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Shame. IIRC the same thing would have happened to Lego if they wouldn't have had branched out into collectables and IP licensing. They were on a steep decline i

Shame. IIRC the same thing would have happened to Lego if they wouldn't have had branched out into collectables and IP licensing. They were on a steep decline in the '00s and then launched the Bionicle line for kids to collect then started licensing IPs. Every time I go into a shop looking for Lego, I no longer see many generic sets: castles, pirate ships, cars, trucks, but they're all big name IP licenses: Pirates of the Caribbean ships, Harry Potter castles, Volvo Trucks, Range Rover SUVs, McLaren cars, BMW motorcycles, etc. Now they're all just fancy collectables meant to sit on display instead of being generic sets where you had to use your imagination to make what you want it to be: that generic looking car could be a McLaren, could be a Ferrari, could be whatever you wanted it to be. Then take it apart and mix it with the rest of your sets to create something original. And the IP licensing is reflected in the price for the sets. I wouldn't be surprised if many of Lego's customers are just nostalgic grown men with disposable income, instead of curious kids. Me thinks Meccano should have taken the same path if they wanted to survive but I'm not an executive in the toy industry to know for sure.

lordnacho 4y ago
That's pretty much it. The only original Lego stuff left is the city stuff. Even new lines within the Lego world is done as if it's licensed: Ninjago is it's own TV series. Friends also has a TV series. They've figured out that you sell more Lego with a story behind it. Does it change much? I don't know, there's still a lot of cool builds.
- simplotek 4y ago
  Ninjago is Lego's own production. The Friends Lego set seems to be in line with their investment in adult demographics, in the sense of being product lines that are decorative show pieces instead of play things.
  - morelisp 4y ago
    > The Friends Lego set seems to be in line with their investment in adult demographics, in the sense of being product lines that are decorative show pieces instead of play things. What? The Friends sets are specifically designed to be for use as objects in play, and this is pretty obvious from looking at them (multiple disconnected builds per set, role-play focused themes, character designs). They're weak as decorative pieces compared to even the Creator line, let alone e.g the Architecture or Icon lines which are specifically designed for that. https://www.lego.com/de-de/product/street-food-market-41701 https://www.lego.com/de-de/product/street-food-market-41701 Does that scream "adult desk toy" to you?
    - meindnoch 4y ago
      Maybe parent meant this Friends: https://www.lego.com/en-gb/product/the-friends-apartments-10292 https://www.lego.com/en-gb/product/the-friends-apartments-10...
      - simplotek 4y ago
        Yes I was. Thanks for plugging the link.
      - morelisp 4y ago
        Huh! I have never see that in a store here, not even one of the official Lego stores.
        bombcar 4y ago
        It’s a Lego “Ideas” set which is where fans build example sets, other fans vote on them, Lego examines them, determines if they can get the license if needed, and then rebuilds them for production. Very many interesting sets, and some are now in stores (saw the Lego Office set at a Walmart, can’t wait for that to clearance and I’ll grab it root sweet) Lego Friends is also the name for a theme built in-house and designed to appeal to girls (though the sets are not overly ‘pink’ if you will, and quite well designed as a “city”) by replacing the mini figs with mini dolls that are more realistically proportioned. It has been very successful and arguably has replaced much of Lego City (the boys I know have no problem mixing mini figs and mini dolls, the girls prefer to keep to the mini dolls).
        morelisp 4y ago
        No, this is an Icons / "Creator Expert" set. The Central Perk set was an Ideas set (and I did see that in stores here), but nobody called that "the Friends set" because it's confusing.
        bombcar 4y ago
        This is all complex and confusing heh. I know there have been some ideas sets that were popular enough to have a few more “in the line” but icons is new to me. Ah Icons is Creator Expert. Interesting fact: the various “lines” have developmental budget they can “spend” internally on design and parts and such - so a rebrand may indicate that the CE team now has more budget. Think a piece that exists costs 1, needing a new color of an existing piece costs 5, and you only have budget for one or two entirely new pieces a year.
  - lordnacho 4y ago
    Ah I didn't even consider the Friends sitcom. I'm talking about the girls who live in Heartlake City. Point was that both Ninjago and Lego Friends are produced by Lego themselves, mimicking IP like Harry Potter and Marvel that they also make Lego of.
TylerE 4y ago
The selection of sets at retail tends to be a bit biased. They've released some really nice non-IP sets in the last few years - Titanic, Saturn V, the various modular buildings, the Colloseem... of course these are the big adult-oriented sets that cost several hundred dollars.
- bombcar 4y ago
  Target actually carries a decent amount of those around here in store. Might be ebcause there’s a Lego store nearby.
simplotek 4y ago
> Every time I went into a shop looking for Lego, I no longer see many generic Lego sets That sounds like an issue with the stores you go to. Even in big department stores I see generic Lego sets (City, Technic, Duplo, etc) next to licensed ones.
- Freak_NL 4y ago
  Yeah, Duplo, City, and Technic are the basic ranges any toy store is bound to have.
  - bombcar 4y ago
    Half the Duplo and Technic are now licensed, but I suspect the Technic licenses may be nearly free or even paid to Lego - they’re selling Ford cars to Ford fans. The licenses obviously don’t cost a ton as the price per piece on the Duplo is comparable to other “sets” - the “big box of parts” is cheaper as always, but I wonder how much of that is “we out left over pieces and spend no design time”.
egeozcan 4y ago
Regarding Lego, as long as that IP stuff allows them to keep producing the excellent generic stuff (which is still easy to buy online, less so in stores, at least in Germany), more power to them! I think the biggest threat to the generic lines is the fact that they have to compete against other generic stuff that's produced cheaper. So they need to differentiate. Amazon is filled to the brim with the no-name generic building blocks that are not as high quality as Lego, and apparently you can't differentiate purely base don the quality alone. Even in clothing, there are less and less, not high-fashion but high quality for not totally unreasonable price brands.
- simplotek 4y ago
  > I think the biggest threat to the generic lines is the fact that they have to compete against other generic stuff that's produced cheaper. I'd say the biggest threat is Lego's pricing. Even Lego's small generic sets are sold for over 20€. Even Lego fans pause when faced with that kind of price tags.
  - morsch 4y ago
    Fortunately, hundreds of billions of Lego bricks were sold over the years, many of which survive, making for a very deep secondary market. On average, families only seem to grow wealthier, in terms of the amount of Lego they acquire.
    - simplotek 4y ago
      Lego's secondary market works for the benefit of diehard fans, but it doesn't help finance Lego the company. The non-diehard fans can simply buy Lego knockoffs. I'd like to support Lego but I don't get to do that by buying used sets or knockoffs, but Lego's pricing also prices me out of the market.
      - nuancebydefault 4y ago
        The knockoffs are still of less quality, especially the manuals. In my opinion, the strategy of quality-first is the main reason for lego's sustainable success.
mpsprd 4y ago
I wonder what happened to K'nex. It was amazing as a kid, and wasn't really IP friendly, more focused on contraptions.
- bombcar 4y ago
  https://basicfun.com/knex/ https://basicfun.com/knex/ Still made - I see them now and then.
zgs 4y ago
Meccano tried licensed IP: Gears of War, Rabbids, Tin Tin, Sonic. Possibly others I don't remember. Lego has more cash and clout to get more desirable IPs with less strict restrictions of course. I think the real reason for the decline of Meccano/Erector is that it is more fiddly than Lego is. I almost wrote difficult but I don't think that's quite the right word -- there is a lot more freedom in construction with makes assembly, even following instructions, trickier.
- janoc 4y ago
  It is also a lot more expensive to produce. Lego is just injection molded ABS plastic. Meccano/Erector (or the Czech Merkur) are all metal, die cut/stamped out of sheet metal and using actual screws. Moreover, the French factory being closed was practically hand-making it, it was not at all automated. So as economically inefficient and expensive as it gets. Also these types of construction sets just aren't as amenable to the usual licensed IP - you can't really make Batman or Star Wars figurines out of sheet metal. These sets don't really have a history of mixing a lot of plastic parts with the usual metal bits. It doesn't work well together and also the result looks a bit weird with all those holes. In addition, the types of shapes you can make out of it are more limited due to the way it is manufactured (or it would get very expensive if custom bent/shaped parts were required). Whereas for Lego it is just another mold being used so they have a lot more flexibility. Meccano/Erector or Merkur are really most suitable for what they were originally modeled after and designed for - mechanical machines, engines, contraptions, etc. Lot of real-world machines were prototyped with Merkur - e.g. the first contact lenses were made by their inventor using a Merkur machine. Sadly those types of toys are not as much in vogue today - or need to be full of flashy electronics, connected to a phone and ideally licensed from Disney to be able to sell them ...
  - eternityforest 4y ago
    I can think of a total of 2 interesting and novel mechanical inventions in modern times, both only relevant outside of cities, and one I believe is based on some traditional practices(The firewood splitter from New Zealand, and the water storage artificial glacier towers). Doing anything new is very hard without advanced tech. You still need fundamentals, but those are really hard to market, because from the outside it just looks like "All relevant modern engineering is done with computers and that's the most important part", the non-computer parts kind of blend into the background. Maybe someone should do a book celebrating the few low tech cool things people are doing. There's probably still undiscovered possibilities with mechanical stuff!
blacklion 4y ago
I've thought, that Lego doesn't make basic generic stuff anymore, but the I found youtube channel "Brickcrafts" where one Austrian guy build amazing Lego city. He buys generic stuff by tons no problem.
ryukoposting 4y ago
It's no secret that Lego is marketing to adults. The botanicals sets are explicitly designed for people who want to decorate their home. Many of the "creator expert" sets show adults building the sets in the ad material. When I was a kid, I didn't treat the licensed sets as "special collectibles." I had Ferrari/Bionicle/etc sets, and all of that stuff got mixed into the same bin eventually (except one of the Ferraris, which I still have to this day). Not sure why a kid would treat any given branded set differently because of the branding, I kept the Ferrari because I like it. Sidebar: a standard measure in the Lego community is "price per piece," and the licensed sets do tend to be more costly. That's not a hard-and-fast truth, though. This blog has a great breakdown from a couple years ago: https://brickbucks.net/what-is-lego-price-per-piece/ https://brickbucks.net/what-is-lego-price-per-piece/
- mcphage 4y ago
  > It's no secret that Lego is marketing to adults. The botanicals sets are explicitly designed for people who want to decorate their home. Well, the “18+” labeling is a dead giveaway.
  - ChuckNorris89 4y ago
    >Well, the “18+” labeling is a dead giveaway. That age warning on Lego is more useless than on porn sites.
    - mcphage 4y ago
      It’s not a warning, it’s just an indicator that it’s intended for adults. Well, that and the astronomical price tags on some of the sets.
- agentwiggles 4y ago
  Yeah, I've always found the trend with adult Lego fans to be a bit funny - buy the set, build it, and put it on a shelf somewhere. That's fine, you do you, AFOLs - but the way we played with Lego was we'd get a new set, build it, play with it in that form for a while, and then eventually, it got taken apart for some new idea and thrown into the bin. There are 2 or 3 30 gallon tubs at my parent's house still filled with Lego, it must be the collected output of at least 100 different sets that were given to us for birthdays, Christmas, and also bought by us when we were old enough to have our own money and young enough to spend it on Lego. We had an air hockey table in the basement that was almost always covered with a landscape of fortresses, spaceships, and weird Bionicle monsters. Good times.
nicolas_t 4y ago
Another construction toy that I loved as a kid but disappeared https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Construx https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Construx
- peatmoss 4y ago
  They were fantastic. There was some kind of marketing event at a shopping mall in upstate NY when I was young. Construx were brand new, and to my utter shock my parents bought some for me. It felt very out of character for my parents to buy toys like this, but they picked a winner in doing so.
nuancebydefault 4y ago
There exist also themes like Ninjago, invented by lego. In fact lego keeps reinventing itself so it never goes out of fashion. That said, over the years, creating new stuff from existing sets became harder and harder, I find this a pity.
rasz 4y ago
>fancy collectables meant to sit on display Star Wars Toy Commercial - SNL https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EYyuo7gm-aQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EYyuo7gm-aQ

lordnacho 4y ago

That's pretty much it. The only original Lego stuff left is the city stuff. Even new lines within the Lego world is done as if it's licensed: Ninjago is it's own TV series. Friends also has a TV series. They've figured out that you sell more Lego with a story behind it. Does it change much? I don't know, there's still a lot of cool builds.

simplotek 4y ago
Ninjago is Lego's own production. The Friends Lego set seems to be in line with their investment in adult demographics, in the sense of being product lines that are decorative show pieces instead of play things.
- morelisp 4y ago
  > The Friends Lego set seems to be in line with their investment in adult demographics, in the sense of being product lines that are decorative show pieces instead of play things. What? The Friends sets are specifically designed to be for use as objects in play, and this is pretty obvious from looking at them (multiple disconnected builds per set, role-play focused themes, character designs). They're weak as decorative pieces compared to even the Creator line, let alone e.g the Architecture or Icon lines which are specifically designed for that. https://www.lego.com/de-de/product/street-food-market-41701 https://www.lego.com/de-de/product/street-food-market-41701 Does that scream "adult desk toy" to you?
  - meindnoch 4y ago
    Maybe parent meant this Friends: https://www.lego.com/en-gb/product/the-friends-apartments-10292 https://www.lego.com/en-gb/product/the-friends-apartments-10...
    - simplotek 4y ago
      Yes I was. Thanks for plugging the link.
    - morelisp 4y ago
      Huh! I have never see that in a store here, not even one of the official Lego stores.
      - bombcar 4y ago
        It’s a Lego “Ideas” set which is where fans build example sets, other fans vote on them, Lego examines them, determines if they can get the license if needed, and then rebuilds them for production. Very many interesting sets, and some are now in stores (saw the Lego Office set at a Walmart, can’t wait for that to clearance and I’ll grab it root sweet) Lego Friends is also the name for a theme built in-house and designed to appeal to girls (though the sets are not overly ‘pink’ if you will, and quite well designed as a “city”) by replacing the mini figs with mini dolls that are more realistically proportioned. It has been very successful and arguably has replaced much of Lego City (the boys I know have no problem mixing mini figs and mini dolls, the girls prefer to keep to the mini dolls).
        morelisp 4y ago
        No, this is an Icons / "Creator Expert" set. The Central Perk set was an Ideas set (and I did see that in stores here), but nobody called that "the Friends set" because it's confusing.
        bombcar 4y ago
        This is all complex and confusing heh. I know there have been some ideas sets that were popular enough to have a few more “in the line” but icons is new to me. Ah Icons is Creator Expert. Interesting fact: the various “lines” have developmental budget they can “spend” internally on design and parts and such - so a rebrand may indicate that the CE team now has more budget. Think a piece that exists costs 1, needing a new color of an existing piece costs 5, and you only have budget for one or two entirely new pieces a year.
- lordnacho 4y ago
  Ah I didn't even consider the Friends sitcom. I'm talking about the girls who live in Heartlake City. Point was that both Ninjago and Lego Friends are produced by Lego themselves, mimicking IP like Harry Potter and Marvel that they also make Lego of.

TylerE 4y ago

The selection of sets at retail tends to be a bit biased. They've released some really nice non-IP sets in the last few years - Titanic, Saturn V, the various modular buildings, the Colloseem... of course these are the big adult-oriented sets that cost several hundred dollars.

bombcar 4y ago
Target actually carries a decent amount of those around here in store. Might be ebcause there’s a Lego store nearby.

simplotek 4y ago

> Every time I went into a shop looking for Lego, I no longer see many generic Lego sets That sounds like an issue with the stores you go to. Even in big department stores I see generic Lego sets (City, Technic, Duplo, etc) next to licensed ones.

Freak_NL 4y ago
Yeah, Duplo, City, and Technic are the basic ranges any toy store is bound to have.
- bombcar 4y ago
  Half the Duplo and Technic are now licensed, but I suspect the Technic licenses may be nearly free or even paid to Lego - they’re selling Ford cars to Ford fans. The licenses obviously don’t cost a ton as the price per piece on the Duplo is comparable to other “sets” - the “big box of parts” is cheaper as always, but I wonder how much of that is “we out left over pieces and spend no design time”.

egeozcan 4y ago

Regarding Lego, as long as that IP stuff allows them to keep producing the excellent generic stuff (which is still easy to buy online, less so in stores, at least in Germany), more power to them! I think the biggest threat to the generic lines is the fact that they have to compete against other generic stuff that's produced cheaper. So they need to differentiate. Amazon is filled to the brim with the no-name generic building blocks that are not as high quality as Lego, and apparently you can't differentiate purely base don the quality alone. Even in clothing, there are less and less, not high-fashion but high quality for not totally unreasonable price brands.

simplotek 4y ago
> I think the biggest threat to the generic lines is the fact that they have to compete against other generic stuff that's produced cheaper. I'd say the biggest threat is Lego's pricing. Even Lego's small generic sets are sold for over 20€. Even Lego fans pause when faced with that kind of price tags.
- morsch 4y ago
  Fortunately, hundreds of billions of Lego bricks were sold over the years, many of which survive, making for a very deep secondary market. On average, families only seem to grow wealthier, in terms of the amount of Lego they acquire.
  - simplotek 4y ago
    Lego's secondary market works for the benefit of diehard fans, but it doesn't help finance Lego the company. The non-diehard fans can simply buy Lego knockoffs. I'd like to support Lego but I don't get to do that by buying used sets or knockoffs, but Lego's pricing also prices me out of the market.
    - nuancebydefault 4y ago
      The knockoffs are still of less quality, especially the manuals. In my opinion, the strategy of quality-first is the main reason for lego's sustainable success.

mpsprd 4y ago

I wonder what happened to K'nex. It was amazing as a kid, and wasn't really IP friendly, more focused on contraptions.

bombcar 4y ago
https://basicfun.com/knex/ https://basicfun.com/knex/ Still made - I see them now and then.

zgs 4y ago

Meccano tried licensed IP: Gears of War, Rabbids, Tin Tin, Sonic. Possibly others I don't remember. Lego has more cash and clout to get more desirable IPs with less strict restrictions of course. I think the real reason for the decline of Meccano/Erector is that it is more fiddly than Lego is. I almost wrote difficult but I don't think that's quite the right word -- there is a lot more freedom in construction with makes assembly, even following instructions, trickier.

janoc 4y ago
It is also a lot more expensive to produce. Lego is just injection molded ABS plastic. Meccano/Erector (or the Czech Merkur) are all metal, die cut/stamped out of sheet metal and using actual screws. Moreover, the French factory being closed was practically hand-making it, it was not at all automated. So as economically inefficient and expensive as it gets. Also these types of construction sets just aren't as amenable to the usual licensed IP - you can't really make Batman or Star Wars figurines out of sheet metal. These sets don't really have a history of mixing a lot of plastic parts with the usual metal bits. It doesn't work well together and also the result looks a bit weird with all those holes. In addition, the types of shapes you can make out of it are more limited due to the way it is manufactured (or it would get very expensive if custom bent/shaped parts were required). Whereas for Lego it is just another mold being used so they have a lot more flexibility. Meccano/Erector or Merkur are really most suitable for what they were originally modeled after and designed for - mechanical machines, engines, contraptions, etc. Lot of real-world machines were prototyped with Merkur - e.g. the first contact lenses were made by their inventor using a Merkur machine. Sadly those types of toys are not as much in vogue today - or need to be full of flashy electronics, connected to a phone and ideally licensed from Disney to be able to sell them ...
- eternityforest 4y ago
  I can think of a total of 2 interesting and novel mechanical inventions in modern times, both only relevant outside of cities, and one I believe is based on some traditional practices(The firewood splitter from New Zealand, and the water storage artificial glacier towers). Doing anything new is very hard without advanced tech. You still need fundamentals, but those are really hard to market, because from the outside it just looks like "All relevant modern engineering is done with computers and that's the most important part", the non-computer parts kind of blend into the background. Maybe someone should do a book celebrating the few low tech cool things people are doing. There's probably still undiscovered possibilities with mechanical stuff!

blacklion 4y ago

I've thought, that Lego doesn't make basic generic stuff anymore, but the I found youtube channel "Brickcrafts" where one Austrian guy build amazing Lego city. He buys generic stuff by tons no problem.

ryukoposting 4y ago

It's no secret that Lego is marketing to adults. The botanicals sets are explicitly designed for people who want to decorate their home. Many of the "creator expert" sets show adults building the sets in the ad material. When I was a kid, I didn't treat the licensed sets as "special collectibles." I had Ferrari/Bionicle/etc sets, and all of that stuff got mixed into the same bin eventually (except one of the Ferraris, which I still have to this day). Not sure why a kid would treat any given branded set differently because of the branding, I kept the Ferrari because I like it. Sidebar: a standard measure in the Lego community is "price per piece," and the licensed sets do tend to be more costly. That's not a hard-and-fast truth, though. This blog has a great breakdown from a couple years ago: https://brickbucks.net/what-is-lego-price-per-piece/ https://brickbucks.net/what-is-lego-price-per-piece/

mcphage 4y ago
> It's no secret that Lego is marketing to adults. The botanicals sets are explicitly designed for people who want to decorate their home. Well, the “18+” labeling is a dead giveaway.
- ChuckNorris89 4y ago
  >Well, the “18+” labeling is a dead giveaway. That age warning on Lego is more useless than on porn sites.
  - mcphage 4y ago
    It’s not a warning, it’s just an indicator that it’s intended for adults. Well, that and the astronomical price tags on some of the sets.
agentwiggles 4y ago
Yeah, I've always found the trend with adult Lego fans to be a bit funny - buy the set, build it, and put it on a shelf somewhere. That's fine, you do you, AFOLs - but the way we played with Lego was we'd get a new set, build it, play with it in that form for a while, and then eventually, it got taken apart for some new idea and thrown into the bin. There are 2 or 3 30 gallon tubs at my parent's house still filled with Lego, it must be the collected output of at least 100 different sets that were given to us for birthdays, Christmas, and also bought by us when we were old enough to have our own money and young enough to spend it on Lego. We had an air hockey table in the basement that was almost always covered with a landscape of fortresses, spaceships, and weird Bionicle monsters. Good times.

nicolas_t 4y ago

Another construction toy that I loved as a kid but disappeared https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Construx https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Construx

peatmoss 4y ago
They were fantastic. There was some kind of marketing event at a shopping mall in upstate NY when I was young. Construx were brand new, and to my utter shock my parents bought some for me. It felt very out of character for my parents to buy toys like this, but they picked a winner in doing so.

nuancebydefault 4y ago

There exist also themes like Ninjago, invented by lego. In fact lego keeps reinventing itself so it never goes out of fashion. That said, over the years, creating new stuff from existing sets became harder and harder, I find this a pity.

rasz 4y ago

>fancy collectables meant to sit on display Star Wars Toy Commercial - SNL https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EYyuo7gm-aQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EYyuo7gm-aQ