Subject:
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European vs American Market and Values (Was: LEGO sells "violent" toys?)
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.mediawatch
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Date:
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Fri, 19 Nov 2004 11:34:10 GMT
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Viewed:
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2091 times
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Thomas Main wrote:
> I think this is an important point and I am very glad that people at Lego are
> thinking about it. I also liked Christian's comparison analysis of the Lego and
> Playmobil catalogs:
Thank you very much! As I said, I very much prefer Lego for the
creativity values it once represented (and which it tries to regain),
but the current set design is very unattractive to me and other adults I
talked to. Kids might like Bionicle and stunt action killer police, but
I as a parent (and uncle) will not spend my money on these themes. My
nephews e.g. get bricks, creator sets, train sets für chrismas,
something from this area of the catalog (My daughter, being way younger,
will get a Duplo farm or house). But if the boys would want bionicle
stuff, they've got to squander their pocket money.
> I would like to see if Jake could actually present Christian's point, along with
> the original article criticizing violent toys and see if a productive debate
> could happen within the Lego company.
The little problem here is that I'm propably on the Red List of Death
for the company by now, being a vocal critic of the horrendous
stupidities they've done in the last few years. I wrote the piece to
pinpoint just another weakness of the Lego design development. Lego
might not like what I write, but I'm only pricking on points where they
did wrong.
> That would be one way that the compnay could strengthen its values, I think.
> Question, re-evaluate, perhaps change.
> Jake, would you be willing to present this argument, article and Playmobil
> catalog in hand?
That would be something new, indeed. A re-evaluation of how the current
development is in or out of sync with the company values (and the older
values like "Only the best is good enough"). A change is IMHO absolutely
necessary.
Maybe this would lead to a split of the product lines, as the American
market is fundamentally different from the European, as many companies
from various market segments and product types learned in the last years
when they tried to cross the pond in this or that direction. The Lego
product line is not "American" enough for the American market, and at
several points totally out of connection to the European market, too,
thus weakening the overall performance under the false impression that
one product line could satisfy the needs of any kid under the sun and
save a lot of money, too. They might have not noticed yet in Billund,
but people _are_ different all over the world, and so are the kids.
Playmobil e.g. has a very firm hold in the European and especially
German market (not excactly surprising, as it is made in Germany), which
makes it very successfull over here. Playmobil has about thrice the
shelf space than Lego in a typical toy shop or supermarket. But there is
no chance that they could gain a noticable amount of foothold in the
American market with their current product lines, their design, their
ideas. American kids would propably consider Playmobil too booring, too
tame. And blindly adapting all these points to the American market would
be repeating the same mistake Lego already made.
The problem with Jake here would be how far he understands the European
market, him being an American. So his reaction to a Playmobil catalog
could be something like "Yea, so what?"...
yours, Christian Treczoks
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Message has 1 Reply:
Message is in Reply To:
 | | Re: LEGO sells "violent" toys?
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| I first saw this thread almost as a troll - an article that had legitimate concerns over violent toys mentioned Lego and all the Lego fans rushed blindly to the defense of their favorite toy. But I think two very important discussion points have (...) (20 years ago, 18-Nov-04, to lugnet.mediawatch)
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