Lego packaging, perhaps time for smaller boxes?

[jus1973]

Dear all,

I’ve been a 35+ year fan of our plastic brick, and am now struck by how much fresh air there is in a typical box of lego.  I realise there is some there for protection however, i think its time to raise the question of perhaps trying to persuade TLG to reduce the size of some of the boxes, in order to save shipping, storage, and packaging costs, not to mention the environmental footprint.

Take for example the creator 3 in 1 rollercoaster, 31084, a USD 90 set, which, if you discount the very heavy and thick instruction manual, contains just around 900 pieces, coming in a less than a kilo in weight. I opened the box, and removed the contents and re packed them to roughly 50% of the volume, using half the box.  

The same could be said for most of the modular buildings, and other creator sets.  Since most of these are purchased by adults, i would guess, perhaps the shelf space argument used in the past is no longer relevent.  Especially since may of us buy from the online store, for our VIP points.  

What’s other peoples opinion this?  Can we maybe ask TLG to consider a move in this direction?

[Blondie-Wan]

They already began doing this, years ago, and beyond the important environmental considerations, they themselves have reason to want smaller packages (since it means more stock can fit in a shipping container or on a store shelf, and it saves on packaging costs).

I don’t profess to be an expert, but I suspect the main impediment to going even smaller is that the automated production / packing processes require the boxes for a certain set to be a certain size, in order to ensure the bags of parts all go in where they’re supposed to.

[Phillip Thorne]

This is not the first time this point has been raised. Literature search time!

Feb 2011: "New Smaller Reduced LEGO Box Size?" at Toys N Bricks, re: Star Wars 8093 Plo Koon's Starfighter.

Feb 2011: The above, cited at Brickset, with 159 comments.

May 2013: Why are Lego sets put in such big boxes? at Stack Exchange. I find the answer by "Josh" plausible: Because retailers want the big boxes. There's an element to consumer psychology such that, if you see a large box for $100, and a slightly smaller (but still large) box for $10, you'll immediately consider the smaller box to be a great deal. Buy it now! This trick doesn't work on us AFOLs, of course, because mentally computing price-per-part is second nature; but most buyers aren't AFOLs.

When AFOL-run conventions get guests, they're usually community managers or set designers. Somebody from the manufacturing end might be an interesting change.

[jus1973]

Interesting that this has been visited before, but not a lot has changed.  After posting, i remembered that when i purchased assembly square and brick bank, to save space in the car, i put the entire contents of brick bank into the assembly square box.  It wasn’t rammed in either.

I think the shelf space arguement is probably winning over the other considerations.  A shame, as i think its time for a change.

[Aanchir]

18 hours ago, Phillip Thorne said:

This is not the first time this point has been raised. Literature search time!

Feb 2011: "New Smaller Reduced LEGO Box Size?" at Toys N Bricks, re: Star Wars 8093 Plo Koon's Starfighter.

Feb 2011: The above, cited at Brickset, with 159 comments.

May 2013: Why are Lego sets put in such big boxes? at Stack Exchange. I find the answer by "Josh" plausible: Because retailers want the big boxes. There's an element to consumer psychology such that, if you see a large box for $100, and a slightly smaller (but still large) box for $10, you'll immediately consider the smaller box to be a great deal. Buy it now! This trick doesn't work on us AFOLs, of course, because mentally computing price-per-part is second nature; but most buyers aren't AFOLs.

When AFOL-run conventions get guests, they're usually community managers or set designers. Somebody from the manufacturing end might be an interesting change.

I think another factor in why LEGO prefers boxes to be fairly large is that it lets them show the product image on the box at close to actual size. Especially with a set like the aforementioned Pirate Roller Coaster, the overall size of the assembled set is much bigger than the size of box the loose parts would take up, because the model is spread out with a lot of empty space in the middle.

Even among AFOLs who have a lifetime of experience with the LEGO brick and its proportions, it's quite frequent to hear "I didn't have much interest in *insert set here*, then I saw it built in real life and realized how BIG it is!" It's easy to see a small picture of a set or read its proportions in inches and still underestimate how big the genuine article will be. So besides having the assembled set on display, an actual-size image of the set is the next best way to give people an honest appraisal of how big a set they'll be getting.