How Hollywood Tie-Ins Saved Lego 193
MBCook writes "The New York Times published an article on Saturday profiling Lego, and how tie-ins with movies have helped save the company. 'Even as other toymakers struggle, this Danish maker of toy bricks is enjoying double-digit sales gains and swelling earnings. In recent years, Lego has increasingly focused on toys that many parents wouldn't recognize from their own childhood. Hollywood themes are commanding more shelf space, a far cry from the idealistic, purely imagination-oriented play that drove Lego for years and was as much a religion as a business strategy in Billund.' The article also mentions coming Lego Stores, a Lego board game, how Lego now allows sets with violence (like a gun for Indiana Jones), and how since 2004 Lego has cut part count nearly in half by encouraging re-use of parts and stopping one-off pieces."
Where's Technic? (Score:5, Interesting)
The tie-ins are tolerable even though they're still horribly dependent on using special pieces. What I want to know is why have they gutted the much more interesting Technic line? You rarely see the sets that are still produced on the big retailers shelves in the US anymore.
That's just the trick isn't it? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Guns in lego are new? (Score:1, Interesting)
Yup, my old yellow castle set had knights with halberds.
Damn, I feel a wave of nostalgia coming on...
Re:I really like Legos (Score:5, Interesting)
Not when you are playing with LEGO Mindstorms NXT [amazon.com]. I got my set ( the older version ) when Ed Nisley, writing for Dr Dobbs at the time, recommended them as a way to learn about embedded programming. Here is a great example [cnet.com] of how awesome the robots can be.
Re:Guns in lego are new? (Score:4, Interesting)
Space sets had those nifty bazookas too. But even so, with the large Technic guys I can make ninja swords out of an axel and a grey spacer.
Bah, that's nothing. When I was a kid (in the late 60s) one of my friends had an old bazooka - a REAL one. Okay, no projectiles, just the launcher. We used to fight over who got to use it when we played Army.
We also had old canvas army jackets (REALLY cool if it had your actual surname on it, versus the usual random surname), locking ammo boxes, stuff like that. Most of our dads were, or had been, in the military - and a lot of that stuff seemed to wander home. My dad didn't bring home infantry stuff, so while I had a camo jacket I was in awe of the kid with the bazooka.
I also remember eating a lot of just-expired C-rations. Those, I think, were legit. We used to fight over who got the one with a particular dessert we liked (most of the actual meals were crap, excepting maybe the beans and franks). Didn't get to keep the cigarettes though.
What's any of this got to do with legos? Nothing, but hey - you brought up bazookas. And I believe I still owned some Legos back then. Okay, well it's time for my medication.
Re:So, in short... (Score:2, Interesting)
why stay the course and become the next GM
To get a ginormous handout from the tax payers and continue running your business into the ground, of course!
Black Seas Barracuda (Score:1, Interesting)
(This is coming from someone who, as a kid, saved up for a year to buy the Black Seas Barracuda and subscribed to "Brick Kicks" magazine)
I used to question the movie tie-ins with LEGO. Then I helped my friend build the LEGO Millenium Falcon for his kid... and it was a blast. It made me realize that the fun of LEGOs was putting them together, destroying them, and building something new. The tie-ins don't really ruin that. If it keeps LEGO around, it's a good thing. You can still buy non-tie-in LEGOs (and it looks to me like the new City LEGOs sets are really cool).
Now, LEGO needs to make the next step and allow people to build their own kits online. I think that would be even bigger than LEGO Star Wars.
Re:lego mirrors real life (Score:3, Interesting)
You might THINK that there are a bunch of specialized pieces that are tailored to make one specific thing, but that's not necessarily true. Yes, there are more different kinds of pieces and some are rather unique. But it is actually hard to find a particular piece that isn't also used in other sets. It may be painted differently or be made of a different color, but that's the way it goes. These more unique pieces enables even more creativity, not less. Go browse "www.mocpages.com" and just look at what people have made using these "specialized pieces." They make everything you can imagine from them. One of my favorite Lego creations of all time is the Futurama Lego set someone created. (Just Google for Lego Futurama) It is most certainly NOT an official Lego set. It uses a lot of specialized pieces and is extremely creative work.
Lego may have started out being "blocky" and only good for making houses with roofs at 45 degree angles, but it is much more than that now, and it is largely thanks to the availability of these "less basic" parts.
Re:So, in short... (Score:3, Interesting)
I grew up with Lego, and I can't express the joy it gives me to walk down a toy isle and see a healthy thriving Lego line. As you said, you don't have to buy the themed Lego sets (Indiana Jones, Star Wars, Space Police, etc). They are awesome, and if you're going to spend money on toys for a kid, Lego toys allow a child to explore his imagination better than static action figures. My preference is still for the Lego CITY set which are more inline with the Legos I had as a kid. These sets are very elaborate. You can get a Malibu beat house, an entire downtown street corner, a passenger plane, etc. And you can combine sets. You can have the perfect setup for your own SyFy channel weekend movie. You just need a city set, a shark, and some sort of space alien.
If I have any complaint about the themed sets is that when I was a kid, a Lego sets gave you a main advertised assembled form plus a couple of alternate forms. This is still true today in some Lego sets, but in the themed sets like Indiana Jones, you get pieces that were clearly designed with one function in mind. For example, the Indiana Jones Shanghai Chase set gives you the two car from that scene in "Temple of Doom". You can't really use the pieces to make anything else but those cars.
Non-Violence was Missed on me (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:So, in short... (Score:5, Interesting)
So, what you're telling me is Lego sold out.
I wouldn't say that. Lego is renowned as one of the best companies in the world to work for: They treat their employees well, pay them well, give them good bennies, and don't nickel and dime 'em. They don't shift jobs to countries where they can exploit workers. If selling out their brand name lets 'em avoid selling out their employees, then I'm all for it.
Re:Lego Star Wars (Score:3, Interesting)
And as an AFOL, I can verify that the design quality and playability of their recent products have improved substantially.
That's because of the reduction in one-off pieces as described by the article. I've noticed it independently myself, that there are a lot fewer specialized pieces in the products. There are still a few piece I'd like to see go the way of the dodo, but its' much better, all in all. And piece quality has gone up since '04 as well, closer to where they used to be.
The thing that killed Lego in the early '00 was the lack of creativity. The themes were stale and the individual sets bland. The large amount of special pieces is strongly correlated with the decline in creativity. But after some major changes, including the redesign of new themes and re-release of classic themes, its popularity has shot back up again.
BTW, Lego Star Wars has been around since '99. And back in the early '00, there were more licensed sets, inclusing Spiderman and Harry Potter. TLG was doing crappily despite having these lines. So I'd have to disagree with you and TFA that the licensed themes turned the tide. More than likely, they're what's keeping TLG in the black and making up the bulk of the sales. But the turn-around was due to more general product improvements across all of the lines.
Has anyone actually -bought- Legos? (Score:5, Interesting)
A lot of people complaining about some of these Lego sets seem to think that you can only really build the thing on the box when you get the set. There's a ton of parts for even the tiniest Lego model and you have a lot of options. If you have more than one set, you can genuinely make some really interesting displays. You need to think differently out of the box. My four year old autistic son taught me this. I buy them for them and he puts together all sorts of stuff. At first, I put the sets together and then let him have at them, but I had gotten lazy and just handed some stuff to play with, and felt pretty bad about it, so I bought a fairly complicated set to put together with him, and found that, by the time I'd got the basics of the first page done, he'd already built something very cool. For him, the picture on the box isn't the thing to build, but is representative of a sort of world he plays in with those pieces. I think right now Princess Lea and Han Solo Lego people are wearing pirate hats and are carrying knight swords on top of a steam engine (sad end for a Bachmann set).
Still, if you must have the ultimate in "suggestionless" Lego design, you need to go to a Lego store. Lego stores have all the theme sets, for sure, but they also have a huge wall in the back where you can just fill up a big cup for $15 and get anything you want. Wheels, different shape blocks, they are all there.
Re:Lego Star Wars (Score:3, Interesting)
Loose Legos from garage sales or craigslist are great, too. Lego still makes "generic unstructured pieces;" a large part of current sets are made from them.
Legos On Mars (Score:5, Interesting)
My scientist's heart sinks when I remember the hopes I had and that the following would re-popularize the space program as well as science in general, then lost when nobody noticed...
So you've got these guys who built these robot car things and they're going to send them to Mars. One of the cool things they did was collect peoples' names and messages to the New Planet to send along. They burned the messages to CDs and then started looking for a way to attach the CDs to the 'dashboards' of their robots. How about... oh, I dunno... maybe some interlocking plastic blocks with the CD trapped between a pair of them, and a screw or two to hold each of the 3 pairs in place? I'll bet some of these guys even have some of these things laying around and would be glad to donate them to the cause.....
From the left science panaorama camera on each Mars Rover, taken on Sol 2 of each mission:
Spirit:
http://marsrovers.nasa.gov/gallery/all/2/p/002/2P126556804EFF0200P2205L1M1.JPG [nasa.gov]
http://marsrovers.nasa.gov/gallery/all/2/p/002/2P126556727EFF0200P2205L4M1.JPG [nasa.gov]
Opportunity:
http://marsrovers.nasa.gov/gallery/all/1/p/002/1P128365194EDN0100P2205L5M1.JPG [nasa.gov]
http://marsrovers.nasa.gov/gallery/all/1/p/002/1P128365248EDN0100P2205L6M1.JPG [nasa.gov]
Re:Guns in lego are new? (Score:3, Interesting)
Glad they did Star Wars... (Score:3, Interesting)
Otherwise I wouldn't have enough pieces that are in grey to make Star Trek Starships out of LEGO.
Re:So, in short... (Score:3, Interesting)
They have more sets in the Lego "Creator" line than ever - i.e. basic building sets (many with *three* suggested models and instructions for each) and brick boxes/buckets. 42 sets in that section of their website, and my local store has an entire shelf section devoted to them - as much as Star Wars Lego has, possibly more (some large Creator sets on other shelves too).
City Lego, while it is a theme, is obviously one of the major mainstays of Lego as ever though - again it's the largest product range (far more than Star Wars) and in my local toy store has maybe three or four times the shelf space of Star Wars.
I disagree entirely with your last statement about the cars. These are fantastic mostly brick-built creations giving great inspiration even to adult Lego builders like myself as to how to build realistic-looking cars. The main custom piece is a small two-seat cockpit (created for the "Adventurers" theme in 1997 or so), and this can be used in any vehicle. The roof of the tan vehicle is admittedly a limited use canvas, but that of the black vehicle uses a new (~2005) hull piece used in many many City vehicles too, and it looks great for roof/bonnet of any vehicles you build yourself, also it's suitable for spaceships (indeed used in Space Police), canopies (as used in another indy set), all manner of other things too.
As regards custom parts - things are about right in Lego at the moment. It was only in the late 90s/early 2000s that not only were there *perhaps* too many special parts, but the sets were poor value because large parts were put in to make up for lack of bricks. New sets have the special/large parts *AND* all the bricks! And as long as you get the parts in good value sets with plenty of bricks - I have no problem with things like "Big Ugly Rock Pieces" (referred to as BURPs by adult Lego builders) because they are exceedingly useful for scaling up one's own constructions too. Yeah a cliff made just from bricks looks best, but you need both large quantities of brick and the time and dedication to build a cohesive structure. BURPs allow you to build a load-bearing outline structure for little brick outlay, then decorate it and customise it appropriately with bricks and Lego foliage.
Re:lego mirrors real life (Score:3, Interesting)
Fun thing is that my kids turned to bigger scale reuse, where functional blocks of 10 or 20 bricks are reused from kits to kits. That gives most of their work a weird Tetsuo [animenation.net] feel...