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Subject: 
Re: Thoughts on Spy Photos of New Trains
Newsgroups: 
lugnet.trains
Date: 
Sat, 7 Jan 2006 03:00:17 GMT
Viewed: 
2224 times
  
   In lugnet.trains, Timothy Gould wrote: --SNIP--
   Yeah, but the Super Chief had 3x more pieces than the 10157.

Which I would think helps my argument, not yours.

Only if the Super Chief was three times as expensive, which it wasn’t. Real bricks mean more value for the dollar than molded super-pieces.

  
   Per piece, the Super Chief comes in at 9.17 cents per piece, while the High Speed Locomotive comes in at 17.73.

Which might represent a higher profit margin for Lego. Either way I doubt your typical kid (or their parents) looks at the price per piece.

I have no idea what effect price per piece means for TLC’s bottom line. They seem to go to either extreme, with sets being dominated by a few huge pieces, or (the kind I like) packed with a lot of bits and bobs.

Of course, you have to actually sell the thing to make a profit, and kids and parents do look at piece count, even if they don’t exactly calculate price per piece like we AFOLs. Plenty of times, I’ve been standing in the LEGO aisle and heard a parent say “This one has more pieces”, or something to that effect.

  
   Beyond the savings in not designing a new mold for every new engine, using normal bricks makes it much more likely that those pieces are already in production for use in other sets - just run off a few thousand more.

Well the prodction doesn’t quite work like that from what I’ve gathered but the moulding would be an added cost I agree.

One of the cost-cutting measures TLC has taken recently is limiting the number of parts in production. It was mentioned in that in the recent Wired article about Mindstorms:

    Cleaning up meant ditching the software division, halving development
    times, and slashing product lines to reduce the number of unique pieces
    being manufactured in Billund from 12,400 to around 7,000.

A part that will only be in one set that year (possibly ever) isn’t going to help in that regard. I’ve also heard Jake McKee talk about part choices for a set being dictated by current production, most recently with the TTX car. Of course, the conventional wisdom on that one was that TLC was right to try and save money on production by using the same parts in multiple sets, instead of producing more unique pieces.

  
   And according to TLC, the target market for the Super Chief is “10+”, while the 10157 is “7+”.

And considering that children start leaving toys for gadgets at about 13 represents twice the time to sell to people.

I was just pointing out that the Santa Fe was indeed targeted at children. According to Jake, no sets are targeted at AFOLs:

    In truth, there are actually no “AFOL products” in our assortment. Sure,
    there are products that better keep in mind the AFOL needs/desires more
    than others. But there is not one product (yet) that was created solely
    for AFOLs.

Marc Nelson Jr.

Marc’s Creations



Message has 1 Reply:
  Re: Thoughts on Spy Photos of New Trains
 
(...) The whole point of this exercise is to bring down the entry point of a starting train set. The Super Chief cost more than the My-Own-Train, so it doesn't help one bit. The price-per-piece is irrelevant - if that was the only engine available (...) (18 years ago, 7-Jan-06, to lugnet.trains, FTX)

Message is in Reply To:
  Re: Thoughts on Spy Photos of New Trains
 
--SNIP-- (...) Which I would think helps my argument, not yours. (...) Which might represent a higher profit margin for Lego. Either way I doubt your typical kid (or their parents) looks at the price per piece. (...) Well the prodction doesn't quite (...) (18 years ago, 6-Jan-06, to lugnet.trains, FTX)

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