The main changes I would push through at TLG would be:

-making figs in many different skin colors and more females than males for the next 50 years,

-offering more sets based on cultures and places not covered in Western Civ classes,

-bringing back Duplo playhouses in all the pastel colors (not just pink) so everyone would feel comfortable playing with them, and

-providing at least a dozen non-clothing items that are specific to each LL Park in the stores at each Park. (I just returned from LL Florida and saw zero items that said LL FL except for clothing. That is horrible IMHO. Where are the mugs, keychains, magnets, etc. that say Legoland Florida on them?)

more females than males for the next 50 years,

I'm sorry, but no.

My changes:

I would make more Licensed CMF series.

Bring back themes like M-tron and Blacktron, Power miners, space police, and the like.

I would have Battle Packs for every theme.

I would cut the SDCC exclusives.

I would remain fully stocked of promo items at all time during the promo(no early endings).

That's all for now.

making figs in many different skin colors

Yes.

I'd say I am glad none of you run TLG because certainly running a company based on your personal interests is a bad idea and that's mostly what happens here.

I'd say I am glad none of you run TLG because certainly running a company based on your personal interests is a bad idea and that's mostly what happens here.

Bring back themes like M-tron and Blacktron, Power miners, space police, and the like.

I would have Battle Packs for every theme.

I would cut the SDCC exclusives.

I would remain fully stocked of promo items at all time during the promo(no early endings).

Explain sir.

I would read message boards and forums and develop a moderate drinking problem.

I would read message boards and forums and develop a moderate drinking problem.

Why can't every company be run this way

I would bring back popular retired sets and begin to make "Evergreen builds" similiar to Evergreen themes. For instance, plenty of people missed out on the Beast that was the 2007 Eiffel Tower. I would make the Eiffel Tower a recycable set that appears on shelves every 2-4 years like how Star Wars sees the Millenium Falcon ever so often. This way, plenty of Generations could see famous Landmarks and builds come to their home and not shell over double it's price on the secondary market. I'd also give consumers more information about the way we (TLG) retire sets.

Freddy, great comments!

Vee, this forum is a place where we express our personal preferences. All of us prefer different LEGO, so it is normal that folks ask for what they want to be sold. And most of us have zero expectations as to seeing our LEGO wishes come true, but dreaming is fun anyway. Your are absolutely correct in that many of our wishes are exactly what TLG should NOT do!

Sometimes our posts are interpreted differently from what we mean to say, and this is normal because posting online lacks the visible cues that speaking to a person facing you provides. And cultural and language differences make it harder to express what we are saying and have it understood. So I try to imagine how others might view a post before I hit the send button, but will never be able to completely understand how their minds work.

It seems to help if we develop thicker skins and realize that 99 per cent of the posts are most likely not meant to be upsetting, and then try to figure out what is really being said. Most of my friends and my spouse are from other countries and I taught intl business for twenty years, so it is natural for me to filter most of what I say before opening my mouth or posting. But I still screw up things often enough to recognize that this will always be an area of heavy land mines and unforeseen explosions around every corner!

I agree with most of your posts and am glad you are active in the forum. Sorry for so many words...

Freddy, great comments!

... our posts are interpreted differently from what we mean to say, and this is normal because posting online lacks the visible cues that speaking to a person facing you provides...

That's very true and I am always concerned about it happening with my posts because I have this tendency to tell things that, if you look at them at the wrong angle, you may see a different thing exactly because words can be deceiving without those cues you mentioned that are only natural to spoken language, not to written one. That is why they invented the smileys...

My previous post was not intended to offend no one, of course this thread is just an exercise on our dreams, but upon reading many of the comments, I couldn't help but think what I said, but again, I meant no harm.

Vee,

I don't think anyone was offended by your last post. We all like to dream!

Again it is good that none of us run TLG even though we do have some valid comments they should be listening to and studying.

Guess I will have to start using smileys! !

If I would run the LEGO comapny .. I would definitelly make some themes more connected and would stop throwing out pointless totally different (from design and complexity point of view) castle themes .. The castle themes barely hold up for one year and on the other there is completely new theme .. no connection can be made .. the previus theme is killed by the new one. I see that LEGO is lost in CASTLE themes and is experimenting with it and failing a bit . The same goes like cloned mistake for space .. but space is even more broken.. Also each new castle hes less and less minifigs. The sets should have like 10-12 minifigs.

Star Wars is here for some year and people can add to their collections and armiest new machines it is not killed after 1 year!

What I find riddiculous from LEGO is the way they handle minifigures .. in the recent time there has been some crappy shapes and mutations of the minifigs "friends" why not connecting the minifigures to lego city and classic minifigures. It is totally unpractical as also in our family the lego friends minifigs are just left in bag and classic minifigs are used for play and they are much better. THEY CAN MOVE LEGS WHOA! :) and have genious design which will never be better. The same goes for zillions of huge lego parts which make 30% of the set and are unusable afterwards. I rather get 15 small pieces which don´t look perfect but can be rebuilt 200 tiimes and are not again put aside while playing.

I find it very sad that LEGO stopped to produce small box sets that costed around 3 €. For example castle figs, these sets were great for army building and/or as a small present.

Actually I know very few kids playing with LEGO and I know many many people over 20/30 who spend hundreds of € every month on LEGOs. There is absolutelly no reason for ignoring this fact.. it is a toy bought and played mostly by adults and LEGO should recognize it finally .. only sets like friends, ninjag, chima, duplo in general are for kids.

Producing millions of different parts, colours and minifigure systems is a 2 sided coin ..

I think that quality and count of minifigures has a huge impact on how sets sell.

I agree with the point that lego sets at least those big ones could have a special code and if you register them you could have something in return. I spend a lot of money on LEGO ;)

For example some special brick, shield, sword .. something unique for some omount of points would be a great reward and motivation.

I would also make LEGO shop shipp to more countries as the coverage is bad atm. Slovakia is not covered while Austria and Czechs are etc .. I think it is not so difficult to allow another country at least they could use the Czech store to ship also to SK as there is no language barier and most of the Czech shops ship to SK anyway :) .. so I don´t need to order my sets to a friend in CZ and then travel for it ;)

I know it's something LEGO will *never ever* do, but I would lobby to change their policy on "controversial" themes like military sets. There is a huge demand for these, both from little boys and AFOLs. At all the brick shows I've been to, military MOCs are quite popular. And they make up a lot of the themes in the secondary market serviced by Cobi/Mega Bloks/etc.

They should expand the CUUSOO program and encourage more fan submissions for custom MOCs outside of CUUSOO. Possibly run competitions where there's a winner every month who gets a small prize? As a web designer, I'm shocked they don't host a gallery of fan builds picked by their master builders. The beauty of LEGO is outside-of-the-box creativity, and I don't think they are doing enough to engage or encourage young builders to experiment on their site. The 3-in-1 sets are a stroke of genius in this regard.

Possibly run competitions where there's a winner every month who gets a small prize? As a web designer, I'm shocked they don't host a gallery of fan builds picked by their master builders. The beauty of LEGO is outside-of-the-box creativity, and I don't think they are doing enough to engage or encourage young builders to experiment on their site. The 3-in-1 sets are a stroke of genius in this regard.

They did pretty much this on the Creator portion of their website all last year.

They did pretty much this on the Creator portion of their website all last year.

I didn't realize they had been running competitions... thanks! Looks like the last one was from Halloween. I'm surprised they stopped. With the LEGO Movie out, it would've been quite appropriate to run a new competion around wacky vehicles similar to the official sets.

I would do a couple of things that would no doubt please at least one of the subforums on here. As a collector and MOC'er of railway stuff I would like a wider range of rolling stock, engines, associated buildings and structures. Now I know this is not likely to happen any time soon, if ever. Apparently it does not seel so well as police and firemen, not sure why but there you go.

However there are a couple of things that I would like them to make and if I had any say I would make sure that they were included.

The first I don't think is likely as it would need new parts, although why on earth they did not do it from the start I have no idea? That is a wider radius curve so you could have two tracks the same distance apart all the round. To make sales equal to what track is now would be easy, they could sell the wider radius with the passenger train and the smaller one they have now with the goods train. (Or the other way around of course.) That would please an awful lot of train fans, but although I would do it I don't think LEGO will, but I have no idea why?

The second is to put a parts pack together in a similar manner to what they have with set 6118 (Wheel & Axles.) but with various train wheel sets and some of the biffer magnet bits. That would require no new parts to be made, sell for the same price as the normal wheels set and at once it would enable train enthusiasts to get the main parts they need to make their own rolling stock and locomotives. They could include enough to make two, four wheel bogies for a large articulated passenger coach or goods wagon, maybe four of the wheels that go on technic axles and the axles and bricks to put then through, four large (steam) train wheels like from the Emerald night and perhaps four buffers. They could do this right away and I am fairly sure that the people who buy a train set would probably pick one up when they buy some extra track.

Anyway, that is what I would do.

I would bring back some of the finest old themes like BIONICLE and sell them once again .

A lot of these ideas on here make no business sense and are ideas of fans. :P

A lot of these ideas on here make no business sense and are ideas of fans. :P

Surely the fans are what makes the business, while some of the ideas might not be just about making money they all interrelate and help to sell the LEGO brand...

I would bring back some of the finest old themes like BIONICLE and sell them once again .

Looks like Toby really is running Lego now.

I would work out exactly how much of the product is brought by AFOLs relative to the core group of 6-10 (I think that is it).

If, as I suspect, AFOLs are responsible for a large chunk of the purchases, then I would tailor more products towards that demographic, whilst still keeping the products for the core demographic.

There could be AFOL themes (Game of Thrones for instance) that are designed to be more complicated builds, with more parts, at a higher price point.

If I'm wrong and the AFOL component of purchases is smaller than I expect, then I guess there is no need to change anything, except, and I don't care if it is good business or not - I wouldn't pander to global economics. I would make sure my product is sold at the same relative price in every country. I wouldn't be able to sleep straight at night with the huge price discrepancies that exist between counties now.

Edited July 29, 201410 yr by ummester

I would work out exactly how much of the product is brought by AFOLs relative to the core group of 6-10 (I think that is it).

If, as I suspect, AFOLs are responsible for a large chunk of the purchases, then I would tailor more products towards that demographic, whilst still keeping the products for the core demographic.

There could be AFOL themes (Game of Thrones for instance) that are designed to be more complicated builds, with more parts, at a higher price point.

If I'm wrong and the AFOL component of purchases is smaller than I expect, then I guess there is no need to change anything, except, and I don't care if it is good business or not - I wouldn't pander to global economics. I would make sure my product is sold at the same relative price in every country. I wouldn't be able to sleep straight at night with the huge price discrepancies that exist between counties now.

AFOLs are definitely the minority.

LEGO is sold at the exact same price point already (within the same currency at least). The thing that changes the price by region is tax. LEGO does not receive the tax. LEGO can not control tax. LEGO will loose money if they alter the price because of regional taxes and would have to hire staff to keep track of the tax.

ITT: If I ran LEGO the company would go bankrupt very fast and the company would be liquidated or sold to someone else.

Edited July 29, 201410 yr by legoman19892

I would work out exactly how much of the product is brought by AFOLs relative to the core group of 6-10 (I think that is it).

If, as I suspect, AFOLs are responsible for a large chunk of the purchases, then I would tailor more products towards that demographic, whilst still keeping the products for the core demographic.

There could be AFOL themes (Game of Thrones for instance) that are designed to be more complicated builds, with more parts, at a higher price point.

If I'm wrong and the AFOL component of purchases is smaller than I expect, then I guess there is no need to change anything, except, and I don't care if it is good business or not - I wouldn't pander to global economics. I would make sure my product is sold at the same relative price in every country. I wouldn't be able to sleep straight at night with the huge price discrepancies that exist between counties now.

AFOLs are a minority. but they are a high margin niche. So while you cannot completely cater to them (see: Character Builder, Dr. who) you can factor them into your plans and cater to them so long as it does not cause conflict with your brand or your other lines. And Lego has rather steadily been increasing this over the past few years. Most of the D2C sets are targeted squarely at AFOLs. UCS, Creator Expert etc. AFOLs in particular help drive a lot of traffic via the Lego branded stores.

But Lego still draws the vast majority of its business from product targeted at kids. They will not risk their branding or brand confusion on Adult Only sets. So Game of Thrones will not happen. The complete Quentin Tarantino theme is rather unlikely. There is just no real business benefit for going in this direction, and the stronger possibility for harm. These are the sorts of risks and undertakings that a new player in the industry or a lower tier one might try in order to strike out a distinctive niche for themselves. Like Todd McFarlanes rather horrid horror sets that are planned. But Lego is the big dog in the room they have no reason to play around with an Adults Only niche. They command the broader market.

If I did one thing, it would be to get rid of Batman in most DC Super Heroes sets. That guy is WAY too overrated. He need to move over and give some more Justice League time to shine...

Looks like Toby really is running Lego now.

It looks like Toby and LEGO itself have had the same idea! Who knows what other classic themes could possibly come back?

Edited July 29, 201410 yr by Puffle Pal26

Some of these are good business ideas and some would be terrible. (Believe me, I have terrible business ideas too )

I do like the idea of connecting themes more though. I have been looking back at my old space sets (Blacktron II, M:Tron, Space Police II), but it also transfers to the classic castle stuff. They all connected. You will see Blacktron II figures in Ice Planet sets and Space Police sets. They even had minifigure packs you could buy that had a collection of that era of space figures or castle figures. There was a bigger picture there instead of scrapping everything you've done after a year or two instead of propogating that same storyline. I liked seeing how they connected. You could at least keep some of the same recurring themes for a little while as it transitioned to a new theme and you slowly phased the previous out instead of stopping it abruptly. People may like variety, but some diehard fans may want some of the old too. For example, I loved Kingdoms but I have zero interest in the new Castle line. Wouldn't it be better to introduce a new castle kingdom within the same realm and throw in mixed sets to keep the kingdoms lovers still buying sets and introduce new fans to it all??

Now a bad idea -- give at least one set that is made to me for my personal collection

Edit: ^In response to the above, Batman is there for a few reasons. Recognizability. He's a driving force for a lot of characters. There are some who don't know or don't care about other heroes. Yes, Superman is recognizable also, but to be honest I wouldn't have told you who Green Lantern was a few years ago if it wasn't for the movie. I just don't pay attention to the other characters. Maybe cartoons today represent them better. And I guess I'm not as big of a comic book nerd as some people, but I really only care about Batman, so to keep getting variants of him and his villains, keeps me buying the sets. If there were sets without him or sets involving heroes I don't care about, I would probably pass (like most of the Spiderman sets).

Edited July 29, 201410 yr by TheLegoDr

I think I'd have an advert for some kind of survey on the back of every instruction leaflet.

To encourage people to fill in the survey, maybe there would be a chance of getting sort of small prize

To draw attention to it, I think I'd have a picture of a kid, maybe shouting "win!" or something.

What could possibly go wrong?

Also, I think I would make Lego Ideas more like Kickstarter, or possibly combine the two models somehow. That way Lego would have an idea of how many people would actually buy a set rather than just how many people could be bothered to "support" an idea (i.e. just click their mouse). For example, people sometimes ask "why doesn't Lego produce separate rolling stock for trains any more?" and the answer is always "because it doesn't sell enough and it's too expensive" but if enough people pledged the price of a carriage or whatever then the cost would already be covered. Something like that, anyway. Well, I can dream

EvilTwin

Edited July 29, 201410 yr by EvilTwin

LEGO is sold at the exact same price point already (within the same currency at least). The thing that changes the price by region is tax. LEGO does not receive the tax.

Tax has nothing to do with LEGO online charging 10-25% more to Australian customers than US customers for the same set.

What I meant is that I would make the prices globally equitable - pick a currency base and charge the same for everyone, everywhere that makes an online purchase. Other online international retailers do this.

If LEGO is primarily a toy, for the enjoyment of children the world over, why don't children the world over (or their parents) pay the same for it? As an AFOL, I can find workarounds like Bricklink, which enable me to get parts at a reasonable price - but this saddens me for Bricklink stores in my own country - there are some good ones, with a large amount of stock and good service, that have to charge more to make ends meet. Bricklink shows the result of inequitable prices for parts by country - if the price of LEGO was globally equitable, a Bricklink store from any country would be able to price parts around about the same as any other and make equal profit.

Re the adult lines, the reasons for there not being one do seem valid to me, especially if AFOLs are more of a minority than I thought.

Edited July 30, 201410 yr by ummester