Price perception vs price history of LEGO
therealityprose.wordpress.com/2013/01/17/what...
therealityprose.wordpress.comPosted Jan 19, 2013, 5:42 PM UTC
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therealityprose.wordpress.comThe price of individual legos may have gone down, but the price of production has gone down by a hell of a lot more. They could be much cheaper.
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It's all about supply, demand, and maximizing profits. I'm sure they've done they're research and found a sweet spot in terms of price.
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Absolutely agree. Manufacturing for other things has gone down dramatically, we're talking about the exact same product being made for many decades. They make a lot more now on the same block as before, even if they haven't kept up with inflation.
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Exactly! Customers compare prices not only to old legos, but also to other toys available on market.
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I agree, just with the caveat that the inelasticity of demand for legos is still fairly high given that short of Megablocks (and who buys Megablocks, how badly do you want your child to be made fun of by friends) there aren't really any substitutes (though this can also be said of a great number of toys due to the excessive amount of marketing needed to maintain a foothold in the industry).
That being said, skimmed the article - clicked every single link to the images of the sets.
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That does it. I'm buying that B-Wing fighter!
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I could be wrong, but I think the size of Lego sets has typically went up. I also think that the larger Lego sets have a lot more very small pieces.
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This is addressed in the article.
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You're being downvoted because you clearly didn't read, or even skim, the article.`
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Diverging a bit from the economics point...I realize that there's a tendency to gild one's own past. That being said...
I am sure that the Lego folks have done their market research, but I have to admit that looking back at my childhood, I'm glad that I had the "generic" Technics or the simple themed ones (Pirate, Castle, City, Space) rather than the modern movie license ones (Batman, Star Wars, Lord of the Rings, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Harry Potter, Indiana Jones, Pirates of the Caribbean, etc).
The thing I like about Legos is that they aren't a simple "perform this task" sort of toy, but an open-ended toy for creating whatever you want.
I agree... I took a bucket of random Legos and would make cool shit with them. My girlfriend's little brother can ONLY build sets, and ONLY when he has the directions in front of him. Why the hell even bother? I wouldn't even wanna get a Lego set. The fun was creating whatever I wanted.
I had the same joyful experience with the old/original "generic" Lego back in the 1960's (i.e. the mixture of several sized basic Red & White bricks, plus 45 degree roof pieces along with the crude original gears & wheels ... oh and I think there were non-opening "doors" and "windows") -- that stuff was a blast... you could make virtually everything (provided you engaged your imagination).
Worse than that, I know a family in the later 1980's/90's where the mother made the kids build the sets exactly according to the directions, and then...
...she would use drops of cyanoacrylate (aka "super glue") to make certain none of the pieces ever came off.
After which they would be placed on a shelf, as "art" to be admired.
Seriously... I am NOT making this shit up. (And yeah I really felt sorry for those kids... and what they missed out on.)
Yeah, that's messed up. I mean, to be fair, I think I got some lego sets, but I don't remember ever even seeing directions-- I just used their cool pieces for other stuff. Like one I think were supposed to be two Star Wars ships, I just used them to make cool planes with other shit, screw the Star Wars ship, that's too unoriginal.
Ehh, I like the sets sometimes for starting out with, license-based or no. They include a lot of interesting-shaped pieces that the basic kits never come with. The real trick is getting someone to throw all the manuals out and just go build something.
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