LEGO Collectable Minifigures Future Series Rumours

[Anonknee Muss]

8 hours ago, Lego-Freak said:

I suppose you‘re alluding to The Simpsons series 2 and TLBM series 2, but I think the curse has been broken  The second Disney series did well from what I can gather and WW series 1 apparently sold extremely well, so there‘s no real reason to assume that WW series 2 will sell badly 

Disney 2 still lingering around in my area whereas Disney 1 went before the official end of the wave.

[1980-Something-Space-Guy]

So over on Instagram FalconFan has revealed that the DC series will be sold at $5 a pop. How does Lego justify this 20% increase? We've gone from $2 to $5 in 9 years! I understand that the designs are more complex now than in 2010, but even then I fail to see what possibly justifies this recent price hike. The wishful thinker in me hopes this price is only for the DC comics series, but the past price increases suggest otherwise.

[Roebuck]

8 hours ago, BrickHat said:

So over on Instagram FalconFan has revealed that the DC series will be sold at $5 a pop. How does Lego justify this 20% increase? We've gone from $2 to $5 in 9 years! I understand that the designs are more complex now than in 2010, but even then I fail to see what possibly justifies this recent price hike. The wishful thinker in me hopes this price is only for the DC comics series, but the past price increases suggest otherwise.

That is to much for one single minifig, do not the starter packs come with 3-4 figs in addition to parts and cost 10 dollar?! ! It is always seems to be some expensive licensed series that hike up the price

[Renny The Spaceman]

15 hours ago, BrickHat said:

So over on Instagram FalconFan has revealed that the DC series will be sold at $5 a pop. How does Lego justify this 20% increase? We've gone from $2 to $5 in 9 years! I understand that the designs are more complex now than in 2010, but even then I fail to see what possibly justifies this recent price hike. The wishful thinker in me hopes this price is only for the DC comics series, but the past price increases suggest otherwise.

And judging by the leaks for DC it's certainly not worth it! It's gonna be a lot harder for LEGO to sway Parents to pick up two or three these fig's while Grocery shopping with their kids now.

[lowbike1]

On 10/7/2019 at 5:48 AM, Digger of Bricks said:

Wizarding World (i.e. Harry Potter & Fantastic Beasts).

thanks!

On 10/7/2019 at 5:43 PM, BrickHat said:

So over on Instagram FalconFan has revealed that the DC series will be sold at $5 a pop. How does Lego justify this 20% increase? We've gone from $2 to $5 in 9 years! I understand that the designs are more complex now than in 2010, but even then I fail to see what possibly justifies this recent price hike. The wishful thinker in me hopes this price is only for the DC comics series, but the past price increases suggest otherwise.

they are already $5 here in canada, and have been since the lego movie2 series, I only pick up a few now, not worth it.

a polybag is $5 and comes with bricks etc, way better bargain

[MAB]

On 10/7/2019 at 3:07 PM, Lego-Freak said:

I suppose you‘re alluding to The Simpsons series 2 and TLBM series 2, but I think the curse has been broken  The second Disney series did well from what I can gather and WW series 1 apparently sold extremely well, so there‘s no real reason to assume that WW series 2 will sell badly 

Not in the UK (or at least near me). Disney2 and TLM2 both seem to be hanging around near me. An independent store that never does discounts on LEGO has been doing a buy 5 get 6 promo on them for months. But also in other toy and grocery stores, they are still on the shelves. Plus lego.com have been discounting TLM2 for a few months now at 50% off, although not Disney2 yet - they are still RRP online.

 

[gedren_y]

Remember that this is purely a licensed theme, and may have other considerations that WW, Disney, and Simpsons didn't. Look at the purely DC sets. Given their piece count, they are slightly overpriced for the parts you get even factoring in new molds. We also have to consider that some new molds might be theme specific (possibly contractually so like the baldric) which would increase LEGO's production costs. A modest increase in price is not unwarranted.

[Robert8]

Next year we should get a 4th special series, right?

After Team GB (2012) and DFB (2016) next year there should be a sports themed special series

Maybe Team Tokyo? 

[ToaIruini]

7 minutes ago, Robert8 said:

Next year we should get a 4th special series, right?

After Team GB (2012) and DFB (2016) next year there should be a sports themed special series

Maybe Team Tokyo? 

Sports series likely means I can’t get it 

but I’d be glad to see new and interesting minifigs regardless 

[Gomek]

On 10/11/2019 at 5:44 PM, ToaIruini said:

Sports series likely means I can’t get it 

but I’d be glad to see new and interesting minifigs regardless 

I thought we put an end to regional exclusives? At least I hope we did.

[MAB]

On 10/11/2019 at 10:31 PM, Robert8 said:

Next year we should get a 4th special series, right?

After Team GB (2012) and DFB (2016) next year there should be a sports themed special series

Maybe Team Tokyo? 

I don't think there is any pattern there.

2012 - time of the Olympics, but this was a deal with the host city/country's Olympic Association only.

2016 - no deal with Rio 2016 Olympics, or with the Brazilian Olympic Association. But did get a deal with the German DFB at the time of the Euro2016 held in France.

I imagine these specials were just one off, fairly random deals when they could get them.

The interesting one for me would be if they could get a complete football World Cup series, one shirt from each team. It is unlikely as they would need to agree terms with every football association to use their branding, but it would be an interesting one for sure, with worldwide appeal.

[Itaria No Shintaku]

On 10/9/2019 at 2:07 PM, lowbike1 said:

thanks!

they are already $5 here in canada, and have been since the lego movie2 series, I only pick up a few now, not worth it.

a polybag is $5 and comes with bricks etc, way better bargain

Actually 5 Canadian dollars are less than 4 US Dolalrs.
And less than 3,50 EUR.
To help you understand, compared to the actual price, it would be as if they costed 5,85 Canadian Dollars.
Or even worse, 5 USD = 6,60 CAD. 
So, I guess 5 CAD per minifig is a super cool deal!

[Robert8]

How come everytime TLG updates the CMF website it becomes more and more confusing?

https://www.lego.com/en-us/kids/minifigures

[Anonknee Muss]

On 10/14/2019 at 6:14 PM, Gomek said:

I thought we put an end to regional exclusives? At least I hope we did.

Yes but if that wanted to make a set based off of a particular country they would make it available everywhere like with the Chinese New Year sets from now on.

[Aanchir]

On 10/17/2019 at 4:16 AM, Robert8 said:

How come everytime TLG updates the CMF website it becomes more and more confusing?

https://www.lego.com/en-us/kids/minifigures

That's how LEGO's got their "kid zone" set up for all their themes, unfortunately. Pretty frustrating, and I hope they come up with a better layout before too long. It wasn't so bad back when the "for grown-ups" section of the site was still using a more easily navigable layout with a lot of the same links, but now the "for grown-ups" link just takes you straight to the shop.

Edited October 19, 2019 by Aanchir

[Gorilla94]

On 10/17/2019 at 8:39 AM, Itaria No Shintaku said:

Actually 5 Canadian dollars are less than 4 US Dolalrs.
And less than 3,50 EUR.
To help you understand, compared to the actual price, it would be as if they costed 5,85 Canadian Dollars.
Or even worse, 5 USD = 6,60 CAD. 
So, I guess 5 CAD per minifig is a super cool deal!

I am not sure if that comparison works that well. It depends on the persons income, too. There are huge differences between countries or even states.

Lego uses the "perfect" tool to find the "right" price by raising it step by step ... to a point where nobody buys them anymore and stores stop ordering them.

Edited November 22, 2019 by Gorilla94

[Itaria No Shintaku]

42 minutes ago, Gorilla94 said:

I am not sure if that comparison works that well. It depends on the persons income, too. There are huge differences between countries or even states.

Lego uses the "perfect" tool to find the "right" price by raising it step by step ... to a point where nobody buys them anymore and stores stop ordering them.

I wouldn't be too harsh. Nor I think that weighing them on personal income should be a good move. If that was the case, people who go out of the boundaries of their States to buy in a State where they are cheaper.

[gedren_y]

3 hours ago, Itaria No Shintaku said:

I wouldn't be too harsh. Nor I think that weighing them on personal income should be a good move. If that was the case, people who go out of the boundaries of their States to buy in a State where they are cheaper.

In the US you are unlikely to find variations in base cost between LEGO vendors any greater than $0.05, and most companies that can afford to consistently undercut LEGO Shop@Home prices are nationwide stores that keep said prices consistent. The greatest variation would be in the local sales tax, but those variations wouldn't be likely to offset the cost of interstate (or even neighboring county) travel. The US does not have the robust rail transit that Europe does.

In any event, as I stated earlier, I think the $4.99 USD price will be limited to the DC series.

[MAB]

4 hours ago, Gorilla94 said:

Lego uses the "perfect" tool to find the "right" price by raising it step by step ... to a point where nobody buys them anymore and stores stop ordering them.

There isn't a point where everybody suddenly stops buying them. They slowly increase prices, so they can probably tell when / if there is a downturn in sales before it gets to the point that nobody is buying them.

 

[Itaria No Shintaku]

20 hours ago, gedren_y said:

In the US you are unlikely to find variations in base cost between LEGO vendors any greater than $0.05, and most companies that can afford to consistently undercut LEGO Shop@Home prices are nationwide stores that keep said prices consistent. The greatest variation would be in the local sales tax, but those variations wouldn't be likely to offset the cost of interstate (or even neighboring county) travel. The US does not have the robust rail transit that Europe does.

In any event, as I stated earlier, I think the $4.99 USD price will be limited to the DC series.

Yes, maybe that's US case. But US is but A country. Those minifigures are sold on dozens of countries so the US example isn't that relevant.

[Gorilla94]

23 hours ago, Itaria No Shintaku said:

I wouldn't be too harsh. Nor I think that weighing them on personal income should be a good move. If that was the case, people who go out of the boundaries of their States to buy in a State where they are cheaper.

Sorry, I am not sure if I understand that correctly. What do you mean by "personal" income? I don´t think my income defines what´s expensive. But you can´t ignore income differences between markets. There are a lot of goods that are cheaper on one market because making a smaller profit for each item there than in another country is often still more productive than failing on it.

Do you mean, "people would go to buy" or "people who go out of the boundaries buy"? The second thing is very often the case. Because of that many people go shopping when they already are in a country/ state with lower prices. Because of that we have so much security on airports looking for people that bring more stuff than allowed. It might not happen that much that people travel just for buying goods from across the border but even for that i know some people living near the east border who do that for their cigarettes, brand clothes and other stuff on a regular basis.

20 hours ago, MAB said:

There isn't a point where everybody suddenly stops buying them. They slowly increase prices, so they can probably tell when / if there is a downturn in sales before it gets to the point that nobody is buying them.

 

I agree that there isn´t one point where everyone makes that decision. But there is a point where most shops stop selling them, when there are not enough customers left, and with bigger steps it will be reached fast. I talked with some shop owners in one of the richest places of Germany. They are already close to that point with the cmfs. They are just selling them reduced without profit to get customers into their store and earn their living with sponaneous purchases. A few from shops outside the town already stopped ordering them. I can still buy all the serieses back to Batman Movie one reduced in stores. At the moment Lego still gets the money from shops even if they can´t sell them. The company will notice this not until stores stop ordering them.

[Itaria No Shintaku]

2 minutes ago, Gorilla94 said:

Sorry, I am not sure if I understand that correctly. What do you mean by "personal" income? I don´t think my income defines what´s expensive. But you can´t ignore income differences between markets. There are a lot of goods that are cheaper on one market because making a smaller profit for each item there than in another country is often still more productive than failing on it.

Do you mean, "people would go to buy" or "people who go out of the boundaries buy"? The second thing is very often the case. Because of that many people go shopping when they already are in a country/ state with lower prices. Because of that we have so much security on airports looking for people that bring more stuff than allowed. It might not happen that much that people travel just for buying goods from across the border but even for that i know some people living near the east border who do that for their cigarettes, brand clothes and other stuff on a regular basis.

I agree that there isn´t one point where everyone makes that decision. But there is a point where most shops stop selling them, when there are not enough customers left, and with bigger steps it will be reached fast. I talked with some shop owners in one of the richest places of Germany. They are already close to that point with the cmfs. They are just selling them reduced without profit to get customers into their store and earn their living with sponaneous purchases. A few from shops outside the town already stopped ordering them. I can still buy all the serieses back to Batman Movie one reduced in stores. At the moment Lego still gets the money from shops even if they can´t sell them. The company will notice this not until stores stop ordering them.

Let's make it super simple shall we?
You are German and I am italian.

According to the Federal Statistic Office of Germany, in 2017 the average gross annual salary was 45.250 €, as 3770€ per month.
In Italy (https://www.statista.com/statistics/708972/average-annual-nominal-wages-of-employees-italy-by-region/) the average is exactly half of that.

If it was per your bizarre ideas, in Italy minifigures should cost half of the German price. But, considering that from Brenner to Mittenwald is 70 km, less than an hour car drive, what would prevent German people from buying minifigures in Italy and then resell them in Germany?
And no, perhaps your informations are very misleading, but there is absolutely no customs between Italy and Austria or between Austria an Germany as they are all european countries. So I would be able to fill my car with italian minifigures and come back to Germany without any question.
And FIY, I find that LEGO bricks are cheaper actually in Germany, so I have already filled my car with LEGO Bricksfor me and friends to bring back to Italy, and nobody has ever questioned me anything. Moreover. I have been stopped by German authorities/Police on the Autobahn with a Van full of LEGO Bricks and nobody told me anything and I was free to go, as everything had a regular receipt.

 

[MatthewRC]

23 hours ago, gedren_y said:

In the US you are unlikely to find variations in base cost between LEGO vendors any greater than $0.05, and most companies that can afford to consistently undercut LEGO Shop@Home prices are nationwide stores that keep said prices consistent. The greatest variation would be in the local sales tax, but those variations wouldn't be likely to offset the cost of interstate (or even neighboring county) travel. The US does not have the robust rail transit that Europe does.

In any event, as I stated earlier, I think the $4.99 USD price will be limited to the DC series.

Or even any other licensed CMF series.

[Gorilla94]

Yeah totally bizarre... because we have in both countries a distribution where everyone gets the average salary and there aren´t other factors like for example rents that are higher or lower in one place while you earn nearly the same at both places so you can spend more money for toys... child poverty in Germany is a lie, too...

Let´s make it even simpler:

What i said is that the cmfs aren´t - at least in my place - selling that well anymore as for 3€ and that 4€ is already to high in some places... In fact it is so bad that some toy shops i know already stopped selling them. As a company you can raise the price to the point where you earn as much as possible and where a raised price would only bring you less profit because the sales sink too much. The problems i see are with how lego does that are the following three: 

- The bigger price steps in shorter frequency.

- The time between the sales to the final customers shrinkng and Lego noticing that because the shops react by not ordering them anymore.

- Investors buying whole cases of cmfs. Would be interesting how many are still sold to kids. This point would be even more relevant for sets with smaller numbers like the UCS Millenium Falcon or the new Star Destroyer. It will be interesting when this bubble pops.

- An additional thing that is only relevant to a certain part of the sales is that once the price is so high that collectors say they quit, they won´t come back as easily because the "i have a complete collection, so i´ll buy the overpriced new ones"-magic will be gone. So it isn´t as easy to ajust the price again once lego noticed they went to far.

If you would understand "my bizarre ideas" you wouldn´t speak of a price that is exactly the same all over Italy... You can make a price that is maybe "too cheap" for some places if you want to squeeze every drop out of your customers or you have to be carefull with pushing it towards the limits for different regions.

Many  things would stop people from doing this. At first you need a big budget you can invest into a certain amount of Lego. Then you need the possibility to buy a big amount of cmf-boxes. How many shops can you reach with only one hour of driving? How many boxes will they have on shelves?  Then you need a big car and space to store the figures. Then you need customers and have to think about how to reach them. Then you have to hope that hundreds of other people at least as smart as you don´t do the same thing. It wouldn´t make much sense to invest the time for driving, buying and selling as well as shipping if you make more profit with a normal job. What works for reimported cars and cigarettes doesn´t necessarily work for toys.

I wrote "airports" and nothing about police stopping you from importing Italian Lego to Germany. If i would buy for example a bunch of American college jackets with real leather arms to resell them later in Germany, where you pay more for fake plastic garbage, i would in fact get problems.This part of my response was aimed at your claim nobody would import goods in general - at least that´s how your post read like.

[Itaria No Shintaku]

4 minutes ago, Gorilla94 said:

Yeah totally bizarre... because we have in both countries a distribution where everyone gets the average salary and there aren´t other factors like for example rents that are higher or lower in one place while you earn nearly the same at both places so you can spend more money for toys... child poverty in Germany is a lie, too...

Let´s make it even simpler:

What i said is that the cmfs aren´t - at least in my place - selling that well anymore as for 3€ and that 4€ is already to high in some places... In fact it is so bad that some toy shops i know already stopped selling them. As a company you can raise the price to the point where you earn as much as possible and where a raised price would only bring you less profit because the sales sink too much. The problems i see are with how lego does that are the following three: 

- The bigger price steps in shorter frequency.

- The time between the sales to the final customers shrinkng and Lego noticing that because the shops react by not ordering them anymore.

- Investors buying whole cases of cmfs. Would be interesting how many are still sold to kids. This point would be even more relevant for sets with smaller numbers like the UCS Millenium Falcon or the new Star Destroyer. It will be interesting when this bubble pops.

- An additional thing that is only relevant to a certain part of the sales is that once the price is so high that collectors say they quit, they won´t come back as easily because the "i have a complete collection, so i´ll buy the overpriced new ones"-magic will be gone. So it isn´t as easy to ajust the price again once lego noticed they went to far.

If you would understand "my bizarre ideas" you wouldn´t speak of a price that is exactly the same all over Italy... You can make a price that is maybe "too cheap" for some places if you want to squeeze every drop out of your customers or you have to be carefull with pushing it towards the limits for different regions.

Many  things would stop people from doing this. At first you need a big budget you can invest into a certain amount of Lego. Then you need the possibility to buy a big amount of cmf-boxes. How many shops can you reach with only one hour of driving? How many boxes will they have on shelves?  Then you need a big car and space to store the figures. Then you need customers and have to think about how to reach them. Then you have to hope that hundreds of other people at least as smart as you don´t do the same thing. It wouldn´t make much sense to invest the time for driving, buying and selling as well as shipping if you make more profit with a normal job. What works for reimported cars and cigarettes doesn´t necessarily work for toys.

I wrote "airports" and nothing about police stopping you from importing Italian Lego to Germany. If i would buy for example a bunch of American college jackets with real leather arms to resell them later in Germany, where you pay more for fake plastic garbage, i would in fact get problems.This part of my response was aimed at your claim nobody would import goods in general - at least that´s how your post read like.

I'd say, cutting it through, that TLG is making their market research. 
They fix the price they seem accordingly to market researches done by people that have far more experience than anyone in this forum.
So I think that somebody criticizing their price and strategies without even having a glimpse at their market researches is a little bit... funny, let me say that.