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 Off-Topic / Clone Brands / 1928
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Subject: 
Re: A serious clone question
Newsgroups: 
lugnet.off-topic.clone-brands
Date: 
Fri, 22 Aug 2003 08:12:34 GMT
Viewed: 
2057 times
  
In lugnet.off-topic.clone-brands, Mike Petrucelli wrote:
In lugnet.off-topic.clone-brands, David Laswell wrote:
In lugnet.off-topic.clone-brands, Mike Petrucelli wrote:
Interesting. I think Mega Bloks is directly responsible for saving The Lego
Company. If not for Mega Bloks successfully taking a portion of the market
share and forcing TLC to reevaluate its direction of straight down the
toilet a few years ago, TLC would be in a very bad position.

     I disagree.  TLC had been losing market share to video games, movies,
sports, action figures, and pretty much anything else that a kid could use as a
quick source for distraction.  MB probably only made the difference between
being slightly in the black and being slightly in the red.

Uh... Mega Bloks soared in popularity (based on increased shelf space devoted to
them) durring the period of crappy LEGO set design a few years ago. Mega Bloks
filled the void of mostly brick based sets that LEGO had seemingly abandoned.


Competition breeds quality and value.

     Only if it plays by the rules.  Knock-offs dilute your market share
regardless of what you produce, since people will look at it and assume it's the
same thing that you're selling, only they can charge less because they didn't
have to invest in R&D (after all, you did it for them), and they'll probably use
cheaper materials because they cost less, so that will bring their MSRP down
even more.  The only way you can reclaim that market share is to throw quality
and value out the window, and that's going to drive other customers away.

Really? Take a look at what LEGO has done since losing market share to Mega
Bloks. They have reverted to produceing good sets instead of the crap they were
trying to shove into consumer hands when they thought they had a monopoly.
Competition has brought us NASA sets, Designer, Inventer, and all of the LEGO
Direct sets. My main problem with LEGO right now is that most of their best sets
(the LEGO Direct stuff by nature of being LEGO Direct) are only available via
Shop @ Home.

-Mike Petrucelli
According to TLC's annual report, the Americas (US+Canada+Mexico+SouthAmerica)
only accounts for one-third of TLC sales, whereas Europe accounts for more than
50% - and as MegaBlocks has never been big in Europe (here in Denmark they only
sell pre-school MB's, and not much of it), the argument that MB has forced TLC
to reconsider their product lines is not completely valid. In Europe Playmobil
is a much bigger competitor than MB, and Playmobil usually only copy TLC's
lines, although this year they released a Viking line - so maybe TLC will copy
that?!?

Arne, Copenhagen



Message is in Reply To:
  Re: A serious clone question
 
(...) Uh... Mega Bloks soared in popularity (based on increased shelf space devoted to them) durring the period of crappy LEGO set design a few years ago. Mega Bloks filled the void of mostly brick based sets that LEGO had seemingly abandoned. (...) (...) (21 years ago, 19-Aug-03, to lugnet.off-topic.clone-brands)

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