It certainly doesn’t. all of Lego’s recent pricing is sky high licensed or not.
Not terribly recent.
I have managed to resist the temptation to buy this, so here’s Scott Manley to give some vicarious building pleasure
That is a really nice set for $100.
Looks cool, but I already built the Opportunity rover and… OOOH, Mars helicopter Ingenuity too?
Ordered!
Quite tempted by this one, but realistically the only place i could put it is as a table centrepiece, and that would probably push my flat’s already slightly lame dilletante classical Japanese/Chinese art aesthetic over the edge. Also, more expensive than I’d like.
That’s pretty awesome, though.
Oh wow, Dune ornithopter set coming!
Whenever I look in this thread I’m just the biology teacher from Community:
To be fair, that question is probably studied by Danish business schools - the turnaround from the early 2000s when it was posting huge losses and to today is pretty amazing.
I bought this. It’s a decent price for what it is. And the real-life rover/helicopter looks like a bunch of big Lego cobbled together anyhow so there’s not much of a stretch of imagination. They do a good job with the NASA/ESA kits.
My (non-researched) understanding is that Bionicle put them back on their feet back then. I wasn’t paying attention then and would not have been interested in that anyhow. Now they’re successful because they grew up, got premium licenses, and started making more intricate and interesting sets. Plus, I assume the AFOL crowd is a big part of their success.
I think I’m seeing a cool-off in their value, however. Still-active sets on Stockx are selling for less than retail (even after shipping, taxes and processing fees), and many retired sets aren’t selling for what they did even a year ago. Ebay and Amazon still sell retired sets for inflated prices but one doesn’t need to go there anymore and I’ll bet those prices for many will come down.
I believe the answer is mainly licensed products, but also TV shows and nostalgia driven adult builders, all of which tend towards higher complexity.
Also, did @vinraith not watch The Wire?
Bionicle was the line that pulled Lego out of their money spiral. It really can’t be understated how important Bionicle was to reversing their dire financial situation.
After that, they turned to licensed sets and appealing to adult hobbyists.
Yeah. I can’t help but be a little troubled by the shift from creative building sets to pre-designed model kits, though.
I did not, well not past the first couple of episodes anyway. Very well made, I’m sure, but not my cup of tea.
Lego was a family-run business with principles that finally had to submit to standard globalized, brand-centric business practices to survive. They opened up factories outside of Denmark, made all those branding partnerships, and dropped their content rules like not making gun pieces. I was working on a Lego MMO in 2007 when that transition was happening, and heard it from the CEO’s own mouth. (He was the first Lego CEO to not be a descendant of the inventor of Lego.) I loved Lego then and love it today, but that’s the story. In many ways, they’ve done the best of nearly any company except maybe Apple at succeeding within globalized capitalism with a minimal decline in quality of product. It helps that they’re still a private company, owned (if not run) by the same family.
They still don’t make guns or other weapons in present day say sets don’t they? I recall hearing about a V-22 in civilian markings that was withdrawn because the real V-22 is only used by armed forces.
Yeah, I think there are still some rules. But as recently as the 2000s I believe they relaxed the rules that they would only make ancient firearms (pirate blunderbusses) or build modern guns out of generic pieces. I recall there being a dinosaur-hunting theme that dispensed with that and included pretty modern-looking (though certainly not real-world) military weapons.
That’s a tranquiliser gun surely.
