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In lugnet.general, Jake McKee wrote:
> * Would you buy LEGO toys for children 0-11? Y/N
Constantly. I send LEGO to people in every age group up to their fifties. If I
had friends older than that, I'd send them LEGO too.
> * Why / Why not?
Because LEGO is the toy that never dies, no matter how hard the marketing guys
try to screw it up by targeting it to an ever-smaller slice of market, genre,
and time period. It's tougher now, with sets that appeal "only" to children of
a specific age in a specific part of a specific year, to expect them to learn to
like the LEGO part and not just the fad-hungry boxcover image. But we've still
got the Designer sets priming the pumps, thank goodness.
> * What feature(s) would you add if you were the marketing director of LEGO?
Focus more on the LEGO aspects. If kids want cheap fads they'll buy Mega-Bloks,
if they want a set of parts specially-made to just build one toy they'll buy
Playmobil. When we try to compete at their level we'll lose, because LEGO is
about quality on the one hand and rebuildability on the other. Or it should be,
anyway.
If the front of the box looks great but the B-models on the back look like hell,
then we've done a good job making a toy but a bad job making a LEGO set.
> * How would you change existing LEGO products if you wanted to sell them for
> more money?
I don't think you can increase the price and still market to children. It'd
have to be an adult collectible if the price gets any higher.
If you want to increase your market base, you need to teach kids the love of
building again, and you need to do it at a price point that'll catch them before
a Mega Bloks set teaches them to hate trying to build anything at all. X-pods
are a good start, but those plastic pods are bulky, they drive up the price, and
they give the kids a permanent reason to keep the different groups of bricks
separate. Cut back to little cardboard boxes, put a cool little $1.99 model in
there, make sure the elements are all the same cool reusable kinds you currently
get in the X-pods.
> * What new products would you launch?
I'd expand the LEGO universe as fast as possible, showcase its infinite
versatility. Like so:
One-off collectible minifigs, covering as wide a variety of themes as possible,
whether those themes have ever been released by LEGO or not. Doesn't matter if
they're a 'construction toy,' they're collectibles, and just owning them
encourages kids to want to buy bricks.
One-off playsets. Instead of having ten sets for every theme, add a bunch of
one-off themes that have only one set each, like Designer sets but for minifigs.
How many cool set ideas currently get axed because LEGO can't build a theme
around it?
More inspiration photos like we used to get in catalogs, of huge crazy models
and scenes built out of thousands of bricks, they made you want to buy as many
sets as you could and build your own crazy stuff. Right now our big pictures
are just "what all the sets from this theme look like together." That hardly
inspires the imagination, it might make me say "I want that one set" but it
won't make me say "I want more LEGO."
> * What should LEGO be doing that it isn’t now?
Focus on making good LEGO sets instead of on making toys. We've been
sacrificing our mastery of the former in order to do a half-assed job of the
latter.
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Message is in Reply To:
 | | Holy Mackerel! LEGO survey...
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| All, I know that some of you have attempted to fill out the survey announced yesterday on LEGOfan.org, only to be turned away with a message about the survey being complete. After some late night phone calls and early morning emails, I've been to (...) (19 years ago, 16-Apr-05, to lugnet.general, lugnet.lego) !!
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