The New York Times this weekend profiled the business revival at Lego Group (”Turning to Hollywood Tie-Ins, Lego Thinks Beyond the Brick“).
The numbers speak for themselves:
Amid a 5 percent drop in total United States toy sales last year and the industry’s worst holiday season in three decades, according to Sean McGowan, an analyst at Needham & Company, Lego’s sales surged 18.7 percent in 2008. And despite a worsening global recession, Lego powered through the first half of 2009, with a 23 percent sales increase over the period a year earlier. It earned $355 million before taxes last year, and $178 million in the first half of 2009.
But the article contained an ominous message:
In the United States, Lego’s biggest market and the biggest toy market in the world, games with themes like “Star Wars” and “Indiana Jones” were among the reasons Lego sales jumped 32 percent last year, well above the global pace. But experts like Dr. Jonathan Sinowitz, a New York psychologist who also runs a psychological services company, Diagnostics, wonders at what price these sales come.
“What Lego loses is what makes it so special,” he says. “When you have a less structured, less themed set, kids have the ability to start from scratch. When you have kids playing out Indiana Jones, they’re playing out Hollywood’s imagination, not their own.”
Even toy analysts who admire the company and its recent success acknowledge a broad shift. “I would like to see more open-ended play like when we were kids,” says Gerrick Johnson, a toy analyst at BMO Capital Markets in New York. “The vast majority is theme-based, and when you go into Toys “R” Us, you’d really be challenged to find a simple box of bricks.”
Um… these guys have never been to my house. My 8- and 6-year-old sons are big Lego fans. Last winter, when we were at Disney, my 6-year-old chose to spend his birthday at the Lego Imagination Center. They’ve gotten “theme-based” kits for the Hogwarts Castle, various Star Wars fighters and Indiana Jones.
But if you think that has inhibited my kids’ creativity, you are dead wrong. Once these kits are built (sometimes even before they’re built), the pieces are repurposed to fit whatever my kids want to make. The 8-year-old built a little Segway-like device for a Storm Trooper to battle in; the 6-year-old mashed up a character with Storm Trooper legs, Indiana Jones’ whip and Harry Potter’s friend Hagrid’s bushy brown beard. The minifigures, in particular, are ripe for innovation and storytelling. Which makes sense–people like stories with other people in them.
Legos when I was growing up were 2- 4- 6- and 8-dot bricks, the occasional wheel and window. My guys have innumerable pieces from which to create–and they do, without limits and with interesting, unique pop-culture references that weren’t possible in my day.
I think creativity among our young is alive and well, and movie tie-ins won’t bother it.
Related post:
Lego knows partnering
