Five things the LEGO Group could do to reduce the price of sets
With prices rises on the horizon, here are five different options that the LEGO Group could try to cut costs and minimise the pain.
There’s no doubt about it, LEGO is a premium product with a price tag to match. But with inflation driven price rises on the way, is there anything that the LEGO Group could do to counter them?
5 – Lose the bags
The LEGO Group are already moving from plastic bags to paper bags in an effort to help the environment. But that still involves a cost. Let’s face it, the only time you worry about the bags is the first time that you build a set. For many people, when the set is broken down, the pieces either go back into the box, loose, or they get absorbed into the great LEGO collection.
So why not lose the bags altogether? It might mean that larger builds are a little more… challenging, but that’s all part of the fun.
4 – Appropriately sized boxes
How often do you open a set to find the bags languishing in the bottom half of the box, while the rest is taken up with fresh air? By opting for a number of standard sized boxes, there’s waste – and therefore cost – in all that extra cardboard and the fact that you’re transporting a lot of air around.
Making boxes the correct size would cut down on that waste. Okay, having hundreds of different sized boxes might make transportation a little more difficult, but no pain, no gain.
3 – Say goodbye to paper manuals
How many trees are cut down to create the millions of LEGO manuals that are created every year? How much ink goes into the printing? The extra weight (some of those manuals are big) that has to be moved around, costing additional fuel. Scrap the printed manual, go digital only and there’s a huge saving right there.
For builders who don’t have access to the internet, putting a set together may take a little while longer but with a LEGO set, creativity is the name of the game.
2 – Stop the unnecessary accessories
We often see a set that come with ‘extras’ that have LEGO fans scratching their heads. Take the recently announced 10306 Atari 2600. The console was beautiful, with a perfectly designed controller and a handful of classic games. And then there were those slightly odd dioramas.
Sure, they’re a nice to have, but give most fans the choice between those extras or £15 off the purchase price, and we’re fairly certain we know what most people would opt for.
1 – Do away with licensed themes
Licensed themes come with an inbuilt cost that has to be passed on to the consumer. The so-called ‘Star Wars tax’. The LEGO Group have a huge number of these, from Disney to DC, Marvel to Minecraft and Super Mario to Stranger Things. Moving away from these would instantly cut costs and allow sets to be produced at a more reasonable price. Then again, it might also put the LEGO Group out of business. So maybe not that one.
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For one thing keep the paper manuals, I’m trying to move away from using tech so much. Yes I could live with out the bags though they do help me pace myself when building and prolong the fun. As for the boxes mine usually end up in the bin so smaller would be better. Also I am a collector of HP lego so do like the franchises.
Oi leave the paper manuals alone!
The boxes are already optimized for their size, probably to fit on a pallet better for shipping when Lego ships around hundreds of them at a time, and it’s not like like saving an inch of cardboard is going to be a big enough difference that anyone would ever notice.
Themed sets are Lego’s bread and butter, they would be absolutely retarder to get rid of those
Manuals are already going digital for many sets
Losing the bags would be a cost increase, people would try to get replacement parts for thing their can’t find in the thousands of bricks. It would lead to more misunderstandings because things like left and right handed versions of the same bricks are usually separated, plus again it’s a minor cost overall
Accessories could be removed, but i think that would be a bad idea because i think I’m general they add far more to the enjoyment of a set than the amount of numerical prices they add, i would much rather buy the full set than add little extra boxes anytime i bought a set
like someone who stopped at this site by mistake and who didn’t even touch a lego because in my country this is something for rich people rsrs(rsrs means like lol on Portuguese Brazil) I don’t have the right to say but I believe that what made lego grow was the products with licensed themes, I think it’s very unlikely that lego will do anything to lower the values, especially if it’s going to lower their “tradition”
Maybe stop the use of affiliate links and plow that money in to price savings for the consumer?
“Do away with licensed themes”
That would probably kill LEGO stopping using licenses would mean dropping not only disney licenses but also, cars, consoles and pretty much leave us with Citi and Friends series, which are not as popular among customers tbh.
“Stop the unnecessary accessories”
This isma way to give people more bricks to use in case they want to dismantle set and use for their own builds, also in case of atari those dioramas are like TV was for NES, to show something from history of set which you just build.
With rest I could live, when I was playing with lego as a child even big sets came in one bag. Instructions are printed on terrible half glossy paper which reflects light in most annoying way possible so when you use artificial light in normal livingroom it’s usually useless anyway. Boxes are oversized thats true, Imjust hope thats cuz they use one line for production for most of them in one set series.
Open the tolerances up maybe, but then you might as well just go buy shitty megabloks
So basically take away everything that makes building a Lego set enjoyable. Great idea! 🙁
Thank you for all the comments. I assure you that my tongue was firmly in my cheek when I wrote this, which I hoped would be fairly obvious.
It seems not.
None of these would save money, in fact some – such as adding bespoke box sizes – would actually increase costs!
Honestly, the only point i would consider taking onboard would be tye one about boxes. Some companies waste a lot of cardboard when boxing up items. All lego would have to do would be to measure the size of the biggest bag in the box and have the box be a couple inches wider.
That has to be better than shipping a single minifigure out in a box fit for an actual brick.
I strongly disagree with all these points.
5) Have you actually tried to build a 1000+ brick model without the pieces separated into bags? It takes tons of space, makes it exponentially harder to find anything and it takes forever!
4) If the contents are tightly packed in boxes, isn’t that just going to increase the risk of crumpled stickers?
3) Just no, absolutely not. Working from a tablet and having to load each page through a cumbersome app is a nightmare. What happens if you missed a brick and need to click back to find out where it goes? Paper instructions please!
2) that’s so rare I can’t even think of another example in any set I own!
1) Lego makes a fortune from the licensed sets. Licensed Star Wars helped bring them back from the brink, and it’s only because the sequels suck that the Star Wars models have tailed off. My son loves Minecraft Lego and buys that almost exclusively.
‘Say goodbye to paper manuals’ is a really bad idea. My manuals from, say, 1970 are still in good shape after 52 years, I have them in a map in my bookshelf. I just gave to open the map, take the manual and start building . With a digital manual you will always need a screen, really annoying to build with in my experience, and it always costs energy again and again. And over several years the files will not be readable anymore because of the always changing file-types. The paper manuals could be a lot thinner though. The building steps could have a lot more parts per step and still will be clear. And don’t print the pages in a basecolour, just use white pages, saves a lot of ink…
Absolute moron. License themes saved the company in early 2000’s, then manuals, extra pieces, cardboard boxes are a tiny % of the variable cost of production. Fixed costs like site location, backroom staff are much more likely to be behind the price increase. Like every company they increase their prices before salary increases fall in line. It’s just a product we buy when we have extra money. Lego doing same as McDonald’s, apple etc.
Wow, some of these comments are harsh. lol I think the obvious suggestion that could be incorporated is losing the paper manual. How many products these days don’t include a manual and instead rely on a digital guide/manual? Lots.
5. This would completely ruin the majority of users experience and probably turn away new builders
4. It could ruin the amount of people buying if an expensive set came in a small box
3. Not everyone has internet connection- Lego should be for everyone
2. That’s purely subjective as to what’s good vs odd
1. So many people buy for licensed themes myself included and while Lego’s own products are great truthfully I wouldn’t be a regular buyer if they stopped
Just stop paying for an overpriced product and the company will bring down the prices.
I’d certainly welcome the reduction in air in the boxes. Some boxes are over large by some degree and its something I contacted TLG about a few years ago. They said that shelf space for expensive sets needed to reflect price point, but they were working on it, but removing the plastic bags was an issue they had prioritised.
I’d hate to see the booklets go. But sometimes there could be fewer steps, which would mean fewer pages. They’re integral to the build for me.
This is a terrible article with all your “suggestions” awful. Shows either a massive lack of knowledge of lego or trying to think of ways to put lego out of business. You should retitle the article ” 5 ways lego can go out business.
Each one of these suggestions are terrible…are you trying to play devils advocate?!
This is a horrible article with some actually damaging suggestions. Half of the points, like the boxes and the bags, betray a terrible lack of knowledge when it comes to logistics and end-user experience. Thank God none of you are in charge of LEGO, because you would do an even worse job than they are doing. Go back to writing articles that you actually know what you’re talking about instead of wasting everybody’s time with badly written garbage like this just to fill the daily quota.
I don’t understand, why they have to pay for licences. It is a give-and-take-deal! The licence-brand does also make profits with the circumstance, that there are Lego-products in the world to make Minecraft, DC or Super Mario more adoreable to the kits (or adults) playing with the branded Lego products.