Lego David

Licensed Themes VS Original Themes

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12 hours ago, ShaydDeGrai said:

One of my litmus tests for a "good" set versus a "the build was an afterthought" one, is to build the kit without any mini-figures or stickers and see if what's left stands on its own. From my experience, licensed theme kits fail this test far more often than original theme ones.

Agree. Way too often you feel that licensed sets were either thrown together quickly at the eleventh hour to make it in time with the release of a specific moviue/ series/ game or whatever and the actual buildable parts appear rather unsophisticated. You could of course argue that they are targeted at kids and inexperienced people to begin with, so they are simplified intentionally, but that seems a somewhat lame excuse, considering that LEGO isn't rocket science overall.

Mylenium

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2 hours ago, Lego David said:

 

This is the problem I have with licensed themes: LEGO has focused on them WAY TO MUCH in the past decade or so. If they continue this way, I can see them being in financial trouble in a few years.

I guess it depends on where you shop but I just don't see this as an issue at all. City and Creator take up the bulk of shelf space then throw in Ninjago, Technic, Speed Champions and Friends. In fact when I look at most of the stores around here I would say licensed sets occupy only around one third of the shelf space. Since I really like both original themes and licensed themes, I see this whole point as a non issue that holds no weight whatsoever. 

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11 hours ago, Aanchir said:

If anything, disappointment with these sets tends to stem from how there aren’t many iconic blockbuster movie or action cartoon scenes that can possibly look as impressive at these sorts of price points as the source material does on-screen, so the sets at those price points typically wind up being extremely condensed versions of their subjects.

I'm pretty sure everyone who buys LEGO is aware that you couldn't possibly re-create e.g. the Battle of New York in its full glory without ending up with a 6000 pieces set that nobody can afford. Simplifications are always part of the game and do not only apply to licensed themes. In the end even Ninjago City is just a trimmed down representation of what it looks like in the movie as are many Ninjago Sets based on the TV series. As far as I'm concerned, the actual complexity and "realism" of a set isn't what makes or breaks this. Once you think about it, many production designs aren't that great, anyway, and just look boring. Some stuff indeed just works on-screen when it's drowned out by explosions and obfuscated with tons of CG motion blur. ;-)

And there's of course the other side: Some designs never translate(d) well to LEGO since specific parts don't/ didn't exist. Things like the 1x1 bracket have only been introduced last year, so in a way due to their reluctance to introduce new parts to emulate all those bits and bobs and ways get them attached to your models LEGO may have shot themselves in their foot for a long time. I'm pretty sure many models could have looked a ton better in the past had those parts been available, in turn making them more attractive. So as far as I'm concerned, there are also hard technical reasons why some stuff may not be attractive and re-capture that feeling of a movie or whatever.

Regardless, I still think the biggest issue with many licensed sets is that they are not "crafted with love". Either they are rushed to the market to meet release dates, not allowing designers to make them as good as possible or they are hopelessly micromanaged by the IP holders. That combined with LEGOs odd pricing policies surely often is to the detriment of licensed sets (along with a ton of other factors that could be discussed endlessly)...

Mylenium

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Just now, Mylenium said:

Regardless, I still think the biggest issue with many licensed sets is that they are not "crafted with love". Either they are rushed to the market to meet release dates, not allowing designers to make them as good as possible or they are hopelessly micromanaged by the IP holders. That combined with LEGOs odd pricing policies surely often is to the detriment of licensed sets (along with a ton of other factors that could be discussed endlessly)...

I agree with all of this.

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19 minutes ago, Johnny1360 said:

I guess it depends on where you shop but I just don't see this as an issue at all. City and Creator take up the bulk of shelf space then throw in Ninjago, Technic, Speed Champions and Friends. In fact when I look at most of the stores around here I would say licensed sets occupy only around one third of the shelf space. Since I really like both original themes and licensed themes, I see this whole point as a non issue that holds no weight whatsoever. 

...but then again, there's more to this than how it's presented on the store shelves. The IP holders want their piece of the pie and I'm pretty sure when Lucasfilm/ Disney are breathing down your neck, it's not even much fun to design a Star Wars set. also one mustn't forget how much money LEGO have sunk into licensed themes where the movies totally bombed or were mediocre at best. "Angry Birds" or "Lone Ranger", anyone? In the end this is pretty hit and miss and out of five licensed IPs only one may turn out as a hit, while the rest only cost you money. I'm pretty sure that if LEGO invested that money in their own IP we'd have at least better sets on that front...

Mylenium

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1 hour ago, Mylenium said:

Angry Birds" or "Lone Ranger"

There is a lot more than this: Prince of Persia, the 2014 Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Live-action movie, Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides, Cars 2, Fantastic Beasts: Crimes of Grindelwald, all of them had their own dedicated wave when the movies were a total failure or mediocre at best. They just used Fantastic Beasts 2 (wich by the way has a extremely low 38% critics score on Rotten Tomatoes) to bring back Harry Potter in the so-called "Wizarding World" wave. Bringing back an entire theme that didn't really need to be brought back just for the cause of a bad movie is a poor move in my opinion. Why should LEGO depend on movies that come out when they can independently make their own themes about that specific topic?

Edited by Lego David

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36 minutes ago, Lego David said:

There is a lot more than this: Prince of Persia, the 2014 Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Live-action movie, Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides, Cars 2, Fantastic Beasts: Crimes of Grindelwald, all of them had their own dedicated wave when the movies were a total failure or mediocre at best. They just used Fantastic Beasts 2 (wich by the way has a extremely low 38% critics score on Rotten Tomatoes) to bring back Harry Potter in the so-called "Wizarding World" wave. Bringing back an entire theme that didn't really need to be brought back just for the cause of a bad movie is a poor move in my opinion. Why should LEGO depend on movies that come out when they can independently make their own themes about that specific topic?

I've said this before elsewhere, but in handling upcoming IPs that Lego can't be certain of as far as their success goes, I think they should opt to promote that IP through tie-in products based upon their more classic forebearers rather than its most current iteration when they can. For instance, take 2008's Speed Racer line based upon the cinematic movie released by Warner Brothers that year. I think it would've been safer if Lego made promotional tie-in sets for the movie based upon the original cartoon rather than the cinematic adaptation to start at least. Same could be been said for The Lone Ranger and Angry Birds, while themes you mentioned such as Lord of the Rings, Pirates of the Caribbean, and Harry Potter (2018 revival, that is) were at least were preceded by tie-in sets based upon the latest installments' forebearers.

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59 minutes ago, Digger of Bricks said:

The Lone Ranger and Angry Birds

You are right in this point. With Angry Birds, they could have easily made sets based on the Classic Mobile game. But instead, we only got sets based on the movie, which didn't perform very well critically. Shortly, this theme could have been better if they added more then just the Movie to it.

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5 hours ago, Johnny1360 said:

I guess it depends on where you shop but I just don't see this as an issue at all. City and Creator take up the bulk of shelf space then throw in Ninjago, Technic, Speed Champions and Friends. In fact when I look at most of the stores around here I would say licensed sets occupy only around one third of the shelf space. Since I really like both original themes and licensed themes, I see this whole point as a non issue that holds no weight whatsoever. 

There's not just shelf space to consider. There's also promotional time and effort. There might be some confirmation bias in my end but it seems like the licensed themes get more than half of the TV advertising--which is even more unbalanced if, as you say, they only constitute about one-third of the stock. I get that a lot of it is enticement for non-LEGO fans to make the jump based on their enjoyment of the source material, but it does feel a bit like regular LEGO fans are taken for granted.

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6 minutes ago, Karalora said:

TV advertising

Should that even matter? LEGO's TV ads are a joke. I don't think anyone even takes them seriously, regardless which theme they are for. In-store POS marketing is no doubt much more important. Just saying...

Mylenium

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Just now, Mylenium said:

Should that even matter? LEGO's TV ads are a joke. I don't think anyone even takes them seriously, regardless which theme they are for. In-store POS marketing is no doubt much more important. Just saying...

Mylenium

By that point, though, people are already kinda committed to buying a LEGO product, or at least strongly considering it. Outside ads, primarily on TV, are going to be what gets people into that store.

I don't think the licensed themes are out of control, and I don't think they're necessarily bad in any case. I just think the presentation implies that TLG is slightly prouder of the licenses they've managed to acquire than their in-house creations. And that's potentially a problem, because as others have pointed out, the licensed sets often seem to be designed from a "minifigs first" perspective rather than a focus on quality building.

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9 hours ago, Lego David said:

I 100% agree with this. Most small licensed sets are just a garbage build that a 10-year-old can build, and the only reason people buy them is because of the minifigures. Take the recent 30$ Star Wars Playsets: The build is nothing great and doesn't look great on display either. But it has some cool characters in a cheap set, so they sell very well. I have fallen in this trap with the Darth Vader Transformation set, which I thought was great, but it was actually not. I just got the minifigs and didn't care about the build.

2

Yes most small licensed sets, that tend to be aimed at children aged 6/7/8+, can be built by a 10 year old. So LEGO are hitting their age demographic for building techniques. And it is not true that people only buy them for the minifigures. So people might, but many kids PLAY with their LEGO.

9 hours ago, Lego David said:

This is the problem I have with licensed themes: LEGO has focused on them WAY TO MUCH in the past decade or so. If they continue this way, I can see them being in financial trouble in a few years.

 

The fact that they keep doing more licenses suggests that they are doing well financially out of licenses.

3 hours ago, Digger of Bricks said:

I think it would've been safer if Lego made promotional tie-in sets for the movie based upon the original cartoon rather than the cinematic adaptation to start at least. Same could be been said for The Lone Ranger and Angry Birds,

 

 

2 hours ago, Lego David said:

You are right in this point. With Angry Birds, they could have easily made sets based on the Classic Mobile game. But instead, we only got sets based on the movie, which didn't perform very well critically. Shortly, this theme could have been better if they added more then just the Movie to it.

 

The license holders don't want LEGO promoting, for example, the Angry Birds game. In this case, Columbia Pictures/Sony wanted LEGO to promote the Angry Birds Movie.

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1 hour ago, Karalora said:

Outside ads, primarily on TV, are going to be what gets people into that store.

Yes/ no/ perhaps. I guess it's once more a case of different markets, but I don't see TV ads for LEGO as something that would get people into stores here in Germany. The placement of the ads is way too inconsistent and many people probably never even get to see them...

Mylenium

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14 hours ago, dr_spock said:

Original themes.  They don't have an IP licensing fee tax.  :pir-classic:

I feel like the impact of licensing fees often seems overstated. I wouldn't be surprised if a bigger factor in the extra cost associated with many licensed sets has more to do with the number of unique molds, printed elements, and recolors needed to accurately re-create their characters. Like, certainly, Jurassic World sets are typically very expensive for their size and piece counts, but so were the non-licensed Dino sets in 2012, so I'd sooner attribute the high prices to the highly specialized and detailed dinosaur elements the two themes have in common, than royalties associated with the Jurassic World license which only pertain to that theme.

Additionally, there usually seems to be a much bigger difference in value between a Star Wars set with lots of big and highly specialized elements and one without (like, say, Rancor Pit vs. Duel on Geonosis) than between a Star Wars set and a Ninjago set that both use mostly small, cheap, basic elements (like Cloud-Rider Swoop Bikes vs. Street Race of Snake Jaguar).

11 hours ago, Lego David said:

This is the problem I have with licensed themes: LEGO has focused on them WAY TO MUCH in the past decade or so. If they continue this way, I can see them being in financial trouble in a few years.

I'm not sure I agree that the focus on licensed themes has been way too much. Certainly the number of licenses has increased, but most individual IPs don't get a whole bunch of different sets per year like LEGO Star Wars does. If anything, this helps to diversify risk so that LEGO doesn't find themselves in serious financial trouble should one or more of their usual licenses have a particularly weak year (as was the case in 2003, when Star Wars, Spider-Man, and Harry Potter sales all plummeted due to having no new movies out to support them).

When you look at what themes typically get the most sets associated with them, the ones that most reliably lead the pack besides Star Wars are non-licensed ones like City, Friends, Ninjago, and Duplo. And in the LEGO Group's annual and interim results, the best-selling themes tend to be pretty similar. In last year's interim results, "the top-performing themes were LEGO Technic, LEGO Ninjago, LEGO Creator and LEGO Classic. LEGO City and LEGO Star Wars also continue to be amongst the Group’s biggest themes." In both 2015 and 2016, the LEGO Group's strongest years, their top-selling themes overall (in no particular order) were Duplo, Ninjago, City, Star Wars, and Friends.

This isn't to say that their licensed sets and themes don't do well, but most of them tend to be engineered for smaller-scale, flash-in-the-pan success built on movie brands that already have a lot of hype built up around them. When new movies for a particular IP like Indiana Jones, Harry Potter, Toy Story, Cars, etc. stop coming out, LEGO seems to have no trouble retiring those themes and shifting their focus to other IPs with more immediate relevance. I suspect this is a big part of why Super Heroes and Disney have become such a stable presence lately: they each encompass a wide range of different movie and television IPs that LEGO can rotate between depending on which have the most hype and attention surrounding them at any given time.

8 hours ago, Mylenium said:

...but then again, there's more to this than how it's presented on the store shelves. The IP holders want their piece of the pie and I'm pretty sure when Lucasfilm/ Disney are breathing down your neck, it's not even much fun to design a Star Wars set. also one mustn't forget how much money LEGO have sunk into licensed themes where the movies totally bombed or were mediocre at best. "Angry Birds" or "Lone Ranger", anyone? In the end this is pretty hit and miss and out of five licensed IPs only one may turn out as a hit, while the rest only cost you money. I'm pretty sure that if LEGO invested that money in their own IP we'd have at least better sets on that front...

Mylenium

 

6 hours ago, Lego David said:

There is a lot more than this: Prince of Persia, the 2014 Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Live-action movie, Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides, Cars 2, Fantastic Beasts: Crimes of Grindelwald, all of them had their own dedicated wave when the movies were a total failure or mediocre at best. They just used Fantastic Beasts 2 (wich by the way has a extremely low 38% critics score on Rotten Tomatoes) to bring back Harry Potter in the so-called "Wizarding World" wave. Bringing back an entire theme that didn't really need to be brought back just for the cause of a bad movie is a poor move in my opinion. Why should LEGO depend on movies that come out when they can independently make their own themes about that specific topic?

On a similar note to what I stated above… I don't know that it's realistic to assume that LEGO lost any money on the licenses in question, because they were not all that heavily invested in them to begin with. Prince of Persia, The Lone Ranger, Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides, and Angry Birds each had only around 6 sets (excluding polybags). When you look at some of LEGO's big failures like Galidor or Explore, they were often tremendously expensive endeavors with unearned expectations of becoming a major hit.

What's more, of the licenses you mention, Cars 2, The Angry Birds Movie, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald, etc. were  pretty major box office successes. Whether or not they're good or well-reviewed movies, they were obviously ones that lots and lots of people were paying attention to and interested in seeing. I suspect all of these movies made a lot of money not only on ticket sales but also on merchandise.

Over the years, LEGO has gotten very good when it comes to minimizing risk, even when that leaves AFOLs a bit disappointed (like many recent waves of LEGO Castle and LEGO Pirates launches being about as low-key as some of the riskier movie licenses you and others have named).

And as for why LEGO used Fantastic Beasts as an incentive to bring back Harry Potter… again, that's the kind of risk management LEGO tends to engage in with most of their licenses:

  • LEGO Star Wars was released shortly ahead of The Phantom Menace
  • LEGO Indiana Jones was released shortly ahead of Kingdom of the Crystal Skull
  • LEGO Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles was released shortly ahead of the 2014 movie
  • New waves of LEGO Harry Potter have ALWAYS been launched just ahead of a new Wizarding World movie and retired when there are no new Wizarding World movies in theaters.

Now, does that mean LEGO doesn't think people care about these brands when there AREN'T movies coming soon or recently released? Of course not. People don't suddenly stop caring about Star Wars or Harry Potter or Batman or Spider-Man when they don't have new movies to look forward to. But as LEGO found out in 2003, licensed toys typically don't sell nearly as well when there's not any new movie being heavily promoted to keep people talking about that particular brand. Because kids' interests can be fickle, and even if kids continue to enjoy Harry Potter in non-movie years, the actual purchasing decisions of that demographic can shift a lot more rapidly based on whatever the media and their peers happen to be most excited about or devoting the most attention to at any given time.

3 hours ago, Mylenium said:

Should that even matter? LEGO's TV ads are a joke. I don't think anyone even takes them seriously, regardless which theme they are for. In-store POS marketing is no doubt much more important. Just saying...

TV commercials for kids' toys in general often tend to be extremely cheesy and cringeworthy from an adult standpoint. That doesn't mean they're not effective. And I think it should go without saying that whether something on TV (whether an ad or a TV show) can be "taken seriously" hardly has any bearing on whether kids enjoy or pay attention to it. I suspect a lot of the shows during which the most toy commercials air would seem just as stupid to you as the commercials themselves.

Granted, I recognize that there might be a lot of difference between the marketing and sales landscape in Germany than in the United States. But I suspect that even in your country, "seriousness" tends to be a much bigger concern among adults than kids.

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6 hours ago, Digger of Bricks said:

 

I don't know about the marketing in either the US or Germany, since I live in Romania. Here, is my country, kids always are more into themes like Ninjago, Nexo Knights, Elves or City rather then licensed themes. Everytime I visit a kid who likes LEGOs, I can barely find any licensed sets among them (except for Minecraft, maybe). This proves that original IP's sell a lot better among kids. The reason licensed sets sell "better" is because it's AFOLs most of the time who buy them. OverWatch was clearly meant to be for either TFOLs or AFOLs rather then KFOLs. This is what concerns me: LEGO has been targeting AFOLs for quite some time (what other explanation is there for all those UCS sets?) More then kids, since of course, AFOLs can spend as much money on LEGO as they want when children are limited by their parent's budget. LEGO is a toy, and obviously a toy is for kids. What is strange though, is that recently LEGO has kinda started to become a toy for Adults...

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On 1/18/2019 at 8:50 AM, MAB said:

No, there isn't.

There are licensed themes that I love such as LOTR and Hobbit, some I find OK such as Star Wars, some where the minifigures are OK but not the sets such as Superheroes and some I don't really like at all, such as Minecraft, Angry Birds, etc.

There are also unlicensed themes I love such as Castle and Creator Expert, some I find OK such as City and some of in-house one-offs such as Monster Fighters and Alien Conquest, some where I like the minifigures and some I don't like at all.

I find it quite pointless to compare licensed sets to in-house sets. It is like comparing all green fruit to all red fruit. There is huge variety within each category. I like some of both and I don't like some of both.

 

Yes.  This.

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13 hours ago, Aanchir said:

TV commercials for kids' toys in general often tend to be extremely cheesy and cringeworthy from an adult standpoint. That doesn't mean they're not effective. And I think it should go without saying that whether something on TV (whether an ad or a TV show) can be "taken seriously" hardly has any bearing on whether kids enjoy or pay attention to it. I suspect a lot of the shows during which the most toy commercials air would seem just as stupid to you as the commercials themselves.

Granted, I recognize that there might be a lot of difference between the marketing and sales landscape in Germany than in the United States. But I suspect that even in your country, "seriousness" tends to be a much bigger concern among adults than kids.

Nope, I have to disagree. Point in case: LEGO's ads look quite rubbish next to those of their competitors. The difference is painfully obvious if you e.g. have a Playmobil ad next to a LEGO one. And then I can't help but feel that LEGO are playing it cheap. I've never seen LEGO ads on "big" channels (public TV or the top private TV channels) and even on the kids channels they appear to only be booking time when it's cheap, i.e. early in the morning, around noon or late in the evening - when most of their target demo are in school or in bed. In fact you can count yourself lucky if you get to see any LEGO ads and I like to think that I'm watching quite a bit of kids TV for specific reasons. So regardless of your other points, which are all good and valid, as far as I'm concerened LEGO are doing a crap job in that department, at least here in Germany. And of course as someone who has worked in the media industry I could still go on endlessly about the stylistic shortcomings, but that's beside the point. Overall my point remains - LEGO's TV advertising is probably not very effective and not doing much to get people in stores in the first place.

Mylenium

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1 hour ago, Mylenium said:

Nope, I have to disagree. Point in case: LEGO's ads look quite rubbish next to those of their competitors.

I think, at this point, speak for yourself. I've seen a bunch other commercial but I've never see Lego commercials to be garbage. Personally, I think they're the most tolerable (for most themes). In fact, I find them quite entertaining to the point where I would rewind to watch them again.

This is obviously my point of view for my own reasons. If you think it's garbage compare to others, that's your opinion. But there are people who may think otherwise. 

Edited by JJ Tong (zfogshooterz)

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Sure, it all depends on individual tastes. I'm not saying anything else. Still, to me the LEGO TV ads look less than great for a million reasons.

Mylenium

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9 hours ago, Mylenium said:

Nope, I have to disagree. Point in case: LEGO's ads look quite rubbish next to those of their competitors. The difference is painfully obvious if you e.g. have a Playmobil ad next to a LEGO one. And then I can't help but feel that LEGO are playing it cheap. I've never seen LEGO ads on "big" channels (public TV or the top private TV channels) and even on the kids channels they appear to only be booking time when it's cheap, i.e. early in the morning, around noon or late in the evening - when most of their target demo are in school or in bed. In fact you can count yourself lucky if you get to see any LEGO ads and I like to think that I'm watching quite a bit of kids TV for specific reasons. So regardless of your other points, which are all good and valid, as far as I'm concerened LEGO are doing a crap job in that department, at least here in Germany. And of course as someone who has worked in the media industry I could still go on endlessly about the stylistic shortcomings, but that's beside the point. Overall my point remains - LEGO's TV advertising is probably not very effective and not doing much to get people in stores in the first place.

Mylenium

On 1/19/2019 at 2:51 PM, Digger of Bricks said:

 

The new LEGO commercials are garbage. The old ones are sooo cool to the point where you rewatch them out of nostalgia. The old ones had cool music and amazing backgrounds. The new ones just show some kids playing with no real budget put into them. And they removed the classic "HEY!" From the City commercials... this is outrageous. The new commercials are garbage. The old ones are probably the best commercials a toy has ever had.

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21 hours ago, Lego David said:

I don't know about the marketing in either the US or Germany, since I live in Romania. Here, is my country, kids always are more into themes like Ninjago, Nexo Knights, Elves or City rather then licensed themes. Everytime I visit a kid who likes LEGOs, I can barely find any licensed sets among them (except for Minecraft, maybe). This proves that original IP's sell a lot better among kids. The reason licensed sets sell "better" is because it's AFOLs most of the time who buy them. OverWatch was clearly meant to be for either TFOLs or AFOLs rather then KFOLs. This is what concerns me: LEGO has been targeting AFOLs for quite some time (what other explanation is there for all those UCS sets?) More then kids, since of course, AFOLs can spend as much money on LEGO as they want when children are limited by their parent's budget. LEGO is a toy, and obviously a toy is for kids. What is strange though, is that recently LEGO has kinda started to become a toy for Adults...

Well, for starters, “all those UCS sets” only amounts to one or two Star Wars sets out of dozens each year.

While teen and adult targeted sets are often priced higher than kid-targeted ones (though not always… Architecture skews older but is usually not priced all that high), they are usually a small fraction of the total number of sets produced per year, and produced in much smaller numbers than a more affordable priced City, Friends, or Ninjago set will usually tend to be. The number of these adult-targeted sets has increased not because LEGO is focusing on adults at the expense of kids, but because the variety of sets and LEGO’s production capacity for them in general has increased, meaning even that small fraction of sets aimed at older builders now accounts for a larger number.

It also seems like a lot of the time, AFOLs think of all adult-targeted sets as something that AFOLs like us are expected to enjoy separately from kids. I think many of us would be surprised how many of these sets are enjoyed together by parents and kids as a bonding activity. Several of the latest Winter Village sets are even designed with two separate manuals: one with smaller or easier builds for kids to construct while their parents work on the main, more “expert” level build. But in other cases the whole building experience is a team effort, with parents chipping in on parts that might be too difficult or repetitive for a younger builder to enjoy alone. As a Ninjago fan it warmed my heart to see lots of Facebook and Twitter posts about parents and kids working together to build huge, advanced sets like the Temple of Airjitzu or Ninjago City!

As for Overwatch specifically, I also suspect there’s some bias in terms of thinking of it as a more “adult” license than we’re used to. LEGO has made licensed sets for plenty of Star Wars, Indiana Jones, Pirates of the Caribbean, and Marvel superhero movies with a PG-13 rating, so why is a fairly small video game licensed theme with an equivalent “T” rating so strange?

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9 minutes ago, Lego David said:

The new LEGO commercials are garbage. The old ones are sooo cool to the point where you rewatch them out of nostalgia. The old ones had cool music and amazing backgrounds. The new ones just show some kids playing with no real budget put into them. And they removed the classic "HEY!" From the City commercials... this is outrageous. The new commercials are garbage. The old ones are probably the best commercials a toy has ever had.

It does seemed from 2018 or so onwards, the direction on how Lego commercials is has changed. Personally, it's not that bad (if you try to look at it neutrally). But, yeah, I will say what's before is pretty much the golden times.

Edited by JJ Tong (zfogshooterz)

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Just now, JJ Tong (zfogshooterz) said:

But, yeah, I will say what's before is pretty much the golden times.

Exactly!!!!! Just compare this two commercials for Ninjago:

2011:

2017:

You can clearly tell which one has more effort put into it. And Yes, before was 100% the golden era of LEGO. This may seem weird, but IMO we are currently in the worst era of LEGO of all time.

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14 hours ago, Lego David said:

The new commercials are garbage. The old ones are probably the best commercials a toy has ever had.

I wouldn't know because I haven't cared much for LEGO until three years ago. So I'd consider myself unbiased on that subject and only judge from what I see currently. That doesn't change that it's in my view still not great as it appears there are basically just five or six different LEGO ads on German TV at all and stylistically they are all over the place:

  • a generic Star Wars one with some kids playing (wrong target demographic IMO)
  • a BF ugly City CG ad for the new Air Police sets
  • an ad for last year's City Arctic sets
  • a Technic one for the Rough Terrain crane with kids (again wrong demographic; also funny enough often runs on DMAX, regardless)
  • a Friends one advertising last year's racing sets (which already totally bombed on the German market, so it's completely pointless)
  • the "this is not a brick" generalized ad they first debuted on Facebook (way too obviously targeted at and created for the American market)

You see, in terms of what's actually running on TV around these parts there's not much that I think would motivate to even go to a toy store and look for LEGO sets, even more so given how weirdly and inconsistently the ads are placed in the TV schedule (as I already mentioned) so that some people may never even get to see a single one of them.

Mylenium

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Most adverts you watched when you were younger will appeal more to you for nostalgic reasons than ones made for an aimed at kids of today. Same with music, what is the best pop music? When you were young or now? Same with kids TV shows, the ones you watched when young, or now? Even with LEGO sets, the ones of your childhood are great for nostalgic reasons and new ones always have something wrong with them when viewed through adult eyes.

 

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