Subject:
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Re: Are *we* part of TLG's problem?
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.general
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Date:
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Sun, 24 Oct 2004 07:48:37 GMT
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Viewed:
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785 times
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The biggest problem with LEGO (in my opinon) are the kids and their culture
themseleves! Kids grow up (or think they are more grown up) faster than
every before. I remember playing with LEGO and my GI Joes until I graduated
11th grade in high school *cough* when I traded those in for girls. *cough*
=)
My baby sister is in 10th grade and do you know that last time she played
with a toy... 4th grade! 4th grade! I asked her freinds during her brithday
party a few months ago in private if they still played with any type of toy
(I was building a tie bomber at the time) and of the 15 boys and girl she had
over only the boy scout kid (admitted to me that he still plays with hot
wheels!) The rest stop playing with their toys when they got to middle school
(6th grade)!
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I’ve been wondering about this for a while.
I’ve played with LEGO my whole life, but I didn’t get my first Legoland set
(Space Dart I Value Pack from 1984) until my 7th birthday. It wasn’t until 1986
when I was 9 years old that I really got into Legoland sets. It was stressful
for me because the boxes all said 7-12, so I feared the day when I would turn
13.
I started middle school at age 11, and I eventually became good friends with
somebody who was really into LEGO. I found that this is an important thing to
maintain interest. However, I recall being embarrassed to talk about LEGO where
people could hear me. If somebody walked past us, I would pause what I was
saying until they had gone by.
During my first year of high school in early 1992, my LEGO buddy moved away.
That made it difficult to continue buying LEGO, because I had nobody to discuss,
build, and play with. I only purchased 1 LEGO set in 1992, and I was embarrassed
about it because I was going on 15. I made up a story in my head that I was
buying it as a gift for my cousin, but the checkout lady wasn’t going to ask and
I was worrying myself for nothing. Regardless, he experience was so
uncomfortable for me that I didn’t buy LEGO again for 10 years.
During those 10 years, I remember picking up lego sets, starting to walk towards
the checkout aisle, and then quickly setting it down. I remember standing in the
LEGO aisle and looking at new sets, and then hastily leaving when somebody else
entered the aisle. It was pathetic. I was afraid, because I knew the kids at
school would tease me if they saw me buying LEGO. (Turns out they all teased me
anyway, so I shouldn’t have let that stop me.)
Anyway, from discussions on classic-castle, a lot of the big collectors seem to
have really gotten into LEGO around age 9, and they did so during the mid-late
80s. Back then, the minifig sets were made for ages 7-12. Lately, TLC says that
their primary market is kids aged 3-7. It would seem as if TLC’s design goals
are no longer to hook 9 year olds into buying their product for the rest of
their lives. Instead, TLC’s design goals appear to make 7-9 year olds react the
way I did when I was 12-15.
TLC is trying to hook children when they are younger, but there is no real
follow-up and their products lack the focus they once had. The types of sets
that had previously been for ages 7-12 are often in the 4+ category with Jack
Stone sized minifigs. The minifig sets seem to be in one of two categories:
Movie licenses (Star Wars, Spider Man, Harry Potter) or “flashy” things with
lots of new parts, bad storylines, and all figs being unique characters (Alpha
Team, Orient Expedition, Knight’s Kingdom). World City seems to avoid these
problems, but the set designs are still closer to Jack Stone than classic Town.
For people who just want to build, 95% of the sets available are not going to
help anybody build anything they actually want to build, and there is less
compatibility between product lines. In the 80s, you could blend BASIC into
Legoland as you got older because the BASIC bricks were still useful. Today, you
are left with lots of dead parts if you try mixing Jack Stone pirates with Black
Seas Barracuda. Likewise, you could add technic elements to creations mostly
built from the parts in Legoland sets, but 95% of the technic beams in use today
are the studless types that don’t connect well with regular bricks.
The designer sets are a big step in the right direction. They have no cap on the
max age and they focus on building, but they have nothing in common with any of
the “play themes” in production and they also rely heavily upon new parts and
colors. People in Europe just got an incredible designer set with the white
house. That is near perfect. Now, where are the space ship and castle designer
sets? A pirate ship designer set? Finally, where are the minifig sets to go with
them? These things interest the builders, and these things don’t exist right
now.
Quite frankly, I think the real problem is that the current set designs are
embarrassing for anybody past the age of 5 or 6. The 9-14 year old LEGO fans
were never a majority - not even 20% of kids, but they did exist 15 years ago
despite competition from girls, music, movies, malls, and video games. The
competition facing toys and TLC haven’t changed, and kids haven’t changed. It’s
LEGO that has changed, and the changes have not been good.
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Message is in Reply To:
 | | Re: Are *we* part of TLG's problem?
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| (...) All good points! And while we (AFOL) might be contributing to the overall problem like you show we are a small percentage of the problem. AFOLs for all their wallet power (AKA $$$) are only a very tiny fraction of the total sales of LEGO. The (...) (20 years ago, 24-Oct-04, to lugnet.general, FTX)
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