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Can't say the same about LEGOs. The LEGO company just raised prices 10-25% across the board. Glad to see Hot Wheels resisting the temptation to gouge customers

Can't say the same about LEGOs. The LEGO company just raised prices 10-25% across the board. Glad to see Hot Wheels resisting the temptation to gouge customers and stay timeless. Top-selling LEGO sets (those between $20 - $70) got hit the hardest with inflation this year. Looking at the newly released sets coming out Jan 1st, there are several new sets priced at $30 that would have previously been $20, so you could argue a 50% inflation on those sets. The UCS sets fared the best behind the $10 sets. The UCS's averaged less than 5-7.5% increase. But these sets are usually $500 - $800, so it still accounts for $35-50 increase per set.

sircastor 4y ago
I don’t want to minimize the work of engineering the product design of Lego sets, but my goodness Lego sets are shockingly expensive for what they are. It feels to me like they should be 50% or less the price they tend to retail at - it’s not hard to understand why the Chinese knock-off sets were so popular.
- dangus 4y ago
  The knockoff brands have issues fitting together due to lower tolerances and QA issues. [1] [2] LEGO bricks are built to a completely insane tolerance for a children's toy. 10 micrometers, according to the company. Have you ever found a single LEGO piece that was defective and didn't fit into another one snugly? I've been playing with them for 25 years and I don't think I've found a single one. IMO, LEGO is expensive but so is a lot of other stuff. We're in a period of high inflation, and most of us aren't used to that with very low inflation being the norm for the past ~10 years. Chipotle wasn't selling $15 burritos 20 years ago. [3] On top of that, LEGO exploded in popularity after their licensing deals with names like Star Wars, Harry Potter, Disney, Batman, Mario, Minecraft, and the list goes on and on. LEGO used to be somewhat of a nerdy toy, only for boys, with a very small adult market compared to today. They're just charging what people are more than willing to pay. [1] https://www.reddit.com/r/lego/comments/2orjay/why_are_mega_bloks_so_bad/ https://www.reddit.com/r/lego/comments/2orjay/why_are_mega_b... [2] https://www.reddit.com/r/lego/comments/2aj3un/are_legos_really_that_much_better_than_mega_blocks/ https://www.reddit.com/r/lego/comments/2aj3un/are_legos_real... [3] https://www.reddit.com/r/Chipotle/comments/t905uc/those_of_us_who_have_been_going_to_chipotle_for/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Chipotle/comments/t905uc/those_of_u...
  - saulpw 4y ago
    Good points about tolerance. LEGO wasn't a nerdy toy though; it had the same mass-appeal that minecraft did/does. Also this LEGO ad from 1981: https://imgur.com/xwAsW56 https://imgur.com/xwAsW56
    - sircastor 4y ago
      This ad was the subject of a debate a few years back about what's happened to LEGO in general - it's large scale shift to licensed properties, and specifically the introduction of specific girl-targeted LEGO sets. This seems like the best article I could find on it: https://mashable.com/archive/girl-1981-lego-ad-found https://mashable.com/archive/girl-1981-lego-ad-found Also, there is this really great monologue on LEGO from Community, delivered by Michael K. Williams that is delightful: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yVCOAFKjaoY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yVCOAFKjaoY
  - piceas 4y ago
    The tolerances are impressive. Not perfect. I had electric Lego parts as a kid, bought new in the late 80s, that had trouble fitting together. It was annoying at the time. My kids have a lot of old Duplo. Unlike the Lego it has not aged well. The fit between parts is all over the place.
    - bombcar 4y ago
      Duplo is designed with less “clutch” so tiny hands can take it apart successfully. That and the size of the pieces leads to flex that you don’t get much with Lego. Primo (rare) and Quattro (super rare) are even bigger and have more flex.
  - petodo 4y ago
    I have Lidl model of police station, roughly 1000 pieces and they fit perfectly exactly same as original Lego for like 1/5th of price in discount so some insane tolerance at Lego sounds to me only like someone trying to justify their purchase though I recently bought Lego classic sets for my kids and those don't seem to be that overpriced
ggm 4y ago
I'm here to remind everyone the plural of Lego is Lego. That aside yes, Lego is ruinously expensive and appears to increase above inflation since it stopped being about blocks (the 60s)
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- JonathonW 4y ago
  If you want to get pedantic, LEGO is a brand name and used as an adjective. The things the LEGO group sells are not Lego or Legos; they’re LEGO bricks or LEGO sets. Only really makes sense to resort to such pedantry if you’re LEGO’s marketing department and concerned about genericization of your trademark, though. Everyone knows what you’re talking about if you say “legos”.
  - defrost 4y ago
    As a non USA-ian I can't say I ever heard a single person talk about "legos" until I joined predominately US forums. Hearing people talk about Lego as "Legos" still sounds weird AF.
    - ggm 4y ago
      I'd love to know if any non European language pluralises Legos the way American English speakers do. It's possible their linguistic constructs don't invite it. I have no particular issue with either English changing under use, or neologism becoming normalised. In 50 years Legos may be the predominant form. After all, "dove" replaced dived. Linguistically maybe it made more sense? But for now, the Queens English being understood, it's like sheep. It pluralises itself. A piece of lego, a box of Lego, a lego set, a bridge made of lego. It's a lego bridge.
      - bombcar 4y ago
        You step on one Lego, you step on two Legos. It’s like Kleenex and kleenecies.
xwdv 4y ago
LEGO can charge this much because it’s one of the rare toys you could actually pass down for many generations. They also have a growing market of adults that are willing to spend a lot more for sets they buy for themselves rather than for some kid. There is no reason for them to not optimize their prices.
- sircastor 4y ago
  I think we’ve seen this across a number of Toy lines. For instance, I’m quite interested in Hasbros Masterpiece line of Transformers, which sell in the for hundreds of dollars a piece, and are massively more complex than the child-focused toys.
wlesieutre 4y ago
LEGO sets have always been expensive. I remember saving forever for a $60 set with ~360 pieces (6975 Alien Avenger) about 25 years ago. For a spaceship set today, the same $60 can buy a 412 piece set (75325 Mandalorian Starfighter). And that one has to pay Disney’s license fees.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
Aeolun 4y ago
I absolutely want Lego to raise the prices if that means they don’t compromise on quality.
joe-collins 4y ago
This analysis is now a decade old, but as of 2013, the claims that Lego was increasingly expensive just didn't pan out. Sets were getting larger, and there were more sets, but average price per set, and the cost per-brick and by mass, were all flat over the decade preceding the report. https://therealityprose.wordpress.com/2013/01/17/what_happened_with_lego/ https://therealityprose.wordpress.com/2013/01/17/what_happen...

sircastor 4y ago

I don’t want to minimize the work of engineering the product design of Lego sets, but my goodness Lego sets are shockingly expensive for what they are. It feels to me like they should be 50% or less the price they tend to retail at - it’s not hard to understand why the Chinese knock-off sets were so popular.

dangus 4y ago
The knockoff brands have issues fitting together due to lower tolerances and QA issues. [1] [2] LEGO bricks are built to a completely insane tolerance for a children's toy. 10 micrometers, according to the company. Have you ever found a single LEGO piece that was defective and didn't fit into another one snugly? I've been playing with them for 25 years and I don't think I've found a single one. IMO, LEGO is expensive but so is a lot of other stuff. We're in a period of high inflation, and most of us aren't used to that with very low inflation being the norm for the past ~10 years. Chipotle wasn't selling $15 burritos 20 years ago. [3] On top of that, LEGO exploded in popularity after their licensing deals with names like Star Wars, Harry Potter, Disney, Batman, Mario, Minecraft, and the list goes on and on. LEGO used to be somewhat of a nerdy toy, only for boys, with a very small adult market compared to today. They're just charging what people are more than willing to pay. [1] https://www.reddit.com/r/lego/comments/2orjay/why_are_mega_bloks_so_bad/ https://www.reddit.com/r/lego/comments/2orjay/why_are_mega_b... [2] https://www.reddit.com/r/lego/comments/2aj3un/are_legos_really_that_much_better_than_mega_blocks/ https://www.reddit.com/r/lego/comments/2aj3un/are_legos_real... [3] https://www.reddit.com/r/Chipotle/comments/t905uc/those_of_us_who_have_been_going_to_chipotle_for/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Chipotle/comments/t905uc/those_of_u...
- saulpw 4y ago
  Good points about tolerance. LEGO wasn't a nerdy toy though; it had the same mass-appeal that minecraft did/does. Also this LEGO ad from 1981: https://imgur.com/xwAsW56 https://imgur.com/xwAsW56
  - sircastor 4y ago
    This ad was the subject of a debate a few years back about what's happened to LEGO in general - it's large scale shift to licensed properties, and specifically the introduction of specific girl-targeted LEGO sets. This seems like the best article I could find on it: https://mashable.com/archive/girl-1981-lego-ad-found https://mashable.com/archive/girl-1981-lego-ad-found Also, there is this really great monologue on LEGO from Community, delivered by Michael K. Williams that is delightful: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yVCOAFKjaoY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yVCOAFKjaoY
- piceas 4y ago
  The tolerances are impressive. Not perfect. I had electric Lego parts as a kid, bought new in the late 80s, that had trouble fitting together. It was annoying at the time. My kids have a lot of old Duplo. Unlike the Lego it has not aged well. The fit between parts is all over the place.
  - bombcar 4y ago
    Duplo is designed with less “clutch” so tiny hands can take it apart successfully. That and the size of the pieces leads to flex that you don’t get much with Lego. Primo (rare) and Quattro (super rare) are even bigger and have more flex.
- petodo 4y ago
  I have Lidl model of police station, roughly 1000 pieces and they fit perfectly exactly same as original Lego for like 1/5th of price in discount so some insane tolerance at Lego sounds to me only like someone trying to justify their purchase though I recently bought Lego classic sets for my kids and those don't seem to be that overpriced

ggm 4y ago

I'm here to remind everyone the plural of Lego is Lego. That aside yes, Lego is ruinously expensive and appears to increase above inflation since it stopped being about blocks (the 60s)

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
JonathonW 4y ago
If you want to get pedantic, LEGO is a brand name and used as an adjective. The things the LEGO group sells are not Lego or Legos; they’re LEGO bricks or LEGO sets. Only really makes sense to resort to such pedantry if you’re LEGO’s marketing department and concerned about genericization of your trademark, though. Everyone knows what you’re talking about if you say “legos”.
- defrost 4y ago
  As a non USA-ian I can't say I ever heard a single person talk about "legos" until I joined predominately US forums. Hearing people talk about Lego as "Legos" still sounds weird AF.
  - ggm 4y ago
    I'd love to know if any non European language pluralises Legos the way American English speakers do. It's possible their linguistic constructs don't invite it. I have no particular issue with either English changing under use, or neologism becoming normalised. In 50 years Legos may be the predominant form. After all, "dove" replaced dived. Linguistically maybe it made more sense? But for now, the Queens English being understood, it's like sheep. It pluralises itself. A piece of lego, a box of Lego, a lego set, a bridge made of lego. It's a lego bridge.
    - bombcar 4y ago
      You step on one Lego, you step on two Legos. It’s like Kleenex and kleenecies.

xwdv 4y ago

LEGO can charge this much because it’s one of the rare toys you could actually pass down for many generations. They also have a growing market of adults that are willing to spend a lot more for sets they buy for themselves rather than for some kid. There is no reason for them to not optimize their prices.

sircastor 4y ago
I think we’ve seen this across a number of Toy lines. For instance, I’m quite interested in Hasbros Masterpiece line of Transformers, which sell in the for hundreds of dollars a piece, and are massively more complex than the child-focused toys.

wlesieutre 4y ago

LEGO sets have always been expensive. I remember saving forever for a $60 set with ~360 pieces (6975 Alien Avenger) about 25 years ago. For a spaceship set today, the same $60 can buy a 412 piece set (75325 Mandalorian Starfighter). And that one has to pay Disney’s license fees.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

Aeolun 4y ago

I absolutely want Lego to raise the prices if that means they don’t compromise on quality.

joe-collins 4y ago

This analysis is now a decade old, but as of 2013, the claims that Lego was increasingly expensive just didn't pan out. Sets were getting larger, and there were more sets, but average price per set, and the cost per-brick and by mass, were all flat over the decade preceding the report. https://therealityprose.wordpress.com/2013/01/17/what_happened_with_lego/ https://therealityprose.wordpress.com/2013/01/17/what_happen...