"Licensed Themes are more expensive." Is it true?

[Hey Joe]

There's an interesting Megafactories documentary about Lego, not exactly sure of the release date but it's fairly recent. A Lego employee says in it that the MOST expensive mold in the factory is the one that makes the dice and it cost US$ 250,000. It's expensive because it's basically two molds-in-one (with a fancy process to put the two together) so I think a normal mold would be much less than half that.

Let's not forget that molds can be made in China as well.

[guandul]

There are definitely license fees that increase the costs. But the actual pricing is I suspect a lot more complicated than we can ever imagine.

Absolutely true. Actually, Lego has a very limited production capacity considering how many different pieces/colors they produced. So, internally, the cost of a piece may be different due to production date, inventory, color and season.

Although all toys are made with the same pieces, Lego manufacturing process and inventory control is very complex and by complex I mean a lot of engineering and math (simulation, optimization and flow controls)

[wilson3a10]

Yes, very expensive. Sad. This leads me buy less legos.

[Deathleech]

I keep seeing people mention the mold cost on large pieces... but not the actual plastic itself used. A cheese slope is going to count as 1 piece, the same as part of a ship haul, but the amount of plastic to make the slope vs the haul is no where near the same. Someone awhile back made a thread about the weight of sets and their price and it was amazing how close they all were. That is a much better indicator than price per piece. Price per piece can be so misleading because there is such a wide range of piece sizes.

[DraikNova]

The fairest way to judge LEGO sets is in terms of price per kg, as that seems to stay fairly consistent across time. Does anyone have any information in terms of $/kg?