Unpopular Opinions about LEGO

[Alexandrina]

9 hours ago, icm said:

I was such a big Tintin fan when I was a kid, 20 years ago. I had half the Tintin comics and read them over and over, and I would have killed for a complete line of Tintin Lego. 

That was twenty years ago, but no adults were pushing Tintin on me. I just found a couple of old Tintin comics in my sister's bedroom, then I found Tintin compilations at the library, then I begged my parents for the Tintin compilations at the bookstore (which were pretty prominently placed on the comics shelves) - 

But yeah, Tintin is definitely not an A-list IP right now such that Lego would have any interest in picking it up.

I was a Tintin fan growing up too (probably around the same time) entirely because the cartoon was being broadcast on UK TV on Saturday mornings when I was at cartoon-watching age. As far as I'm aware it's not being broadcast at the moment, and aside from a surreal moment in a Tintin store in Nottingham I've not seen any merchandise or books for the IP since the film came out.

As Harry Potter is concerned: I've obviously only got anecdotal evidence to go on, but my mum teaches in a primary school and Harry Potter is at least as popular there as Marvel (slightly more popular than Star Wars, possibly) - interestingly there's a prominent Home Alone fanbase there which was in existence before the set was announced, so maybe Lego were onto something more than just nostalgia when they decided to go for it. I'm also currently lodging in a house where the kids' Lego collection consists of Friends and Harry Potter, and relatives' kids are wanting Harry Potter far more than they're wanting Star Wars sets.

[Peppermint_M]

Can confirm: my Facebook feed was filled with Harry Potter book day dress up from all my old school friends (because all but three of "the girls" are mothers to school age kids now.) It still has global appeal. Sets still have a market. 

Unpopular opinion: there needs to be some kind of battle royale theme to cash in on the popularity of Fortnite etc. Mainly because I want to have lots of bonkers characters and battlefield sets. 

[MAB]

Last year's annual results have been published: https://www.lego.com/en-my/aboutus/news/2023/march/2022-annual-results

They specifically mention Harry Potter as a "top theme". I cannot see them dropping it for a competitor to take it up, and it is hardly tired or unpopular if it continues to outsell Marvel and every other license except Star Wars.

 

[TeriXeri]

2 hours ago, Peppermint_M said:

Unpopular opinion: there needs to be some kind of battle royale theme to cash in on the popularity of Fortnite etc. Mainly because I want to have lots of bonkers characters and battlefield sets. 

Fortnite LEGO might actually become a thing, it's even rumoured to have a dedicated Season in Chapter 4 Season 4. (which should be around September/October)

Also if it's not a full map change, could still appear as a timed event type of thing, like Star Wars, Dragonball etc, usually had 1-2 weeks of questlines in recent seasons without being the main season theme.

Even if it ends up being a Creative map project, and skins, instead of a "LEGO Island" battle royale, the recent Epic Games & LEGO partnership certainly is a clue of something happening.

For now, the closest fortnite related set is 40644: Piñata , just needs a longer neck 

 

Edited March 7, 2023 by TeriXeri

[BrickG]

On 3/1/2023 at 10:48 AM, MAB said:

Then they wouldn't be blind bags. They have to be blind to be blind bags.

If they are no longer blind bags, then they are no longer really a collectable series. If they identify / name them on the packaging, then completing a series would be much harder since it is even quicker and easier than having to feel for them to grab all the good ones as soon as a box is opened. So LEGO might as well just do away with them completely. Selling them as a complete series is rather boring, removes the 'collecting' aspect, and defeats the point of them being pocket money priced packs. Identifying individual characters means the less interesting ones will remain unsold and the interesting ones will only be available on the secondary market at high prices.

 

Nothing wrong with what you just described.

Kill blind bags. Just have them choosable. You can collect things without them being blind: See about 100000 other toys, the collecting aspect is absolutely not even touched, just the "random" part. They'd make more of the desirable ones, less of the ones people don't want. Still nothing wrong with that.

You've mentioned nothing that is a negative in my mind.

 

Do away with them completely. Make it more like buying an action figure but buildable, like some of LEGO's other products (but cheaper).

[TeriXeri]

50 minutes ago, BrickG said:

Nothing wrong with what you just described.

Kill blind bags. Just have them choosable. You can collect things without them being blind: See about 100000 other toys, the collecting aspect is absolutely not even touched, just the "random" part. They'd make more of the desirable ones, less of the ones people don't want. Still nothing wrong with that.

You've mentioned nothing that is a negative in my mind.

 

Do away with them completely. Make it more like buying an action figure but buildable, like some of LEGO's other products (but cheaper).

Agreed, LEGO does still make very small boxes (Stuntz bikes) that are not random. Or small builds/figures via Magazines.

I see Stuntz bikes and Magazines in stores, magazines even in supermarkets, I have never seen a CMF sold outside of an official LEGO store.

Playmobil sells individual figures in boxes as well.

The random aspect of CMF has been pretty dumb when they aren't even found in stores here locally, and yes you can buy them opened/pre-selected via the secondary market but that's not an excuse to just be happy about blind bags.

I get the point of the product, mainly impulse buy, or  but for that to work out, they need to be available in stores in the first place, which can obviously vary a lot per area. 

As for bags vs boxes, random boxes will probably be hated by the people that pre-select by feeling, but overall for the general public I doubt it'll change much, but it will make a store purchase much more equal to a random online purchase for those areas who have no CMF sales nearby.

Edited March 8, 2023 by TeriXeri

[MAB]

1 hour ago, BrickG said:

Nothing wrong with what you just described.

Kill blind bags. Just have them choosable. You can collect things without them being blind: See about 100000 other toys, the collecting aspect is absolutely not even touched, just the "random" part. They'd make more of the desirable ones, less of the ones people don't want. Still nothing wrong with that.

You've mentioned nothing that is a negative in my mind.

 

Do away with them completely. Make it more like buying an action figure but buildable, like some of LEGO's other products (but cheaper).

The negative is that doing away with blind boxes probably means not doing CMF at all.

Given that they are introducing a change to make them properly unknown items before they are opened, they clearly have an issue with them being a not-blind blind packet. I'm guessing they are getting enough complaints from both consumers and retailers that they feel the need to change. Otherwise, they wouldn't be making the change.

The real problem stems from different people wanting different things out of them. Some want them as a pocket money toy, some want them as a collectable series (collect one of each), some want to amass large numbers of the single item. LEGO presumably want them (at least partially) to be an incentive to buy until you complete a set. LEGO already produces loads of other toys (including small ones) where you know what you are getting.

Making them identifiable really changes what the product is. First, it doesn't solve whatever problem they are presumably trying to overcome by making this change. Second, if they go as far as individually boxing them so that they are different sets, then instead of being one product per series, they become 12 or 16 or 18 different products that the retailer needs to have on their system (of course the counter is keep one SKU but have clear packaging, but that still fails on the previous problem). Then, if they can identify ones that are going to be more or less favoured, presumably that would mean they don't produce as many of the least favored. But would that also mean not producing those more often unique ones that you wouldn't normally find in a set at all? If in clear packaging, they also become less of a collectable series, and more of a buy one of everything in one go type collectable (although I'd say they are already there). And if they can identify the popular ones, and especially army building ones, why not just remove those completely too. Instead, just stick 10 in a box and sell it for $40 or whatever. Or 3 or 4 in a box with a selection of parts to make a small build (in other words, a battle pack). Either way, less stock volume for retailers to handle. If they remove the high demand ones because they can sell them in an alternative way and the weaker ones because they won't sell as well, then there is not much left to keep the series going.

35 minutes ago, TeriXeri said:

Playmobil sells individual figures in boxes as well.

The comparison with playmobil is interesting since they produce both small identifiable characters in individual boxes and also blind bags. So they presumably think both types of products can exist side by side.

 

I wouldn't mind totally blind packs, if there was some sort of theme like they did with the Monsters S14. They could do a modern day series, where you get a farmer, a business man, a police officer, etc, something that fits neatly with City, a space theme, where you get aliens and space outfits, historical where you might get a Viking, a Roman, a Musketeer or a Conquistador, a sports theme, etc. So you know roughly what you will get but not specifically.

I really wonder how popular CMF would still be if they also did for example, a space battle pack, a history battle pack and a fantasy battle pack, and it was possible to army build the Brown Spaceman, the Black Falcon and the Orc in another way, or even left them out of the CMF altogether in favour of three other random (but not too popular) figures.

Edited March 8, 2023 by MAB

[BrickG]

1 hour ago, MAB said:

The negative is that doing away with blind boxes probably means not doing CMF at all.

 

Sounds like an improvement to me.

But I don't actually agree that it's all or nothing. I don't doubt the designs would change (the lamer ones nobody wants besides hardcore collectors would have less of a chance to be made). I don't doubt many things would change that would basically make it a different product. I don't care.

$5 non-blind "just choose what you want" minifigure. Seems like a net benefit.

 

[MAB]

3 minutes ago, BrickG said:

$5 non-blind "just choose what you want" minifigure. Seems like a net benefit.

Presumably only a benefit if you can still get the ones you want at cost price though.

Currently there is the hurdle that you need to feel for them so there is a time cost to stripping out the valuable ones. If they were in clear packs, I doubt the really popular ones would make it to the shelves and if they did, they'd be gone instantly. For series 1 and 2 you could scan the barcodes. Even though there were few collectors compared to now and the market price hadn't gone crazy, the popular ones were still reasonably hard to find on shelves because customers or in some cases the shops were taking out the Forestmen, Zombies, Nurses and Spartans. Now it is a totally different time to those days. Prices for the popular ones are insane even when the packs are on the shelves. You can make about £10 profit for each popular one you can find. Those will be impossible to find on shelves if they are in clear packaging. If you wanted one of those you would either need to get to a store as they open a box (unless the employees already take them out to sell on) or ask for a fresh box, or buy from a reseller, or buy a whole box, or buy random ones from LEGO online. In my view, clear packaging would actually make it harder to get what you want unless you are the guy that can get to a box first.

 

[Lyichir]

6 hours ago, BrickG said:

Sounds like an improvement to me.

But I don't actually agree that it's all or nothing. I don't doubt the designs would change (the lamer ones nobody wants besides hardcore collectors would have less of a chance to be made). I don't doubt many things would change that would basically make it a different product. I don't care.

$5 non-blind "just choose what you want" minifigure. Seems like a net benefit.

 

See, I would hate if if the "lamer" ones went away like that, mainly because those often tend to be far more interesting to me than the hundredth or so army-buildable medieval fig. The coolest thing about the CMFs, in my mind, is that they give a chance to create figs of subjects you might otherwise never see in any other theme, even if often those are less sought after among the overall buying audience. Doing away with that would likely create a sort of "tyranny of the majority" that flattened the selection into only the most ordinary, broad-appeal sorts of figures, the kinds that there's already plenty of room for in other themes.

[2ndgen]

Many of the recent technic sets have horrible colour schemes, and it's not getting better..........

[Khargeust]

Do you think LEGO will ever stop those ugly black packaging for 18+ sets? I can't stand it anymore, all boxes look lazy, cheap and lifeless.

[MAB]

35 minutes ago, Khargeust said:

Do you think LEGO will ever stop those ugly black packaging for 18+ sets? I can't stand it anymore, all boxes look lazy, cheap and lifeless.

I hope not, as I like them. Plus they make it easier to quickly identify 18+ sets for customers and staff in stores.

[Yperio_Bricks]

1 hour ago, Khargeust said:

Do you think LEGO will ever stop those ugly black packaging for 18+ sets? I can't stand it anymore, all boxes look lazy, cheap and lifeless.

What you call lazy, cheap and lifeless, LEGO calls stylish, elegant and high class. Like those black Gucci paper shopping bags

[Khargeust]

4 hours ago, MAB said:

I hope not, as I like them. Plus they make it easier to quickly identify 18+ sets for customers and staff in stores.

I don't understand this argument. I don't need a label to know which set I should feel drawn to. There is already a selection of segmented marketing in relation to the price and the number of pieces, I do not see the point in addition to distinguishing these sets with such packaging, especially this one. In my opinion, this way of forcibly and forcefully separating sets for children and sets for adults breaks the original magic of the LEGO experience. Isn't it supposed to be universal ? For the staff, they already know the products and therefore are able to direct potential buyers towards certain sets rather than others according to their tastes.

The packaging from the years before 2000 or even before 2010, strictly speaking, was a real invitation to travel, with often a scripted context (I am thinking of Pirates, Castle, Adventurers for example), pretty colors and illustrative background, and cardboard boxes in the form of small collector cases that you can observe for hours. That was real luxury! The packaging was very elaborate and was an integral part of the LEGO experience. For me, today packaging does nothing good, and only invites us to throw it in the trash, except for the recent 90th anniversary sets of the toy brand that I love looking to.

Bonus: black cardboard leaves fingerprints visible! 

 

3 hours ago, Yperio_Bricks said:

What you call lazy, cheap and lifeless, LEGO calls stylish, elegant and high class. Like those black Gucci paper shopping bags

I have a different opinion about this kind of bags, because they are often all monochrome with no illustration except the brand logo, and for once I find that it works quite well even if I'm not particularly a fan of it.

Of course I understand LEGO's marketing strategy with its Adults Welcome approach. I just think there is a loss from an aesthetic point of view compared to what they used to do a few years ago. It's good to focus on the sets as such, but I think the care taken with the packaging is not to be overlooked as it is part of a larger experience. The box is the first relation to the set and a box that is pleasing to the eye, in harmony with the set it contains, is important to me.

There will be no nostalgia in the future for their adult packaging. And there will be a good reason for that! I take bets!

Edited March 15, 2023 by Khargeust

[MAB]

1 hour ago, Khargeust said:

I don't understand this argument. I don't need a label to know which set I should feel drawn to. There is already a selection of segmented marketing in relation to the price and the number of pieces, I do not see the point in addition to distinguishing these sets with such packaging, especially this one. In my opinion, this way of forcibly and forcefully separating sets for children and sets for adults breaks the original magic of the LEGO experience. Isn't it supposed to be universal ? For the staff, they already know the products and therefore are able to direct potential buyers towards certain sets rather than others according to their tastes.
 

Part of the reason is to differentiate the adult sets from kid sets. In the past lots of adults weren't into LEGO and didn't buy kid sets. But make them look different to kid sets and they become a product for adults. I also like to see what you are getting and not distracted by artwork although that could be done with plain white backgrounds. 

[danth]

1 hour ago, Khargeust said:

I don't need a label to know which set I should feel drawn to.

Sadly, I think some people do need it. They need "permission" to look at Lego sets. And 18+ box gives them permission to not feel like a dork looking at kid's stuff.

Or, even more importantly, when buying gifts for people who might otherwise be insulted. For example, I bought my aunt a Lego set of flowers, and I'm glad they say 18+, otherwise I would have gotten a weird text: "WTF are you sending me kid's toys?"

[Rjbricks]

That’s exactly the reason my son is buying his mum Lego tulips for Mother’s Day instead of Lego roses. The tulip box is on black and has 18+ plastered across it.

Edited March 15, 2023 by Rjbricks
Spelling

[danth]

1 hour ago, Rjbricks said:

That’s exactly the reason my son is buying his mum Lego tulips for Mother’s Day instead of Lego roses. The tulip box is on black and has 18+ plastered across it.

I think it's also the reason girls get more Lego as gifts now: Friends boxes are pink.

At least that was the excuse I needed to buy Lego for my niece.

[MAB]

14 hours ago, Khargeust said:

I don't understand this argument. I don't need a label to know which set I should feel drawn to.

You are a LEGO fan that has joined a LEGO fan site and is actively engaging in it. You are not really the type of customer they are trying to draw with the box designs for 18+ sets, as they already have you. Other customers do need labels and need to be told what goes with what. That is also why logos/labels for themes have existed for years. Why put a Castle logo on a box when it is obvious to the viewer from the picture of the set (with or without a background)? Labels have always helped customers.

[Ondra]

Blind bag needs to go, whats even worse in full box of CMF there are exactly three sets of minifigures in predefined locations so they completely knows from factory what figures are here.

Are they scared of some figures on shelf? Yeah me too to just buy it...

Last series 24. was probably only, with only bad figure for me. So I bought full box without hesitation...

[Ondra]

Its weird that people seek perfect boxes when buying new set. I think some collectors see this as excuse not to buy set.

These lego carton boxes are cheap and intended to throw away so there are always some scratch on the way. Even they are damaged slightly by weight of set.

I would definitely buy set even with some beating, bu it must be sealed. I never cared about new boxes, I only care about bricks.

[MAB]

Different people are allowed to enjoy different things. For some sets I display the built set in front of the box, or use the boxes for display. They are part of the product. Plus a damaged box could mean a damaged instruction book.

[Lucarex]

Personally (and I know many will disagree) I'm not a fan of the boring as hell black background boxes that seem to be ubiquitous these days, even on the IDEAS range.

I miss the gorgeous artwork on stuff like the Old Fishing Store, Ship in Bottle etc, hell, even the retinal haemorrhage-inducing Hidden Side sets had some creative originality.

[Lyichir]

9 hours ago, Lucarex said:

Personally (and I know many will disagree) I'm not a fan of the boring as hell black background boxes that seem to be ubiquitous these days, even on the IDEAS range.

I miss the gorgeous artwork on stuff like the Old Fishing Store, Ship in Bottle etc, hell, even the retinal haemorrhage-inducing Hidden Side sets had some creative originality.

Your descriptor for the Hidden Side sets (which committed the great crime of... using appropriately spooky illustrations instead of photos or renders) is a pretty good case study for part why Lego probably shifted to the black boxes for adult-focused sets. Way too many adults have a low tolerance for "fun" or "creative" packaging decisions, being at best dismissive of them and at worst accusing them of false advertising. So perhaps an accurate but sterile product photo on an undistracting background IS the way to go for things like that.