lego and the topic of knockoffs and product range. One market I've been seeing a niche level growth in is nano blocks. Lots of knock offs but nothing compares with the quality of the original nano block stuff. Has anyone else tried these out? I'd love for Lego to merge them in and create sets related to all the IP they seem to be building around these days. A nano block star wars ship set would be amazing.
Bringing me around to the reason I mentioned this. It's nice to see Lego spread further. It feels like it's been a while since I saw them introduce a new line of toys though (like the mindstorm range). Would love if miniature blocks could become a thing.
Lego is becoming more and more of a scumbag company.
First hit this year was that they sued a small Lego shop in Frankfurt called "Held der Steine". His logo was a standing brick, but it could have been any brick, no Lego logo was seen or whatnot. They sued him for infringement of their trademarks anyway. That gave quite a huge media wave, I think the video of "Held der Steine" on YouTube where he lays out what happened has seven figure views.
The next big hit happened yesterday when bailiffs walked in another small shop that is selling brick construction sets. Lego found that some of the figures from some chinese vendors look somewhat like their mini figures and obtained a restraining order for that shop. Bailiffs took some sets with them, the business owner was quite shaken when stating on YouTube what happened and that they will check which sets they can still sell and which not and that Lego threatened him with something like half a million Euro fine if he would violate the restraining orders. His company is called "Bluebrixx".
Besides this behaviour Lego is getting more and more expensive, while the quality of the models and the part count go down. Just look at some of the regular Star Wars models for example. The "bang for the buck" is pretty bad on those.
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 do. Stickers are really lame. They never go on right and peel off at the corners easily, but if you pull them off they'll definitely leave goop behind.
My kids and I still enjoy Lego despite this, but we haven't bought a new set for a long time.
I buy LEGO regularly and the bricks I get are very tough. Even dropping entire models I don’t think I’ve had one brick shatter. But it is possible the quality varies.
Yeah, they are not nearly as good. I've had pieces snap just from having them in a box, rooting through to find other pieces, they must have snagged. And dropping regular pieces on a tiled floor from table height, had the side break! Maybe I was unlucky, but that would've been unheard of back in the 80s.
Uh, are you sure those were Legos? I have tens of thousands of loose pieces and exactly one has been damaged in use (a clip that broke after being walked on).
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.
> If you drop a normal brick on a hard floor the brick is likely to shatter.
If they shatter, they are defective. You can contact Lego[0], mail them the broken piece and get a replacement, no questions asked. Bricks are designed to last a decade with normal play and shattering would be a severe safety risk.
I've never seen a Lego brick shatter. I just threw a few of my sons Lego bricks as hard as I could at a brick wall, and they were all fine (but I nearly weren't, as I almost got a few of them back in my face).
If those are actually Lego and not counterfeit or another brand, then it sounds like a defect.
I also can't find any examples of those narrow waist sections you refer to, which makes me think maybe it's a different brand?
Not saying it's nice, but these are things a company like Lego needs to do, or risk losing trademarks on the iconic block type... I looked at the examples and they do show similarities to their IP so they need to sue or risk losing their own rights.
For the SW Lego sets, Disney will be sure to take a big cut of that increased prices on the product. Can't really blame Lego for that either. I can't say for sure regarding quality, this might be a thing?
The story about "Held der Steine" looked to me like an attorney going too far. Stupid move, stupid shitstorm ensues. The design of the classical Lego minifigure OTOH is protected. It's completely legal and understandable to go after copies of that.
This looks very much like something fishy going on. They call them "Bluebrixx-Specials" but they are clearly not original designs.
What does a "classical ambulance" do in a category called "SF"? It looks eerily similar to Ecto-1, that's why. I also suppose they don't have the license to do classical Battlestar Galactica models.
> This looks very much like something fishy going on. They call them "Bluebrixx-Specials" but they are clearly not original designs.
I'm with you on that, but can you really protect designs like these?
Obviously they are trying hard to sail around paying licensing fees which I can understand and don't really see a problem with.
Paying those licensing fees is mainly for marketing reasons and if you want to keep marketing costs low I see no problem in selling a "classical ambulance" instead of "Ecto-1 from Ghostbusters".
Trademark law is lot more fuzzy than copyright law. Whereas copyright comes into existence just by creating something, trademarks are only granted after official registering. And then they can still be challenged.
But with the Ecto-1-look-alike, this is still very clear to me. That's not how a NY classical ambulance looks, that's how a classical ambulance looks after being modified by the Ghostbusters. That's a significant point.
Given that this is even a licensed model, I'm surprised that it isn't part of the provisional injunction.
> First hit this year was that they sued a small Lego shop in Frankfurt called "Held der Steine". His logo was a standing brick, but it could have been any brick, no Lego logo was seen or whatnot. They sued him for infringement of their trademarks anyway. That gave quite a huge media wave, I think the video of "Held der Steine" on YouTube where he lays out what happened has seven figure views.
He tried to trademark that logo and sell merchandise with it.
Using stuff that looks like LEGO trademarks is fine, trademarking it and selling your own merchandise with it obviously is not.
LEGO sells clothes with a 3D 2x2 brick, isometric projection, looking at the corner, red, with the lego text on it.
Which looks – except for colour and number of studs — exactly like the Held der Steine logo.
Held der Steine then tried to trademark it not just as logo for youtube, but also with the explicit purpose to sell merchandise, such as clothes, with it.
At this point, the trademarks conflict. The law, being horribly written, requires one of the trademark holders to either license from the other, or give up the claim.
As Lego wasn’t gonna give up their claim, and Held der Steine wasn’t gonna license their logo, there weren’t exactly few options left.
It’s a similar situation as with Apple vs. Apfelkind a few years back. A german store which used a silhouette of an apple as logo, which was fine. Until they tried to trademark it, not just for their store or for clothes as merchandise, but also for electronic products.
LEGO was built on the premise of patent infringement and the blatant copying of others designs. They have a 'play nice' slogan that they use to try to pretend that they are 'playing nice' if others play nice as well but they're quick to engage their legal department.
Most of the toy manufactures/retailers target only kids, while Lego sells also to a significant number of adults... they positioned themselves almost perfectly...
get lego by the kilo on ebay or similar places. look for deals.
and (some will disagree with that) buy clone-brands that are cheaper. the quality of the clone brands is catching up. the only downside with clone-brands is that the often actually clone lego designed sets instead of designing their own which is not really ethical. but many brands also have their own sets.
lego by the kilo is effectively only had second hand, so any places where second hand stuff is sold.
local flea-markets for example, thrift stores, craigs list, other auctioning sites...
on craigs list and newspaper classifieds you could even ask. some people keep their old lego, waiting for an opportunity to give/sell it to someone who deserves/needs it instead of selling it to someone looking to make a profit.
154 comments
[ 4.4 ms ] story [ 226 ms ] threadHad 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.
It was very definitely my parents' policy. My sister and I had Duplo, Lego, wooden blocks, Lego Technic, Mecanno, a train set (sorry dad, "model railway"), K'Nex and board games.
Someone once gave my sister a doll. It's still in the original box in a cupboard in her room, and she's almost 30...
When the characters we wanted were with other companies I would maybe buy a few but they never stuck together quite right, or would break too easily. So I wouldnt buy more, or if i did it was just the character and not the set.
You can buy Lego blocks anywhere in the world, and they click perfectly with Lego blocks purchased anywhere else in the world, and purchased at just about any time in the past or present.
Apart from the tolerances that also illustrates what their competitors rarely get right - Lego tends to opt for pieces that are generic enough to be reusable in as many contexts as possible where a lot of the competitors have sets full of pieces that are unmistakably one specific thing. That lets them not worry so much about the tolerances - if it works in that one context reliably, then it's fine. But the downside is it makes the sets even less flexible.
[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/lego/comments/4uv5tl/why_does_lego_...
I don't think that they used to be gender specific however with the Lego friends and elves sets they have definitely gone that way
Gender specific - well the market to both boys and girls. What else should they do? Try to sell "friends" to boys and "warrior robots" (or whatever) to girls, just to please the feminists?
I don't think they would mind girls buying the warrior stuff and boys buying the friends or elves stuff. More sales for them.
/me is still way ahead of his children, hah!
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), because of Lego not catering to girls, and at the same time claim Lego cars don't appeal to girls.
As if company bosses would shun earning billions by refusing to market to girls, just to enforce gender stereotypes. Companies want to make money. That's it. The new "themed" sets apparently sell better than the "random box of colored bricks" from the past.
In the 1990s, almost no sets were "random boxes of colored bricks" and they were all themed, but the themes weren't the commercialized junk they are today. You had Castle, Pirates and Space without any references to movie characters and the structures were rather harmonic without too many special or overly-sized parts. The minifigs had serious faces and were not cartoonish. A child would be able to invent its own story and get creative with those themes, rather than using the toy to play when it's not watching the movie.
Some parents prefer not to have brands or advertising within their children's toys, and Lego used to be free from this influence.
Of course they were commercial. They did a space theme because they thought it would sell, just like they are now doing Star Wars because they sell.
Apart from the price, I personally can't really complain about the modern Lego sets, either. They are nice puzzles, and my kids like to play with them. After a while they fall apart, and new things can be built.
I don't think Lego wants to pay for expensive Hollywood brands. They always try to establish their own brands, too, like Ninjago, Lego Movie, Nexo Knights. Often it seems the Hollywood stuff simply sells better.
Sales slump in 1993 - I don't think that agrees with your thesis. Maybe they put out so much stuff out of desperation, to find something that sticks.
That's at least partly because Lego won't sell you coloured bricks unless you buy a certain number of their sets anymore. (source: my step-mother who owned a toy-store).
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.
[0] https://imgur.com/gallery/XmlDUox
[1] https://imgur.com/gallery/xwAsW56
FTFY
The Wiktionary definition for tyre is "The ring-shaped protective covering around a wheel which is usually made of rubber or plastic composite and is either pneumatic or solid."
More than close enough IMO.
Can’t tell if you think that’s a good thing or you’re being sarcastic?
To each their own of course. Not everyone has to like working at every company. I've never been unhappier than when I was in my own personal office.
I think of workspaces as "introverted" and "extroverted" and I think it's a mistake to say one is inherently better than the other. The reality is that the best workspace is the one that fulfills the needs of the team using it.
The room was set up like a computer lab, with a few rows of computers. Each was an iMac with an equal sized Apple Cinema Display that was mirrored, along with 2 keyboards and 2 mice.
The machines were reimaged occasionally to make sure everything was always the same and up to date. You never had to worry about setting up an environment or anything.
We all had personal laptops, but almost never used them.
https://bricksandminifigs.com/
Noticed their Concord, CA (east Bay area) store from the highway a while back, and while I haven't been inside yet, was surprised to see they've got 20+ locations in the US and Canada.
The store was really cool.
https://www.newshub.co.nz/home/money/2019/07/lego-store-comi...
which luckily for me, is a 5 minute walk away from my work! Earlier this year my son (8) and I really enjoyed watching the Australian Lego Masters TV competition. https://www.thebrickman.com/lego-masters-australia/
That's less than one new store per country on average.
To put it in perspective there are 37,000 McDonald's and 11,766 Wal-Marts in the world. Even Levi's has 750 of their own stores worldwide.
I’m sure there’s plenty room for growth in a couple other markets as well.
If you've used and compared the various brands in this space, you'll be familiar with the quality variations. LEGO has put immense engineering effort into having the best plastic and tightest tolerances in the industry, and I can really feel the difference when building.
Here's one example comparing some of the clone brands to LEGO's own products:
https://uploads.brickset.com/docs/clonebrands_v1.7.pdf
Other brands do continue to improve, and there are many companies out there that make very nice building toys, but LEGO has done a nice job making sure that everything they ship is of good quality.
This makes no sense, otherwise only things that are high quality would survive. Everything proves otherwise.
Lego works because it is so versatile.
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.
Its also worth noting that some of LEGO's competitors don't worry too much about IP laws. You can buy a clone brand X-wing for 50% of the cost of the genuine set, but the quality is significantly lower in my experience.
try this
Admittedly a revolver and not a semi-auto, and I don't know if it's from a current or recently discontinued set. But it's definitely from a modern set.
edit: link to the specific piece: https://www.bricklink.com/v2/catalog/catalogitem.page?P=1356...
The BrickLink page lists the revolver as part of a bunch of western and cavalry sets, that is, historical sets. Click "Item Appears In: 7 Sets" to the right.
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 minifig and not portable at all) that really isn’t very gun-like at all.
Not even the minifig prints include suggestions of guns.
0. https://www.amazon.com/PLAYMOBIL%C2%AE-6872-Police-Command-C...
https://www.quora.com/When-did-LEGO-set-start-containing-con...
The introduction of weapons was gradual, and except for Batman, they are either historical or futuristic.
From my observations as a foreigner in Denmark, historical or fantasy weapons like swords, spears, shields, clubs acceptable and common. A 6 year old might have a wooden one, and be seen anywhere in the city. A 16 year old might have a foam and fibreglass one, and be seen LARPing in the woods at the weekend. A gun that isn't clearly a water pistol is a rare sight.
Even though Lego sets do sometimes include weapons, even very gun-like weapons, to me there is still a pretty clear line Lego draws. Their City sets don’t include guns and guns are the exception, not the rule, otherwise.
Look at Lego’s competitors if you want to get an idea of what Lego could be doing. Obviously those are looking for their niche, so that’s to be expected. They have modern and 20th century military equipment sets and I could never imagine Lego releasing sets like that.
That line got me thinking. I think you are right and I've never seen a police minifig with a weapon.
Often the knockoff sets are around 25% of the Lego price—I bought a Lepin Porsche for >$80 instead of $300. And the quality was 85%-90% of Lego. So slightly lower, but at a quarter of the price—and price is a feature.
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."
- 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
I was only about some plastic bricks, ecommerce would suffice. I really think it is the kind of fantasy/DIY/inspiration that you only get from direct experience.
LEGO is the new hardware store.
So if their license free sets sell better, then it would stand to reason they make more profit off of these.
It should be easy to determine if they are more profitable assuming some kind of percentage going to the brands. If the mark-up is lower than a small percentage they are likely not more profitable, otherwise likely they are more profitable on a unit basis (per set).
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.
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.
What all stories people tell themselves to shell out wads of dough on bullshit no one asked for. Apple and every other luxury brand in the world makes use of this story telling subset of the population as an external evangelizing church to keep the dogma flowing.
I have a bunch of Lego from decades ago that I am slowly offloading to kids of family and friends. I never bought any of my sets with this bonus usecase in mind caring about plastic quality or lifespan . I bought them because I like building stuff.
It's almost like consumers aren't basing their decisions on random dogma.
> I have a bunch of Lego from decades ago that I am slowly offloading to kids of family and friends
Surely even you have to admit that the engineering quality is what allows you to be able to hand down those bricks?
I think that proves the grand-parents point about quality just fine, even if you didn't buy it with that bonus in mind. People today do know that LEGO lasts for decades and it may factor into their decisions. It may also factor into yours now if you buy a new toy for a kid.
Just for the record, the phrase is »kun det bedste er godt nok«.
Your phrase would translate as 'the best is not too good', or in more natural English 'the best is bad' (which more accurately conveys the same meaning).
But I believe a large part of their success is due to being at the right place at the right time. They also had very good marketing. They keep themselves present with all their branded stuff, even if their standard palette is probably far more successful. And they seem to put a lot of effort in their models.
Curiously, some other hobby markets like miniature trains seem to allow for more competition, even if the market is so much smaller.
Now don’t get me wrong injection molding with sub 50um precision is cool. But that’s not the core of their success, they where doing that way back before they struck gold, and 4 year olds playing with their LEGO-hulk wouldn’t notice. Geeks who value quality engineering might appreciate it, but the LEGO-architects was never a blockbuster success, and even their NXT Robot series while fun, aren’t what’s pushing profits.
And I am glad Toys 'R Us are gone.
You must have had a different Toys R Us to the UK then because they were dismal places over here.
this scam of people taking over a company and selling profitable assets to hide the elimination of pension obligations needs to stop. the government should control pension just like healthcare.
Sales online and local retail shops are far better pricing wise.
Although I've visited the local Lego store, I don't really need to visit to get a good feel for a given product, and the prices mean I don't buy anything.
Also less competing products, distractions.
I think Lego stores are not for the price sensitive Lego buyer but for those buying for someone else. These are less informed buyers.
As a parent I don’t see many competition for LEGO: Duplo for toddlers, LEGO for kids, Mindstorms to teach kids programming, Technic for older kids. No soldering needed and can be used in relatively small apartments. And quality is a big topic here - LEGO uses molding equipment with pressure sensors, so they all bricks are the same. Cheap knockoffs frustrate kids, because every brick is different and sometimes one can’t join them at all. And you can build anything you want with couple sets since LEGO provides all the instructions online!
https://nypost.com/2019/06/28/lego-strikes-deal-to-buy-back-...
Bringing me around to the reason I mentioned this. It's nice to see Lego spread further. It feels like it's been a while since I saw them introduce a new line of toys though (like the mindstorm range). Would love if miniature blocks could become a thing.
First hit this year was that they sued a small Lego shop in Frankfurt called "Held der Steine". His logo was a standing brick, but it could have been any brick, no Lego logo was seen or whatnot. They sued him for infringement of their trademarks anyway. That gave quite a huge media wave, I think the video of "Held der Steine" on YouTube where he lays out what happened has seven figure views.
The next big hit happened yesterday when bailiffs walked in another small shop that is selling brick construction sets. Lego found that some of the figures from some chinese vendors look somewhat like their mini figures and obtained a restraining order for that shop. Bailiffs took some sets with them, the business owner was quite shaken when stating on YouTube what happened and that they will check which sets they can still sell and which not and that Lego threatened him with something like half a million Euro fine if he would violate the restraining orders. His company is called "Bluebrixx".
Besides this behaviour Lego is getting more and more expensive, while the quality of the models and the part count go down. Just look at some of the regular Star Wars models for example. The "bang for the buck" is pretty bad on those.
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 do. Stickers are really lame. They never go on right and peel off at the corners easily, but if you pull them off they'll definitely leave goop behind.
My kids and I still enjoy Lego despite this, but we haven't bought a new set for a long time.
Are they really like that nowadays?
When I was a child they were near indestructible.
If they shatter, they are defective. You can contact Lego[0], mail them the broken piece and get a replacement, no questions asked. Bricks are designed to last a decade with normal play and shattering would be a severe safety risk.
They take this sort of thing very seriously.
[0] https://www.lego.com/en-us/service/replacementparts
If those are actually Lego and not counterfeit or another brand, then it sounds like a defect.
I also can't find any examples of those narrow waist sections you refer to, which makes me think maybe it's a different brand?
For the SW Lego sets, Disney will be sure to take a big cut of that increased prices on the product. Can't really blame Lego for that either. I can't say for sure regarding quality, this might be a thing?
But with "Bluebrixx", I'm not so sure if this is all. There might be more about that. Look for example at this page: https://www.bluebrixx.com/de/bluebrixxspecials/scifi
This looks very much like something fishy going on. They call them "Bluebrixx-Specials" but they are clearly not original designs.
What does a "classical ambulance" do in a category called "SF"? It looks eerily similar to Ecto-1, that's why. I also suppose they don't have the license to do classical Battlestar Galactica models.
They should be very careful about such things.
I'm with you on that, but can you really protect designs like these?
Obviously they are trying hard to sail around paying licensing fees which I can understand and don't really see a problem with.
Paying those licensing fees is mainly for marketing reasons and if you want to keep marketing costs low I see no problem in selling a "classical ambulance" instead of "Ecto-1 from Ghostbusters".
But with the Ecto-1-look-alike, this is still very clear to me. That's not how a NY classical ambulance looks, that's how a classical ambulance looks after being modified by the Ghostbusters. That's a significant point.
Given that this is even a licensed model, I'm surprised that it isn't part of the provisional injunction.
He tried to trademark that logo and sell merchandise with it.
Using stuff that looks like LEGO trademarks is fine, trademarking it and selling your own merchandise with it obviously is not.
Which looks – except for colour and number of studs — exactly like the Held der Steine logo.
Held der Steine then tried to trademark it not just as logo for youtube, but also with the explicit purpose to sell merchandise, such as clothes, with it.
At this point, the trademarks conflict. The law, being horribly written, requires one of the trademark holders to either license from the other, or give up the claim.
As Lego wasn’t gonna give up their claim, and Held der Steine wasn’t gonna license their logo, there weren’t exactly few options left.
It’s a similar situation as with Apple vs. Apfelkind a few years back. A german store which used a silhouette of an apple as logo, which was fine. Until they tried to trademark it, not just for their store or for clothes as merchandise, but also for electronic products.
The LEGO brand is forever tarnished by this.
https://www.watson.de/imgdb/c6c7/Qx,A,0,0,874,491,141,7,629,...
I don't think that's generally true. I'm often checking price per brick when buying Technic sets and cheapest per brick came out in recent years.
Star Wars is expensive because when you buy them you volunteer to pay Mickey Mouse tax.
and (some will disagree with that) buy clone-brands that are cheaper. the quality of the clone brands is catching up. the only downside with clone-brands is that the often actually clone lego designed sets instead of designing their own which is not really ethical. but many brands also have their own sets.
local flea-markets for example, thrift stores, craigs list, other auctioning sites...
on craigs list and newspaper classifieds you could even ask. some people keep their old lego, waiting for an opportunity to give/sell it to someone who deserves/needs it instead of selling it to someone looking to make a profit.
it takes some searching, patience and good luck.