Subject:
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Re: Why do you love bley?
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.color
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Date:
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Fri, 11 May 2007 15:46:16 GMT
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Viewed:
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5071 times
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In lugnet.color, Jeff Stembel wrote:
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And I think this argument is crap.
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The sad thing is, I think it’s actually true. Not necessarily that it was done
*specifically* for the retail environment, but that the color change was done to
give the pieces more visual “pop”, and because the old colors (in contrast) look
old and weathered, even when new.
The project was started (according to Jake) back in the late 90’s or possibly
2000. Which makes sense. Back then, their mentality was “Let’s go in a new
direction and make the Lego brand be the best brand in family households!” Part
of that philosophy was apparently making the Lego color palette be super-cool
and new.
I’ll bet that when they started examining the colors, and new potential colors,
they noticed what we all notice-- that old gray and old dark gray look ... old.
They’re kinda yellowy-brownish, and have the appearance of looking old, even out
of the box. More specifically, they look like *real* colors, and less like
colorful, bright, iconic, happy colors, that you might expect in a Disney movie.
So they figured they’d change the colors, because the colors looked better. I’ll
wager very little thought or importance was given to being consistant with their
old color palette. They just wanted their products to “pop” from now on.
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I’d be incredibly surprised if the new
bley colors in display pieces made any more than a tiny fraction of a
percentage difference in parental purchasing (and probably none at all when a
child decides).
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I agree. I doubt the color change will result in much of anything sales-wise.
The incredibly slight gain in sales thanks to colors will probably be more than
offset by the *decrease* in sales from AFOL purchases. Maybe they’ll break even
over the course of 20 years or something (if at all), but I DON’T think there’s
any substantial monetary gain, and I doubt that any sales figures you could show
me would have me thinking otherwise.
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I can’t think of any management that would consider this reason worthwhile.
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Well, think of it this way-- should Microsoft fix an incredibly minor bug in
Windows XP? It won’t *really* result in any more sales, why should they bother?
The only reason to bother is if they care about the quality of the product. If
they want a higher quality product, they’ll fix it.
Similarly, Lego considered its old colors to be ugly (or, uglier than the
possible new colors), so they attempted to make their product *better*. Whether
or not they actually *are* better is a matter of opinion, but Lego thought the
new stuff was better, so they changed.
The idea is that if you keep making your products better, sales will go up,
because you’ll have a high-quality product. Specific improvements (like the
color change) may not result in a drastic increase in sales thanks to improved
quality, but the gradual trend is that sales *will* increase, because you took
the time to care about your product.
Of course, the thing that they didn’t think about (or didn’t give precedence to)
was quality in terms of brand loyalty. Keeping a toy system *constant* is a form
of quality that they most likely didn’t care that much about. At the time, Lego
was thinking like Mattel or Disney or Hasbro. That’s who they wanted to be-- the
next big brand. And those companies don’t *need* to think about color
continuity. So my guess is they decided not to bother giving that consideration
much attention, because they didn’t think it was that big of a deal.
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It is more likely, IMO, that the old shades were a bit more expensive to
produce or the new shades are cheaper to produce;
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From what I’ve heard from 3 seperate sources at Lego, they’re negligably
different, and cost *savings* had nothing to do with the reasoning behind the
color change. The only monetary consideration was how much it would cost to
perform the change, not how much it would save. Besides, if Lego were looking to
save money, there’s a LOT more they could do. And, actually, they’re doing many
of those things now.
Again, keep in mind that the color change project started *before* Lego really
started going south financially. The color change was probably going on in
earnest in 2002 and 2003, when Lego’s perception of its progress was far more
positive.
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the studies done with children was probably just to see whether or not they
liked the colors less than the old. If they had liked them less than the old,
they probably wouldn’t have changed it.
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That’s probably true. And as you hinted at above (and I would agree), kids
probably don’t care worth beans about the minor color variation, and if asked
their preference, would probably say they liked the new colors better.
DaveE
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Message is in Reply To:
 | | Re: Why do you love bley?
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| (...) And I think this argument is crap. I'd be incredibly surprised if the new bley colors in display pieces made any more than a tiny fraction of a percentage difference in parental purchasing (and probably none at all when a child decides). (...) (17 years ago, 11-May-07, to lugnet.color, FTX)
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