Subject:
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Re: Star Wars a loss for Lego?
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.starwars
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Date:
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Tue, 1 Feb 2000 23:25:12 GMT
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Viewed:
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1489 times
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In lugnet.starwars, John Green writes:
> My boss's former boss plays golf with a Lego executive and found out that Lego
> has actually lost money on the Star Wars sets. Though the Star Wars sets have
> been some of the most successful Lego sets ever, expectations for them were
> even higher. Just like the Star Wars books from DK, Lego made more product • than
> outlets have bought.
>
> I didn't find out what exactly this might mean. Hopefully, no sets have been
> cancelled (the Falcon and the others we know about are coming out - I'm • talking
> about sets we DIDN'T know about), and Lego will still develop new sets, just
> this time they won't make too much of each set.
>
> Just thought people might like to know this, especially since executives
> sometimes don't know how to interpret info like this. We can only hope they
> don't decide to juniorize the sets, thinking that was why they didn't live up
> to expectatio
I can't say that this comes as any sort of a surprise. I'm sure all the North
American LUGnuts (probably the Europeans, too, but I can't vouch for them)
remember the hoopty-doo over the release of The Phantom Menace (TPM); Lucas
and Company tried to whip an already-overhyped phenomenon into a five-ring
media circus. I would not be very surprised to find out that earnings for
Episode I merchandising were much lower than expected across the board, and I
attribute this to three factors:
1. Overblown expectations of the motion picture. TPM was easily the equal of
any of the first three movies; it was _not_ any better, nor (in my purely
abstract opinion) is it any worse than Episodes IV through VI.
2. Near-saturation of target markets prior to release of merchandise. Any
major metropolitan market in the US had at least one toy store which had a
decent selection of SW merchandise prior to the release of The Phantom Menace.
In addition, the Internet threw open the doors to traders and collectors
looking for hard-to-find Star Wars merchandise.
3. Over-advertising. As we all remember, last spring and summer you couldn't
swing a block of cheese over your head without hitting someone talking about
TPM or Star Wars in general. With three different fast-food merchandisers in
the US, and numerous local conventions and festivals, there was no escaping
the Lucasfilm/Fox advertising juggernaut.
I think that Lucas, LEGO and the lot would have been better off, at least
financially, in staggering the merchandising contracts so as not to push away
more customers than they attracted.
My US$.02
-The Cheese
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Message has 2 Replies:
 | | Re: Star Wars a loss for Lego?
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| Hm, I would really get an official statement on this. Maybe only some of the Star Wars stuff is selling badly. AFAIK, the Star Wars Classic Sets released in early 99 were flying of the shelves and TLG had serious problem to deliver the sets to all (...) (25 years ago, 2-Feb-00, to lugnet.starwars)
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Message is in Reply To:
| | Star Wars a loss for Lego?
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| My boss's former boss plays golf with a Lego executive and found out that Lego has actually lost money on the Star Wars sets. Though the Star Wars sets have been some of the most successful Lego sets ever, expectations for them were even higher. (...) (25 years ago, 1-Feb-00, to lugnet.starwars)
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