MAB

I hope that means they release them worldwide unlike the current Chinese themed ones.

There is no theme based evidence - only the evidence of the profits across the whole company every year. I can barely think of a normal retail (non-exclusive) set that hasn't been discounted in some way. The fact that something is discounted is not an indication of failure, more an indication that the store wants the shelves cleared to get the new product in. It is better to oversupply and discount the remainders when necessary than to undersupply and have shelves bare before the new sets arrive.

That is just the title sequence though. In the cartoon itself it says FLINTSTONE, so they are correct:

This is not only true for licenses though. A string of spectacular fails for non-licensed themes could also hit LEGO hard. The types of plastics being banned in most places are single-use, disposable plastics. LEGO hardly fits that, it is multi-use by definition. Plastics will not disappear, they are the right material for many jobs. They also happen to be a bad material for some jobs, especially for items that are used once then thrown away. The fact that it takes a long time to degrade are what makes it a good material for long-life toys. Yet LEGO are masters of pricing for individual markets. They know how to price items that will still sell at RRP, and what will sell once reduced. It also depends how you measure price / value, as with some measures, they are more affordable and better value today than 30 years ago. They have a new press release: https://www.lego.com/en-us/aboutus/news-room/2019/february/annual-results-2018/ 2018 sales up 3% compared to 2017. Revenue up 4%. Operating profit up 4%. Market share growth in all major markets. The top selling themes in 2018 in no particular order were LEGO® City, LEGO® Technic™, LEGO® Star Wars™, LEGO® Friends and LEGO® NINJAGO®. LEGO® Harry Potter™, LEGO® Jurassic World™, LEGO® Classic and LEGO® Creator also performed strongly. Look at that, a diversified portfolio of licensed and non-licensed themes are top-selling or performing strongly.

It's also not the sort of thing English kids get taught at school (at least outside of the Black Country). When washing LEGO, allow at least 5 days air drying time in the UK. In summer! A day in a washing up bowl of water and a bit of washing up liquid normally helps to shift thick dust/grease with minimal agitation.

^^ That probably wouldn't bother me too much so long as there was play value in the additions, and not just size of building. As an AFOL, I'd want the focus to be the building. However, as a parent, I want the set to contain enough to be played with as a stand alone without the kids needing more sets to be able to play with the flagship one. So, for example, the three big NK sets were essentially castles with a couple of mech type builds or vehicles. The add ons were big enough to add play value without taking too much away in part count from the main structure.

You've given them five years at best. Is this based on being five years from now, or being 14 years from when they did Prince of Persia? If doing sets like the ones based on Prince of Persia, The Lone Ranger and Angry Birds was going to make the company fail financially, then why hasn't it happened already? It's almost ten years since PoP, and they are still using a similar business model of having a wide mixture of in-house non-licensed sets, along with a main licensed theme of SW, a number of smaller licensed themes that come and go (even Harry Potter is back, like 2010), and small waves of current hot properties such as Overwatch that may bomb, or may take off like Minecraft. They are even making the "mistake" (like for PoP) of putting movie sets on the shelves about 1-2 months before release for TLM2. Was it a mistake to put TLM2 sets on the shelves at the end of December or beginning of January for a movie not coming out for about six weeks? They clearly haven't learnt, have they!

Brickset indicates that the PoP sets were available 12/19 April 2010 at S@H in the US and UK. The premiere was 9 May, followed by worldwide release on 19/20 May but a week later in the US to try to coincide with Memorial day (from wikipedia). To me, it seems they were out for one month before the cinema release, which makes sense so that they are already on the shelves at the time of release with no delays. The inventories at BL indicate 1 April, which were probably done from online instructions, that often came out before release for sets like this.

Indeed, often there is no reason to keep a license going outside of the cinematic release through to maybe when the DVD is released. Why have multiple waves of Prince of Persia sets when the lifetime of the movie is typically six months or so. This is not just LEGO - most merchandising for movies doesn't stick around that long once the movie has finished at the cinema. Also, although these appear to be individual licenses, it may well be that LEGO has an agreement with a company to cross-promote a series of their movies via sets. Just like LEGO often insists stores takes a whole range of their sets, I imagine similar agreements between the companies: that they either partner for a number of movies, or none. Negotiation for one movie is likely to be similar to the amount of negotiation for say three over a year or two. It is not surprising that the same company/ies seem to be partnering with LEGO all the time. For LEGO to say to Warner, for example, that they think their next movie will be a flop and they won't make sets for it is unlikely. It would damage their relationship with them. Of course, if the movies are flops after flops and sets don't sell well, then the relationship may well be terminated. Although concerning Lone Ranger, the sets sold OK on release in the UK and very well at 30% off - the train and stagecoach in particular are brilliant sets, and the buildings good for parts packs or Western style builds. Even at 30% off, LEGO are going to be making enough money off them to continue doing similar sets. Then there is regionality. I doubt LEGO care at all how well sets sell in Romania. They care about sales in the US and other major markets. Sets may appear to stagnate in some countries, yet they are probably still profit making. They have no extra design costs for selling a Super Heroes set in, say, Germany since they are going to pay those design costs to have the set available for the US. Having those sets available also keeps fans of those franchises interested in LEGO in general. If they decided to stop sending SH sets to Germany as they sell better elsewhere, overall the market share of LEGO will go down in Germany as they lose those fans to another company producing SH merchandise.

Yes, it will be interesting to see what it is like in two more generations. This isn't the truth. The sets from "useless licenses" are bought. I doubt they will be in financial trouble in five years. And if they are, it won't be due to licenses, but by taking on too many staff. That is where the real costs are. That is the mistake they made after The Lego Movie. Expecting the growth they experienced on release of the movie to continue.

Get some LEDs and a few coin cell batteries and some rare earth magnets. Attach a battery to an LED leg, then a magnet then the other LED leg. Pop it in a building. It gives you an idea of what the display will look like when lit up. How to get them out? Stick a steel bar through a window and the magnet sticks to it, making removal easy. If you do decide to light up the City, you can get really thin filament wire (like hair thick) that you can put between bricks.

Including Capaldi made sense. The BBC wanted the set to promote the (then) current series. The weeping angels seem to remain the most popular minifigure in the set, based on secondary market price. Presumably as an army builder.

I think LEGO is still on a bit of a high compared to ten years ago. This is mainly due to TLM1 but the peak of the hype has been dying down. 18 months ago they showed they were willing to be very cut-throat in the way they run the business, shedding almost 10% of staff - many of which were relatively new at the time, having been employed on the forecast growth that was based on the success of TLM1. Then that growth was found not to be sustainable. It will be interesting to see what effect all the cheap fake minifigures have on LEGO's bottom line over the next five years, as more and more people realise they can get them without buying sets for low prices.

Yes, I cannot see many people dropping £300 / 300 Euro / $300 on a large castle set, unless it was connected to a license. Castle does not have the popularity of series like Ninjago and I doubt an equivalent type set to Ninjago City would sell so well - even though many of us would probably buy it. Whereas a series of smaller sets, with one £100 / 100 Euro / $100 set as the flagship set would be better for incidental sales.

TRU's problems were more to do with the people that bought them then shoved loads of debt onto the company, rather than their operating practices. Most AFOLs knew they could do better than TRU when it came to buying LEGO sets, but many families still used TRU for more occasional purchases.

I think there was demand, but accompanied by massive oversupply. It was available for about 50% off in the UK for quite a while. I bought ten to part out on BL, and some of the parts did very well, but others were and still are in such oversupply, they are almost worthless. It is similar with the minifigures, especially Clara and the 12 Doctor.

There is only one view that matters when it comes to production and overlap of current themes - LEGO's view. They clearly didn't think there was overlap between NK and Ninjago or if there was, that it was not problematic.

I think a bigger threat is that a future family member sells out to a large corporation or internal family arguments cause a split to the company.

I agree, as think about this the other way around. If enough people don't like the themes you like, they could be cancelled. I would prefer to have a wide distribution of themes, each of which some people like, than to try to have one overall theme that is designed to not offend anyone. There are typically over 500 sets a year. You don't need to like them all. It would be like banning music or TV shows or movies if you didn't like them. People like different things, and it is good that LEGO reflects that.

More than 20 years. What will be more interesting is when do they decide to stop making bricks, and why.

I guess you could submit Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, Diff'rent Strokes, or The Cosby Show and see how they do.

Keep the ones from expensive sets. Chuck / recycle / reuse the small set ones. With my kids, we made lots of LEGO themed storage boxes for their rooms. Heavy duty cardboard boxes from the supermarket, spray glue and pages from their old instructions.

Think also of the demographic. 20, 30, 40 year old women watch Friends. That demographic have not been so well served by Ghostbusters, BTTF, TBBT, etc.

If they haven't sent it yet, then they know it isn't lost yet and so no need to re-ship it.

I don't know about the external website as I've never used it, but it is over 12 years since they posted here. The last copyright date on the site is 2007, and the last "evaluations" 2010. Similarly the stuff that appears "New in Shop" are about a decade out of date. So probably not active.