Thomas the Tank Engine and The Lego Group

[rday1982]

On 9/9/2018 at 11:47 AM, pirzyk said:

As LEGO mentioned before, the train market is just too small for them to invest in its own line, there needs to be a tie in theme (winter, hp, etc).

If Lego actually wanted to make real money off trains, they could make it from relatively-limited runs of parts packs - bags of components that are useful for building trains. Windows, fronts, steam locomotive driving wheels, connecting rods, the bits to make valve gear, cab controls, parts that are good for boilers, parts that are good for lights, parts that work for making bogies, bricks that house a simple roller bearing wheel set, train wheels that you can stick a roller bearing in nice and easy, maybe even loose roller bearings, parts to build couplers, buffer beams, parts to ballast track, and let's not forget track itself. Different radius curves, different commonly-used ballasting colours, different weeds for overgrown areas. Horns, bells, whistles, antennae, pantographs, technic gears, motors, things to motorize points, different points geometries, different selections of minifigures with different connections to railways.

With maybe three or four of these things requiring a few new moulds to be produced, there are still lots that could be done without additional expense beyond new packaging (and let's be honest, you don't care if it just comes in a thin, plain, shipping box of white card. You just want the parts). A selection of 30-40 pieces per month, changed every month for another list of 30-40 train parts would be a constant stream of revenue for Lego. They might not deal in a massive volume, but they would see a constant sales stream that would allow them to roughly estimate after 6-7 months how many they should expect to sell in the next 6-7 months.

If they obtained a licence for TTTE parts (just 4x4 dishes with faces printed on them would be all they'd need initially), they could at least produce a test-run to see what sort of a demand exists. I bet that blind-bagged faces for steam locomotives and rolling stock would sell pretty well. Panels with locomotive numbers on them would be the next logical step, and the rest would be taken care of by the constant availability of packs of train parts with slightly different colours and slightly differing contents lists from month to month. People could and would be able to recreate Sodor in Lego this way, and Lego wouldn't need to try to justify massive investment.

For that matter, I don't think that Lego need to justify massive investment in order to expand demand for Lego trains. All they need to do is focus a little more on making sure that appropriate themes contain an integration potential for a train. The City theme is easy enough to tie rail infrastructure into. Harry Potter enthusiasts at this point own up to five versions of the Hogwarts Express and can be counted on to buy the next variant to be released. As well as the next Hogsmeade station. Trains like the Disney Train are always going to have some kind of customer base, and they really missed a trick by not releasing that behemoth of a locomotive from the Lego Movie as a set. In fact, with a Lego Movie franchise existing, the company has the opportunity to create any demand that they see fit to, simply by including something that looks cool in a movie and then releasing a cheap set that connects with a more expensive set, with both sets based around that concept.

What Lego would say if they were a little more honest is that it would require creativity and determination on the part of a team working for Lego to ensure that market demand be appropriately created and exploited to support investment in catering to Lego train consumers by leveraging an increased earnings potential that they just don't see as worth it based on being able to increase their earnings potential without doing this, simply by continuing with their current strategy. Simply put, because people are going to continue to buy Lego products whether or not Lego decide to cater to a specific market, Lego will opt not to do so. Thus, trains in general is an under-served segment of the Lego universe and will continue to be so (despite the potential of Lego trains to drive consumer interest with properly applied strategy).

With specific regard to TTTE, I think that Lego just don't care enough about (a) younger consumers - ie, the target audience for TTTE, (b) older train-specific consumers - ie, the people who would go build TTTE MOCs for themselves and their children if creepy face dishes were printed and sold, (c) train-specific consumers, ie, the people who want to build primarily trains and train-adjacent items, (d) treating Lego trains as anything more than an ancillary possibility of the Lego building system, and (e) making Lego sets that carry license agreements but don't have the kind of rabid, obsessive, and above all, enormous fanbase of properties like Star Wars.

Excuse me. I appear to have begun ranting a little. I'll get off my soapbox and depart... ... ...for now.