Subject:
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Re: Nicely now. What do you think of the new colors?
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.lego, lugnet.general
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Date:
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Thu, 15 Jan 2004 09:53:46 GMT
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Viewed:
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13005 times
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Jake McKee wrote:
> But I know that you don't like this answer, so please use this
opportunity (as
> well as continuing to direct complaints and feedback through LEGO
Customer
> Service) as a way to have your voices heard.
First things first. Forget "Customer Service". From being totally
ignorant of the issue at all to giving more or less random
"explanations" for the colour change we've seen it all (there was an
insightful posting from Rene on 1000steine.de, ask Kate). This is a sad
state that should be fixed before we are sent there again.
> Again, we are not changing the colors back, and from what I know now,
we aren’t
> considering it. This is an information gathering mission only.
So we could just say: "Why bother?". Nonetheless, I hope to raise a few
points for changing back to the original grey.
If I use the term "you" in this text, this is nothing personally, and
should be read "your company", or "TLC". I appreciate your and Kates
efforts to communicate with us, even if you can't influence the flow of
events.
1. Personally, this change in the greys is a catastrophy. My current MOC
already ate about 10000 grey bricks and is happily eating at least the
same amount again. Needless to say, this is not made from bricks laying
around. In contrast to the Legoland park builders, I don't have
unlimited access to bricks, and I have to spread the purchases over a
certain time. Originally, the aquisition window for the grey parts was
planned into 2004/2005, a planning which I can scrap now, maybe even
along the plans for completing my MOC. And I prefer new bricks for my
MOC, not used ones (except where not available), therefor your are
hurting yourself with closing this source, and, as you limit the access
to these bricks, you are also turmoiling the market and feeding
profiteers, something LEGO usually wants to avoid.
Needless to say, the finished first part of the MOC has been on show in
Berlin and Frechen, and the complete MOC was planned to be shown, too,
thus being part of the large cheap advertising crowd for LEGO called AFOLs.
2. Grey has been and is a basic colour for almost all areas of MOC
design. Wether one builds castle, space, city, trains - grey is there,
as walls, wings, pavements, technical parts, grey is omnipresent. It has
been available and has been used for ages and in quantities. I can't
tell it, but it may be one of the colours your company made the most
bricks of. So your company found an effective way to hurt almost all
MOC builders with one needless change.
3. The old grey was good enough for years and years. I've seen the grey
in my childhood, and it followed me around through several stages of my
LEGO life. Suddenly, the old grey is no longer acceptable. The
explanation given is weak to say at least. And instead of just adding a
new colour - which happened frequently in the last years - a more or
less basic colour is just being dropped like a hot potato. There's
something fishy in the state of Denmark...
Needless to say, with the packaging of the new models not showing the
new but the old colours, and most customers and retailers not being
aware of the issue (yet), the argumentation of focus groups liking the
new grey better that the old one is moot. Maybe they look better if seen
on their own. But even then, customers are looking at the boxes, which
still show the "right" grey. And, of course, you should know that you
can get almost any answer out of a focus group given the "right" questions.
4. A toy shop owner I talked to was alarmed when I told him of the
colour change. His concern was that non-matching colours would be seen
primarily as one of the many quality issues LEGO had and has (train
wheels, significant brick size derivations, et al), thus increasing
customer complaints.
5. If you change back to the old grey, there will be complaints from
some AFOLs of course. On the other hand, this may transform the 2004
sets with the "off-grey" to collector items for those who care (I
don't), thus raising their (sales) value. Given the current state of
feedback on the misc. boards and groups, the praise for reversing the
change will exceed the amount of boohs.
6. A lot of people see the new greys as a kowtow to the militaria fans,
thus sparking the name "Wehrmachtsgrau" (WW2 Nazi-German Army Grey) for
the new greys. Go figure about image and reputation issues. It may not
match 100%, but the new grey, especially the dark grey, seems to be a
close match to the MegaBlocks grey variants - a toy frequently related
to military models.
In summary, the colour change was and is one of the biggest mistakes
this company has committed in recent years, even exceeding the "Duplo is
now Explorer" issue in needless stupidity (Other words fail for me on
this topic, sorry! I really tried hard to be nicely on that...).
And the communication (or lack of it) of this very core issue to the
customer showed us how little the customer is taken into account, and
how rotten the internal communication in your company appears.
It also ruined your image of being a reliable, dependable and
trustworthy supplier for quality bricks. This makes me very sad.
Yours, Christian Treczoks
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Message is in Reply To:
 | | Nicely now. What do you think of the new colors?
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| It's only a couple of weeks in the new year, and it looks like it's going to be an interesting 2004! I have a request, but before I go any further, let me say that personally, I understand the concerns surrounding the color changes. I know many of (...) (20 years ago, 15-Jan-04, to lugnet.lego, lugnet.general, FTX) !!
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