
Lego sales topple as children turn away from the building bricks - leothekim
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2017/09/05/lego-sales-crumble-children-turn-away-building-bricks/
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hateful
I would argue that they don't really make Legos anymore anyway. Almost every
piece is specialized for design you buy. So it may as well be an DYI action
figure. There's no creativity in using the set to build your own things. No
re-usability. That and the price.

~~~
manyxcxi
After helping my 4 year old build dozens of kits over the past year or two
I've noticed many patterns of use with those 'specialized' pieces. They're
absolutely reusable, to the degree that by looking at a box I can pretty much
know that it's going to have a couple of [whatever] because it has arm or leg
joints, a turret, etc.

What I have seen is that the parts that come with typical kits are WAY more
advanced than the race cars, castles and pirate ships I used to have. I'd say
a good percentage of the bricks used to be bricks I'd only see in the advanced
Technic kits from back in my day.

I will say though that I went and bought a bucket of generic bricks because a
lot of the bricks that come with the standard kits today aren't super awesome
for a four year old that wants to build simple buildings and stuff like that.

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_sdegutis
My kids loved to play Minecraft too until they found out about mods and now
they have no fun doing regular creative stuff in vanilla MC anymore.

I think that also goes hand-in-hand with the trend for kids to just stare at
screens all day and not really _do_ things.

My oldest son just began his first year in public school at 8th grade (he was
homeschooled until now) and they had a puzzle challenge and all the other kids
took like 20 minutes to do a 50 piece puzzle.

My son told me how surprised he was and I had to explain to him that those
other kids in class probably just sit and stare at a screen all day, just like
he notices they do on their bus ride.

Kids these days don't go out and play nearly as much, they don't go exploring
the neighborhood during summer or evenings, they don't play with LEGOs, they
don't do puzzles, they don't just sit and read a good book, they aren't
prepared to understand so many aspects of _life_ that us older generations
take for granted.

I know the whole "kids these days" is a cliche, but in this case these are
actually legitimately huge changes happening in society and culture, on the
scale of electricity and trains: having the entire internet at your fingertips
pretty much 24/7 even from a young age is going to change future generations
in gigantic ways that I don't think society really understands, and which I
definitely think the mass media and society in general is financially
incentivized to keep quiet about or try to ignore.

~~~
_sdegutis
I think good leadership is a very important key to solving this kind of issue.
School administrators could make rules that you can't use screens on school
grounds or on the bus rides. Instead you have to turn and actually _talk to_
the people sitting next to you.

Families especially need strong leaders, and I know this is controversial,
because I grew up 100% indoctrinated into the belief that families should be a
democracy and that parents should just let kids figure out everything on their
own. But as a father of 5, I see their need for structure and rules even if
they are unpopular or don't sound as fun.

For example, for a year or so we did 500 piece puzzles together as a family
every other night, while one of us read a book to everyone else. We could
pause the book and talk about what we were reading, and it was a generally
good time.

Sure, they sometimes would complain and argue that they would rather watch
Sonic Boom or play their 3DS or whatever, but enforcing the rule was good for
them and now they look back on those days with nostalgia, and I really see
many legitimate ways that it benefited them as people in general.

~~~
stalin555
I hope they had a choice what to do in their spare time each night. That
sounds painful and awful if they didn't.

~~~
_sdegutis
I didn't mean the whole night. But a good solid 30 minutes of spending time
like this together before their bed time (they were no older than 8) helped
them unwind before bed from a fun day of doing schoolwork and playing outside
and climbing trees and riding bikes and stuff. EDIT: also this was when I had
a 3 hour roundtrip commute to Chicago and got home at 7pm every night, so I
didn't get to see them. It was a good way to have us all spend time together
every night relaxing and having opportunities to talk about our days and
stuff.

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legitster
I always wondered how LEGO managed to grow so much - their products are too
good! They spend an insane amount of work on quality and durability of their
pieces. When I was a kid, I had pieces that were nearly 20 years old that
still looked and acted brand new. There's now an entire secondary market of
used pieces since they basically last forever. Why buy new unless you are
looking for some new, gimmicky set?

When I was a kid, I also took a book and a small set of bricks everywhere I
went. These days, all I ever see kids have are tablets. When I do see toys,
they are cheaper, more gimmicky, and more likely to be designed to sit on a
shelf than to play with.

~~~
lithos
Or families sets are currently 4 generations old (with each one adding some).
In some cases they were stored terribly like in a garage.

Even with a mix of the newer set types it's not that bad since instructions
rarely follow everything. So the kid doesn't know what they're missing, but
can still find some interesting pieces to figure out how to use.

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maleck13
My kids love LEGO, but the price of buying new sets seems very high and off
putting to me. So instead only buy sets at xmas

~~~
freehunter
Same. Lego is fantastic and a wonderful high-quality toy, but it's so darn
expensive. Couple that with the heavy focus on kits that contain specialized
parts and step-by-step instructions for how to put them together, and you're
not really looking at a toy anymore. It's basically a Star Wars themed model
car that you're going to put on display instead of actually play with.

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otterpro
Lego is so versatile and fun, but I wish they weren't so expensive, which
might or might not be justified by their high quality. I wanted to make a
small PC Case (similar to Google's first server rack made out of Lego), but
the cost was too prohibitive.

~~~
passivepinetree
Holy smokes I had no idea about that story. Thanks for getting me started down
a rabbit hole of the lore around Google's origin.

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kyriakos
Lego is still fantastic toys . Unfortunately they are quite expensive compared
to other options but they last a lifetime. My son plays with lego blocks I
played as a kid.

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molestrangler
I think its a case of parents kinda seeing they're getting ripped off over
some of their prices.

New Millennium Falcon is Lego’s biggest set ever = $799.99

[https://www.polygon.com/2017/8/31/16234672/star-wars-
millenn...](https://www.polygon.com/2017/8/31/16234672/star-wars-millennium-
falcon-biggest-lego-set-ever-of-all-time)

And maybe games like Minecraft have a more cost effective block building
experience.

~~~
mcphage
Well, that's the biggest set ever, in # of pieces as well as price. So the set
comes out to about 10.5¢ per piece, which is roughly the same price as their
smaller sets, too.

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captn3m0
If you're interested in Lego, and what goes behind the scenes, I can recommend
"The secret world of Lego"[0], a documentary that goes behind the scenes and
more specifically how they handle Christmas sales.

[0]:
[http://docuwiki.net/index.php?title=The_Secret_World_of_Lego](http://docuwiki.net/index.php?title=The_Secret_World_of_Lego)

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mavhc
Do you want to buy 100 pieces of Lego, or infinity pieces of minecraft blocks?

~~~
majewsky
Sorta off-topic, but the 20 bucks for Minecraft might have been one of my best
investments _ever_ , considering the value per hour of gameplay.

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obiefernandez
Speaking as the father of a 9-year old boy, LEGO sets feel very very
expensive. (Even though realistically speaking I can afford them!) I can only
imagine how expensive they must feel to someone with a lower income level.

Buying from a used LEGO shop doesn't seem to offer much of a discount either.
I found cases where it was even more expensive, since they deal with
collectible sets.

~~~
jpalomaki
I would like to build some serious Technic stuff with kids, but I find it
quite annoying that you can't get a good set of basic parts for a reasonable
price.

~~~
mcphage
This is one area where Lego is sorely lacking. I've started looking into the
knock-off Lego brands to get affordable Technic pieces—sadly, they don't make
sets of bulk technic pieces, either. But at least the sets are more
affordable.

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dvfjsdhgfv
It may have something to do with globalization. Legos are quite expensive, and
the Chinese manage to sell them at 1/3 of the original price (while still
getting reasonable net margin I believe). Their quality is comparable - not
identical, but not too far off. Many Lego fans are buying these. I don't
believe this is the main factor, but I wonder how much it influenced Lego's
current financial result. I know people who buy Lego clones exclusively.

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i_don_t_know
It's all my fault. I've been eyeing a few sets but I haven't bought any of
them... _yet_.

