Some 2021/2022 LEGO products having shorter production runs ?

[TeriXeri]

Pure speculation, but based on recent end of life lists, it seems to be a trend that sets having a lifespan of 1 year or even less seems to be a common thing in some themes.

LEGO retiring products to be able to make new ones does make sense, considering how many sets per theme there are nowadays, but that does mean some sets will have lifespans as short as 6 months , which seems a bit odd for regular boxed sets.

Of course there are sets that have lifespans of years, many years, 4+ even, but in normal in-house themes like City, Friends , Ninjago, there certainly are 2022 sets listed with retirement dates at the end of this same year, and that includes sets that just released in March and June, some licensed sets as well.

Now, we won't know if the sets will be extended, maybe it will, maybe lego is doing smaller production batches at a time and can extend production based on need/sales numbers.

Also LEGO has re-released IDEAS sets like Saturn V after initial production runs before (likely has to do with the contract of the IDEAS winners and % of sales they get etc.

Now, such lists do get updated frequently and corrected if new info is known but this is the current state of what's known.

https://www.stonewars.de/news/lego-end-of-life-2022

Also if the retirement date is nearing, it's usually on Brickset as well , for example a Ninjago set like 71753: Fire Dragon Attack has a retirement listed as 31 July this year, which is only 8 weeks from now.

Edited June 9, 2022 by TeriXeri

[Mylenium]

13 hours ago, TeriXeri said:

but that does mean some sets will have lifespans as short as 6 months , which seems a bit odd for regular boxed sets.

Does it, though? Actual availability of many sets lasts way longer due to retailers' stock not depleting as fast. Other than that there could be/ are a million reasons, several of which are entirely LEGO's own fault such as

• An unnecessary overabundance of new releases. You barely can keep up with what comes out every month and naturally in a world where people only have so much money, new releases cannibalize older ones or people simply forget that some sets exist because it's all drowned out in the everlasting beat of the hype marketing drum.
• Recognizable resource issues with LEGO's production. It happens way too often that popular sets run out and are on back order forever ore don't make it into wide retail in the first place. This could be taken as a sign that despite maxing out their production they can't keep up with demand, but at the same time are unable to free up resources because they're already running production on five million yet to be released sets as well.
• The ever increasing prices put off buyers and also retailers/ intermediate distributors. Some sets just don't sell that well, so there's no point in producing them for longer as retailers just won't order enough to top up their supply. Therefore additional production runs may simply become too costly to rev up/ reboot after the initial phase.
• The number of total duds has been dangerously high in the last three years, further causing retailers to be more cautious.

I'm sure one could come up with even more points. To me the real question is mostly when this all is going to implode. Eventually people will simply will get pissed one way or the other...

Mylenium