Is the LEGO Group limiting Toy Fair reveals due to clone brands?

Is it clone brands, or frustrated licensing partners, that mean the LEGO Group will allow little photography at Nuremberg Toy Fair?

Nuremberg Toy Fair begins this week, and the LEGO Group will be placing restrictions on the ranges that media can photograph. The company has also confirmed that New York Toy Fair will not have the summer ranges on display. This has led Rebelscum to question why the LEGO Group has taken these restrictive measures.

The article suggests that the LEGO Group are not choosing to limit photography due to fear of clone brands, as the companies behind those brands do not need photos from various toy fairs:

Let’s be honest, this isn’t about protecting LEGO’s toys – especially their licensed lines – from Chinese bootleggers. Lepin doesn’t require the early, fuzzy images that LEGO Star Wars fans do cartwheels over. Nor do they need photos from toy fairs to start their production runs. It’s pretty clear that they have far more elaborate networks and sources which allow them to get their cloned products on the shelves before LEGO has started to ship them from their factories.

The real reason, the piece suggests, is that previous early reveals have frustrated the LEGO Group’s licensing partners:

Control is the end-game here, and if industry rumours, and a number of pieces of circumstantial evidence, are to be believed then LEGO has received a number of pants down smacks from Disney regarding the early release of images from Solo: A Star Wars Story.

It is worth reading the piece in full at Rebelscum, for more speculation about the benefits – and drawbacks – to the LEGO Group exhibiting to media at such events.