An Argument Against Most Non-Licensed Themes

[BrickJagger]

I could write a small novel in response to the OP, but I'll keep it short.

Simply put, Lego's core values are based around imagination and creativity. Advocating for Lego to get rid of all of the non-licensed themes save for a few is shortsighted and would not be feasible in the long run.

Many of Lego's media properties are "here today, gone tomorrow", while their non-licensed themes tend to be based on timeless concepts. As several others in this thread have pointed out, Castle 2013 and Pirates 2015 were half-hearted efforts at best, and their mediocre sales likely had more to do with Lego itself than the customers. We have seen multiple successful non-licensed themes in the recent past (Elves, Ultra Agents, Fantasy Era, Mars Mission, etc.) and I see no real indication that those wouldn't sell well in the present. In conclusion, kids don't change much, and the amount of adult buyers are growing in size, so why would Lego shrink its range of themes and options?

[MAB]

Thinking about it, I wouldn't mind at all if LEGO got rid of all non-licensed (minifigure based) themes except for City. So long as City has subthemes based on historical reenactors, futuristic enactors, etc.

 

[Peppermint_M]

City is filling in for the Action Themes I miss, adventures in the jungle and diving explorers was pretty fun. 

However I would like to have something character driven within the realm of adventurers seeking treasures and tackling monsters.

There are themes that popular Film and TV will never cover in a way that LEGO can tie-in to, so there will always be room for the exciting and different ideas.

[Kalahari134]

I suspect that the reason that non-licensed themes such as castle and pirates don't sell as well as they might once have done is one of marketing. Licensed brands already do most of the promotion for Lego, non-licensed brands have to be sold from scratched. Kids will play with pretty much anything you put in front of them but when the kid is writing his/her Christmas list or the parent is browsing in a toy shop, both are more likely to go for something they recognise, whether from a film or from an advert.

[MAB]

12 hours ago, Kalahari134 said:

I suspect that the reason that non-licensed themes such as castle and pirates don't sell as well as they might once have done is one of marketing. Licensed brands already do most of the promotion for Lego, non-licensed brands have to be sold from scratched. Kids will play with pretty much anything you put in front of them but when the kid is writing his/her Christmas list or the parent is browsing in a toy shop, both are more likely to go for something they recognise, whether from a film or from an advert.

Yet two of the most consistently popular themes are City and Friends. Very little advertising is done for those, outside of the catalogues and the LEGO Club magazines and website (which also cover other in-house themes).

[Mylenium]

15 hours ago, Kalahari134 said:

I suspect that the reason that non-licensed themes such as castle and pirates don't sell as well as they might once have done is one of marketing. Licensed brands already do most of the promotion for Lego, non-licensed brands have to be sold from scratched. Kids will play with pretty much anything you put in front of them but when the kid is writing his/her Christmas list or the parent is browsing in a toy shop, both are more likely to go for something they recognise, whether from a film or from an advert.

As MAB pointed out certain themes don't need much marketing. LEGO could have it simple in the area where I live for instance. As per my comment on the first page all they would need to do is have some connection to historical events, sell this stuff in museum gift shops or put up some quality window dressing in a big store to enawe children. This stuff would sell itself if only LEGO actually had it.

Mylenium

[icm]

22 minutes ago, Mylenium said:

As MAB pointed out certain themes don't need much marketing. LEGO could have it simple in the area where I live for instance. As per my comment on the first page all they would need to do is have some connection to historical events, sell this stuff in museum gift shops or put up some quality window dressing in a big store to enawe children. This stuff would sell itself if only LEGO actually had it.

See, that's the basic problem with most of these kinds of threads.  As adults who buy a lot of Lego and maybe have children or nieces and nephews who like Lego, we know what we personally want to see in a Lego set, we have some idea what the kids we know like, and we can see which sets tend to be shelf-warmers - but we don't actually have access to anything but anecdotal evidence, so we don't really have firm ideas of what would or would not sell.  Then we promote our dream themes on the forums as lines that would "sell themselves" with minimal marketing or investment. 

Take the idea of selling kits with "some connection to historical events" in a museum gift shop.  COBI produces a line of sets based off real-world airplanes and spacecraft and sells it in the United States in museum gift shops.  They even have a licensing deal with the Smithsonian Institution.  I imagine those airplanes sell well in the gift shop, but I wouldn't necessarily count on them selling well on Walmart shelves.  Same goes for a line of "compatible" sets produced by a company in my state - it's a line of pretty good builds of historically significant landmark buildings, and the quality is pretty good.  They sell reasonably well in local gift shops, but they wouldn't make it in the general market.  Finally, take the example of Overwatch.  No doubt somebody on this forum has at some time asked why Lego wasn't making kits based off this enormously popular video game, because those kits would fly off the shelves.  Well, now they are, and the complaints are pretty predictable.

My point isn't to say that every production decision Lego makes is thoroughly backed up by market research and risk analysis, only to say that the argument "X theme made by Lego doesn't sell well despite heavy marketing, therefore Y theme that I want Lego to make would sell well with minimal marketing" is a bit tiresome.  

[Mylenium]

1 hour ago, icm said:

Take the idea of selling kits with "some connection to historical events" in a museum gift shop. *snipped for brevity*

Fair enough points, but I still disagree. At least where specific European history and heritage is concerned, it's a case of "it's in your bones". You literally don't need to explicitly educate kids about this stuff. They will simply stumble upon it everywhere they turn. Even the smallest villages here have a legacy that goes back hundreds or even thousands of years when they were under the rule of some ancient count or Sith Lord. *lol* You really need to see the broader picture. This isn't necessarily just about selling merchandise at some musuem shop, it's about allowing kids to relive and reenact living history they breathe every day. Just look at Schleich or Playmobil - they're selling knights figures and stuff by the bucket. I do get that the market may not be as big as I think, but if those competitors can sell this stuff almost effortlessly, don't you think LEGO would make a good buck then, too? I really think they are missing something major here.

Mylenium

[Kalahari134]

5 hours ago, MAB said:

Yet two of the most consistently popular themes are City and Friends. Very little advertising is done for those, outside of the catalogues and the LEGO Club magazines and website (which also cover other in-house themes).

The former does have an advantage over Pirates/Castle in that among all these lines trying to get a slice of the boys' market, police cars are the most relate-able. The latter is backed up with a TV series and caters for a market that has relatively little competition from LEGO's other products.

13 minutes ago, Mylenium said:

Fair enough points, but I still disagree. At least where specific European history and heritage is concerned, it's a case of "it's in your bones". You literally don't need to explicitly educate kids about this stuff. They will simply stumble upon it everywhere they turn. Even the smallest villages here have a legacy that goes back hundreds or even thousands of years when they were under the rule of some ancient count or Sith Lord. *lol* You really need to see the broader picture. This isn't necessarily just about selling merchandise at some musuem shop, it's about allowing kids to relive and reenact living history they breathe every day. Just look at Schleich or Playmobil - they're selling knights figures and stuff by the bucket. I do get that the market may not be as big as I think, but if those competitors can sell this stuff almost effortlessly, don't you think LEGO would make a good buck then, too? I really think they are missing something major here.

 Mylenium

I'm afraid that in England where I grew up, kids know little more about history than that the Romans invented plumbing and that Henry VIII had six wives. Here in Wales it may be better as we are surrounded by fortifications, some built by the Welsh princes defending against invading armies, others by Edward I to keep the conquered masses in check.

[ShaydDeGrai]

7 hours ago, MAB said:

Yet two of the most consistently popular themes are City and Friends.

These generic themes also benefit from a lack of comparison to big name IPs.  I sometimes feel that  Classic Space, Blacktron, etc. largely went away  as part of a non-compete (formal or otherwise) with Lego Star Wars.  Pirates got shelved to clear the way for Pirates of the Caribbean.  Harry Potter and The Lord of the Rings didn't want to share shelf space with classic castle, etc.   I can't help but think about where those other evergreen themes would be if they'd been consistently nurtured the same way the Playmobile has been consistently selling their castle-theme for decades.  

I remember several exchanges with Castle fans (AFOLs) comparing things to LOTR.  People were jealous of the attention to detail on the mini-figures but (with the exception of WeatherTop and Helm's Deep) largely unimpressed with the builds.  A lot of friends were hoping that once the LOTR line ended TLG would return to Castle, bringing the best of both worlds, great mini-figs and engaging builds (like Medieval Market Village and classic castles reworked to use modern parts and building techniques), but it never happened.  In the waning days of LOTR, you really couldn't introduce a Castle set without people mentally contrasting it with LOTR so we needed time to clear the palette as it were.  Once the time was ripe to jump back in with a "swords and armor" offering, we got Nexo-knights which somehow managed to combine Space and Castle to produce a theme that was neither - not that this is bad, but I think it speaks to the idea that some of these "evergreen" themes have lost their needles because they were forced out by (sometimes) short-lived niche specialty themes.  Opportunities for a self-perpetuating "legacy" fan base were lost, or, at best, traded for a quick bite of the latest pop culture pie.

 

3 hours ago, icm said:

(snip) As adults who buy a lot of Lego and maybe have children or nieces and nephews who like Lego, we know what we personally want to see in a Lego set, we have some idea what the kids we know like, and we can see which sets tend to be shelf-warmers - but we don't actually have access to anything but anecdotal evidence, so we don't really have firm ideas of what would or would not sell.  Then we promote our dream themes on the forums as lines that would "sell themselves" with minimal marketing or investment. ... 

From a certain perspective, this is undeniable. People like to assume that their personal opinions reflect the will of the masses and cherry-pick "evidence" to "prove" their point.  This is not unique to Lego, half of political rhetoric is built around pandering to fringe groups who are so convinced that they're both right and in the majority, that they stopped comparing notes years ago, let alone listening to actual facts.

Anecdotally however, as an AFOL and parent, I can say that my daughter and I already have different tastes in Lego and I certainly buy her kits that I'd never consider for myself.  Where we do generally agree though is on issues of complexity and quality.  She has a good eye and can spot a quality kit that will be fun to build and fun to play with after the fact even when the theme itself holds little value to her.  She's not a good basis for comparing the appeal of licensed-IP vs in-house media tie-ins vs generic themes because she doesn't get much screen time and has never seen the films or TV shows of the former, but she can spot a lame excuse to sell a mini-figure a mile away and would much rather have quality, playable set, waiting for her to invent a story (like many Duplo and City kits) than a "defined" character or two and a random collection of parts that get most of their "value" from being tied to an IP that she doesn't recognize.   

[Mylenium]

17 hours ago, Kalahari134 said:

I'm afraid that in England where I grew up, kids know little more about history than that the Romans invented plumbing and that Henry VIII had six wives. Here in Wales it may be better as we are surrounded by fortifications, some built by the Welsh princes defending against invading armies, others by Edward I to keep the conquered masses in check.

Fair enough, though I wouldn't take this as an argument against a Castle-style original product line. Certain things would still be applicable even to the lesser historically educated. I'm sure people could still be hooked on stuff just for the fun of building something interesting. Point in case: This could be a very comprehensive theme about what people more or less perceive as the middle ages, not necessarily an exact period and I think even if you have no proactive interest in any of that, people are at least aware of it from movies, books, paintings and so on and some passing knowledge and the desire to explore this further in LEGO might still lure them in...

Mylenium

[Aanchir]

20 hours ago, ShaydDeGrai said:

These generic themes also benefit from a lack of comparison to big name IPs.  I sometimes feel that  Classic Space, Blacktron, etc. largely went away  as part of a non-compete (formal or otherwise) with Lego Star Wars.  Pirates got shelved to clear the way for Pirates of the Caribbean.  Harry Potter and The Lord of the Rings didn't want to share shelf space with classic castle, etc.   I can't help but think about where those other evergreen themes would be if they'd been consistently nurtured the same way the Playmobile has been consistently selling their castle-theme for decades.

With regard to themes specifically involving space travel and aliens, I agree, some non-compete clause in various contracts for the Star Wars license is probably responsible for that decline. Granted, it's worth noting that we did get a new space theme about every two years between the end of the Star Wars prequel trilogy and the beginning of the sequel trilogy, so I suspect at that time LEGO was able to negotiate for a less restrictive contract. There is also some ambiguity in what exactly is perceived as competition under the current licensing contract for Star Wars sets — clearly even non-Disney IPs like NASA, Doctor Who, E.T, and Voltron have still been fair game since the start of the sequel trilogy, despite space travel being a major theme within all those IPs.

With Pirates of the Caribbean it's hard to tell if it was a matter of a non-compete clause or simply LEGO not wanting to oversaturate the market, since in general pirate-related themes tend to be a lot smaller and less frequent than castle- or space-related ones, and I'm not sure if the demand for Pirates sets has ever been as reliably strong as with the Castle or Space categories. Even on a broader pop culture level, pirate-related movies and TV shows have been far scarcer in the past 30 years than medieval fantasy or sci-fi movies and TV shows.

But with Castle I think you are certainly overstating things. I don't get the sense that licensed themes have ever stood in the way of non-licensed castle themes except perhaps in the Harry Potter theme's first few years, on the grounds that every new incarnation of LEGO Castle since 2004 has overlapped with a castle-related license, and most even launched the same year as a wave of sets tied to a new Harry Potter or The Hobbit movie! Knights' Kingdom II and Prisoner of Azkaban sets both launched in 2004, Fantasy Era and Order of the Phoenix sets both launched in 2007, Kingdoms and Deathly Hallows sets both launched in 2010, and the yellow banner Castle reboot and The Desolation of Smaug sets both launched in 2013. What's more, in all but that final example, the non-iicensed Castle themes demonstrated as much or more staying power than their licensed brethren. Never mind the considerable overlap in subject matter between the more recent Elves and Disney Princess themes, which managed to coexist for a good four years.

As far as Nexo Knights goes, I've heard the LEGO Group had been floating the idea of a sci-fi castle theme since 2009 or so, and to be honest i think their choice to launch it when they did probably had less to do with diminishing faith in more traditional incarnations of the Castle theme and more to do with it being a great way to introduce a sci-fi theme with extensive LEGO Space design cues like brightly colored windscreens, vehicles with huge all-terrain wheels, and lots of robots and lasers, but with an unmistakably non-space setting with no extraterrestrial characters, so as not to conflict with the annual release of new Star Wars movies and corresponding sets beginning in 2015. (the launch of Ultra Agents in 2014 with its "post-space" setting and space-inspired vehicles may have been similarly motivated by the impending arrival of new Star Wars movies).

With Nexo Knights ending I expect that in 2019 or 2020 we'll see another more traditional castle theme take its place, and probably also another heavily space-influenced sci-fi/action-adventure theme in some other category, like underwater or underground or something new entirely.

[TeriXeri]

I greatly prefer Lego's own themes, in modern times, after my 15 years of no-lego dark age, it was Nexo Knights that brought me back as an AFOL.

Now Nexo Knights is pretty much done (2 more magazines at most), I started collecting mostly Creator (3-in-1) sets, along with the Minifig packs (fun in the park/beach/outdoor), and more recent Classic  sets for parts (the 60th anniversary sets were great), and Xtra Polybags.

I just like plain yellow minifigs, even while I like some Friends or Elves sets for their designs, I never got into them due to Minidoll scale and heavy focus on stickers for decoration.

I just have way more nostalgia toward in house themes, like Space/Castle/Pirates/City(town etc.) as I was a kid, and only at the last tail-end of my LEGO time. 

I got 1 small Star Wars set in 1999. And simply do not feel the same towards the theme, as when I think back of Blacktron, M-Tron, Ice Planet, Space Police 1-2, Insectoids and even some UFO. Despite only having a few small sets of it as most my LEGO was received as gifts as a kid so I never got a whole lot of the same theme.

 

Edited October 26, 2018 by TeriXeri

[Stash2Sixx]

4 hours ago, Aanchir said:

With Pirates of the Caribbean it's hard to tell if it was a matter of a non-compete clause or simply LEGO not wanting to oversaturate the market, since in general pirate-related themes tend to be a lot smaller and less frequent than castle- or space-related ones, and I'm not sure if the demand for Pirates sets has ever been as reliably strong as with the Castle or Space categories. 

As an employee at that time, I had NEVER seen a theme (classic pirates) go on sale and get pushed out so fast!

4 hours ago, Aanchir said:

But with Castle I think you are certainly overstating things. I don't get the sense that licensed themes have ever stood in the way of non-licensed castle themes 

In the public's eye, this is exactly what 'they' will tell you, couldn't be farther from the truth though.  I've spoken with enough designers and internal employees over my years (with LEGO) and there is a lot that doesn't get publicized.  I can provide no proof though, so take it as you will.

[BrickJagger]

On 10/26/2018 at 4:23 PM, Stash2Sixx said:

In the public's eye, this is exactly what 'they' will tell you, couldn't be farther from the truth though.  I've spoken with enough designers and internal employees over my years (with LEGO) and there is a lot that doesn't get publicized.  I can provide no proof though, so take it as you will.

Now this is interesting, thanks for sharing. If licensed themes are standing in the way of Castle though, why were there so many licenses and Castle themes that ran co-currently in the recent past? I imagine that this must have been a recent change.

[HawkLord]

Non-licensed themes means Lego doesn’t pay extra profits into those licenses. Effectively all the profit goes to Lego, which is a pretty good deal. And they don’t have to be focused on contracts that may require them to use specific characters in sets or limited their creativity. 

[Lyichir]

54 minutes ago, HawkLord said:

Non-licensed themes means Lego doesn’t pay extra profits into those licenses. Effectively all the profit goes to Lego, which is a pretty good deal. And they don’t have to be focused on contracts that may require them to use specific characters in sets or limited their creativity. 

The counterpoint is that for non-licensed themes, Lego has to put in a lot more work in terms of brand-building. Licensing a popular movie ensures that the movie itself will pull a lot of weight in terms of generating hype for the sets, whereas for a theme like Ninjago, Chima, or Nexo Knights, Lego has to basically build the brand from the ground up in the hopes of generating a “craze”. That’s not to say they haven’t become fairly good at that, but there’s a reason there’s usually only one new “Big Bang” theme per year. A huge marketing push like that is a lot more resource intensive at the design and marketing stages than licensing an already popular property.