Lego Mindstorms: What Went Wrong? 278
latif writes "In recent years, Lego Mindstorms has generated more media buzz for Lego than
all of its other product lines combined, but surprisingly, Mindstorms seem to
be out of favor at Lego. The Mindstorms line has been cut down to a
single set and Lego is not interested in marketing even that set. Lego has been in
a lot of financial trouble in recent times and its neglect of a product line
with solid sales potential might seem odd but this is not so. I have done an
analysis of Lego's Mindstorms options and my analysis indicates that Lego has
solid economic reasons for backing away from the Mindstorms line."
Back to the basics (Score:5, Insightful)
The thing that made legos great was how much they used to enable creativity. Now they've gone the other way, and all the sets prevent you from making your own creation because of wierd specialized pieces.
Go back to the basics. Hell, just go back to Space Police, Blacktron, Castle, and Forest legos. That'd be cool.
Re:Back to the basics (Score:5, Insightful)
If i were a kid now i'm not sure i'd want to be able to build some crappy version of harry potter or some star wars model.
Re:Back to the basics (Score:4, Insightful)
And, sure, the original sets had class and style, but I would like to see sets based on cool current licenses. No, not Harry Potter. Lord of the Rings, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, '60s Batman, Indiana Jones, Aqua Teen Hunger Force, 50 Cent. Those would sell at least as good as whatever Bionicle crap they're pushing nowadays. Well, maybe not that last one, but I think it would be funny.
Re:Back to the basics (Score:4, Insightful)
some other toys in your toy store. Lego's manufacturing tolerances are very
narrow indeed, and they must be; if they didn't you'd not be able to
put blocks together. Modern manufacturing has improved, to be sure, but they
have been doing this for decades.
Re:Back to the basics (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Back to the basics (Score:5, Insightful)
They all have a much lower tolerance to faults and most sell for fractions of a pence.
Lego isn't some technical miracle, its a molded plastic piece.
Re:Back to the basics (Score:3, Informative)
The parent is right. In fact, to describe their tolerance as "narrow" is understating things. A lego piece made 30 years ago fits perfectly with a piece coming off the line today. I've bought 10,000's of legos over the years (basic, old school technic from the 80's, Mindstorm, etc...) and never once have I seen a piece that didn't work. And not only do they fit and work, but they fit tight and stay together despite a fair amount of abuse. Try any of the other block building toys out there and t
Expensive lego (Score:3, Interesting)
I think most of ours were inherited or from garage sales. Though i do remember when i first got one of the knights and castles models that had custom pieces - even back then i wasn't too happy about it.
Re:Back to the basics (Score:2, Informative)
http://shop.lego.com/product.asp?p=4496&CMP=AFC
1000 peice lego tub (Of the generic non specific peices) for 20 Dollars
A use your own imagination set at the cost of two pennies per peice. Not friggin bad, Cheaper than a ton of toys kids might play with for a few hours then get tired of/break/batteries run out/annoys the parents so the batteries DO run out
Re:Back to the basics (Score:4, Insightful)
The real problem is that kids aren't as creative anymore as they used to be. Playing an PS2 game is "easy", while building something with Legos requires thought and time. Most kids don't know better than to consume (blame TV, for instance) so playing with Legos is generally harder than playing with a PSP.
I think.
Re:Back to the basics (Score:5, Interesting)
Just recently, I started collecting all the star wars stuff that I couldn't have when i was a kid. Like the AT-AT, Millenium Falcon etc. And they do sit there and wont go in with the rest, because they are models in their own right. So you can have a bit of both.
But really... the Harry Potter and Spiderman stuff REALLY sucks.
Back to Duplo (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Back to the basics (Score:5, Interesting)
It's funny to see comments like this. When I was growing up, the original Space sets were just coming out. My older brothers complained that Lego was making far too many specialized pieces in order to help you construct their pre-prepared models.
Plus ca change...
Re:Back to the basics (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Back to the basics (Score:5, Insightful)
My biggest complaint is the eggregiuos (sp?) price. Lego toys are WAY over priced considering they are just simple plastic blocks. If they cut the price, I would make sure the Christmas tree this year had plenty of Legos for my kids.
Re:Back to the basics (Score:2, Informative)
Huh? They still sell generic sets. Fry's recently had a huge wall of them for ~$20 per box. All bricks, no special parts.
Re:Back to the basics (Score:5, Insightful)
If 60% of your legos are 'one use only' parts, then that's 40% more you have to buy before you could do as much with them as you could a decade ago. The problem Lego has is that their product was designed to last and is always 'backwards compatable' they are afraid of saturating their market and having what happened when I was growing up. Back then, they were having problems selling sets, not because no one thought they were worth anything, but because after about three or four sets, you never needed to buy any more unless Billy managed to sitck the entire set up his nose or down the heating vents.
This is also why they are moving onto things like "Star Wars" and "Spiderman" instead of generic Space Police or 'build a city' sets. Even if you have all the pieces then, you want to buy the next set because you 'cant' build Spiderman without the 20 pieces they specially molded to make it look like Spiderman.
Mindstorm is a perfect example of the problem. They had a $200 set, and once you bought it, there wasn't any hook to make you buy more. So no one did. It didn't matter that they made huge profit on that $200 set that would have probably been more like $20 to create. If you aren't continuing to buy, then they failed.
Re:Back to the basics (Score:5, Insightful)
Geez, with businesses and people both thinking like this, it's no wonder we can't get anything anymore without a 2 year contract with DRM and a penalty for buying something else.
Why do we have to turn everything in to a time limited, disposable, keep repurchasing nightmare? Mindstorms failed because as you said, it took $20 to make and cost $200 -- they sold it above the price point the market was willing and able to bear. No one wants to pay 1000% markup.
Sell your quality products like Mindstorms at a reasonable price and they will fly off the shelves, its Christmas even. The typical price point is somewhere in the $35-50 range these days for most things (a video game, a couple of CDs, etc..) and I imagine most parents would be happier giving quality legos than 50 Cent and Grand Theft Auto.
~Rebecca
Re:Back to the basics (Score:4, Interesting)
Because eveyone has to eat, and few people are willing to work for nothing and rely on the soup kitchen.
Sell Mindstorm kits at $50, have them fly off the shelves this Christmas. Have every kid in the world own a kit.
Then what? What do you sell then? Or are you going to take the miniscule profits you made off the first run and continue to pay your employees off of it? Fat Chance.
They have to continue to sell because they need your money to pay the cost of doing buisness. They charged $200 not because they were gouging, but because that's the price point where they thought they could make back the loss in repeat customers with direct profit.
Now, I'm not taking their side on the issue, I'm not taking the stance that they should just return to 100% reusable cheap parts either.
But to not see why people build obselence into their products is to have a fundemental misunderstanding of economics in this world. There is nothing wrong with trying to 'keep them coming back', the problem is when the methods you choose in themselves are poor or unethical. In Lego's case, I would agree with another poster, they've failed in either case. That's why they are pulling back from the line. They can't see a way to sell it that won't cut their throat further down the road, so they are just slowly abandoning the line. It's sad. But it's the fate of hundreds of products out there and it's simply an economic fact that not everything the public loves is going to be something a company can make money off of in the long-term, at regarldess of price.
Re:Back to the basics (Score:5, Interesting)
The parts for the PCB themselves come in at about fifteen to twenty bucks, including a 16-bit ATMega. If we add a few motors, some wires and a bunch of simple sensors we might reach the fifty EUR mark, not counting bulk discounts. Even though the Mindstorms prices have dropped a bit 50 EUR is a damn good price for a kit that does much more than a 120 EUR Mindstorms kit. Mindstorms might be competitive if it was priced similarly (people don't have to learn C in order to program it), but not for the current price.
Maybe I should tell the Prof to just give some E-Tech student twenty bucks to make a PCB design...
Re:Back to the basics (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, food is a time-limited, disposable nightmare. That doesnt mean you have to churn out time limited disposable nightmares to exchange for food.
Specific players in an economy may gain by creating deliberately time-limited products, but the economy as a whole, and the wealth of society as a whole gets diminished.
The classical example would be the broken window fallacy; the bakers broken window does not generate more employment and higher turnover in the economy. It seems that way when you only look at the economic chain following the window replacement, but in fact it merely forces the baker to buy a new window instead of buying a new pot, thus causing there to be the same number of windows but one less pot available in the economy.
Money spent replacing something that gets destroyed or deliberately obsoleted without cause is not money coming from nowhere, it's money that would have been spent purchasing (and financing the creation of) something else.
"Then what? What do you sell then?"
Then you damn well sell something else or get a job, just like everyone else. A free market economy is not a corporate welfare system intended to support the profits of people who want to keep doing the same thing over and over again when they've already saturated their market.
The very foundation of the creation of wealth in a free market economy is that the ever increasing efficiency in the economy is what is allowing everyone to accumulate as much material wealth as possible. Legos get so cheap that everyone can own them? Great, that's the whole idea of a free market, it's done its thing, legos are no longer a scarcity, we've all become 'richer', we now have the spare wealth that would have been spent buying legos available to buy something else. Now go over to maintenance mode on that old product and produce something new, attracting that newly available spare wealth so we all become even 'richer' again.
"There is nothing wrong with trying to 'keep them coming back'"
If you truly understand the fundamentals of the economics of the world then you will understand what is wrong with trying to keep them coming back with certain methods. Deliberate unnecessary obsolecense has very specific effects on the wealth of society and the economy as a whole. A sale gained for one by unecessary obsolecense is a sale lost for someone else, and ultimately a piece of 'wealth' that goes uncreated for us all. And so, it can be considered 'wrong', in the same way as any other deliberate destruction of someone elses property.
Re:Back to the basics (Score:3, Insightful)
What about next year? (Score:5, Insightful)
Because companies are in for the long haul.
Let's say they take your advice, and build a Mindstorms lineup with the cool electronics bricks on the cheap. Say, $40 for the RIS with just the electronics and mechanical parts. Maybe a couple of add-on sets for more electronics and mechanical gears. Then say they go back to selling the big boxes of bricks again, like they had when I was a kid. You use these to build the models themselves, and the RIS stuff for the movement and such. Mark it all at a reasonable price so that for $100-150, you can get one fantastic set of Legos that will let you build anything you can imagine, as a kid. Nothing huge, but all the joy of Lego plus the learning experience of the Mindstorms gear. Easily done, and they'd make a killer profit. Everybody would get one.
Then next year rolls around, and they go out of business. Those Lego bricks *last*. My sister's kids will be playing with the same bricks I had 30 years previously. As long as you don't lose them to the evils of the vaccum cleaner, they just freakin' last forever.
Lego just has an unusual business. They're into selling timeless toys, but the problem with timeless toys is that they are actually timeless. They sold the big boxes of bricks 30 years ago and it almost killed the company. It's all down to profit, really. They make more money selling those crappy models with all the custom pieces and selling *less* of them than they did by selling the generic bricks on the cheap at a still substantial profit.
Yes, we all want the big buckets of bricks and we all want the electronic coolness that is the Mindstorms line, but the fact is that selling those is not a way to achieve long term profitability. They're not trying to sell to you right now, they're trying to continue selling to you and your kids, and their kids, forever.
Okay, so that sucks, but it does make sense from their point of view.
One thing not seemingly mentioned anywhere is that Lego seems to have the notion building internally of starting up a different market for the older people into Lego. Us old people who still remember the big buckets of bricks can sign up for their catalog. I got one the other day, and yes, you can buy bricks in bulk. Not random sets, but sets of specific brick types, basically by the bag. It's kinda interesting, actually. For the Lego-philes, I recommend looking around their webpage and signing up for the catalog to see what's what there. Yes, the catalog is full of all the Harry Potter and Spiderman crap, but in the center is a nice foldout where you can just buy pieces in bulk. You could amass one hell of a large lego collection for a decent price by buying one bag of everything they have. Or if you have a specific idea, it would be great for making a large model of whatever type you like.
Re:What about next year? (Score:2, Insightful)
Well Kudos to Lego for realising this at least. Many large companies seem to be in it for the money they can get on THIS years profit sheet, so that the directors can get large bonuses THIS year and $sys$ the long haul.
Or maybe thats just because some industries (oil, music, ...) can see that they have no life at all in the long term.
Gosh but I'm cynical sometimes..
Re:Lego modelling software (Score:3, Insightful)
A lego plan is valuable in the same way that "hello, world" is valuable -- it teaches you a technique that you can apply to your own designs.
Re:Back to the basics (Score:2, Informative)
The RCX is too bulky and heavy to build smaller nimbler things.
Maybe the RCX as both the brain and brawn was wrong.
Re:Back to the basics (Score:2)
Re:Back to the basics (Score:2)
Re:Back to the basics (Score:4, Insightful)
Look, this is arrant nonsense. I was 45 when Mindstorms first came out, and I don't have any kids. I was one of the first purchasers, and from what I've read 50% or more of all Mindstorms sets sold have been sold for use by adults - people who simply would not have bought other LEGO products. Furthermore, since I bought my Mindstorms set, I've bought masses of other Technic LEGO, and other stuff like rotation sensors, additional light sensors, additional motors, and so on.
LEGO could develop a whole new audience with Mindstorms. They'd need to get rid of the awful firmware it comes with and bundle instead some of the many enthusiast-developed alternative firmwares (e.g. TinyVM [sourceforge.net], BrickOS [sourceforge.net], pbForth [hempeldesigngroup.com]). It would be nice also to have a USB or serial port, to make interfacing things like GPS systems easier. A more powerful processor and more memory would be great. But there is a big adult audience out there for mindstorms - people who want to tinker with robotics - and that audience has far more money to spend than kids have.
LEGO are missing a trick here. They need to rebrand Mindstorms as an adult focussed product, add more compute power, and raise the price. They'd have a run away winner.
Re:Back to the basics (Score:2)
I'd rather have a "sellout" lego company than no lego company at all.
Re:Back to the basics (Score:2)
LEGO needs to get rid of this insane brand-everything-with-something (Harry Potter, STAR WARS, FERRARI, etc) and get back to the basics. Include both genders. Give a stupid amount (20~) ways to put th
Re:Back to the basics (Score:2)
Re:Back to the basics (Score:5, Insightful)
What would you use the front windsheild piece on the TIE fighter model for other than a tie fighter? I guess you can be creative with it, but it will always make any spaceship built with it look like a TIE fighter knock-off.
The article mentions that children are giving up traditional toys for video game at an earlier age. This is a sad state of affairs, and I feel that it will result in a less creative and less intelligent generation. When I was growing up, I had 8-bit nintendo, I had computer games, and I enjoyed them. But I also highly valued my time playing with lego and erector sets. These promoted creative, math, and engineering type skills. My point is that I had access to both mediums, and I chose to split my time between the two. I wonder what else is making children less inclined to play with traditional toys and more attracted to the "idiot box" as my mother used to call the Nintendo.
Re:Back to the basics (Score:3)
Re:Back to the basics (Score:5, Insightful)
Our economy is such that, in general... it's the impulse buyers that keep makers of consumer products afloat rather than the loyal customer.
Ny nephew is an atypical child, but he latched on to legos early, and now, at nine... he's expanded the size of his set tenfold and builds huge and complex constructs regularly. The reason he fell into it is because I was a huge lego guy as a kid and passed the love on to him. We often build things together - he sends me pix and we consult on design.
Interestingly enough, many companies are having problems with keeping mindshare for the same reason. For example, the sports leagues (baseball, football, etc.) are facing an increasingly older demographic, as these generations have failed to instill their love for the sport in their kids and grandkids. The NFL speculates that 90% of their fans pick up the sport from a father or father figure. The implosion of the nuclear family and the lack of permanent father figures mean that generations of boys don't have an instilled passion for baseball or football... or whatever. Venture onto a kids channel during daytime hours and you'll be bombarded with NFL for kids and/or NBA for kids commercials et al.
I think legos suffer from a similar problem. they are great toys that a child for the most part needs to be introduced to. Modern day toys are things that are designed to babysit kids for parents, as opposed to involving them and engaging them together. And that's if kids are playing with toys at all. The only toys my nephew has are legos. Other than that, he's a gamer. His friends are no different, except that they don't even like legos. They play games and ride bikes.
This dude I knew once bought an old pocket watch at an estate sale. After a few tokes, while playing splinter cell co-op, he tells me that he's gonna keep the watch in his family... start a tradition. I laughed uproariously; it was the funniest thing I'd heard ever. I understand his sentiment though... now anyway. Part and parcel of a quickly evolving popular culture is a resetting of the mindset, like goldfish....
I know I've gotten completely off-topic... but it's ironic that the very companies that seek to destroy that which is good in man for profit are the very same companies we work for.
Re:Back to the basics (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Stop complaining and buy the good sets (Score:5, Informative)
The Designer [lego.com] series is top notch and a current favorite of mine. Sure there are some custom pieces here and there but the majority are hinges and cosmetic blocks that can be used in many interesting ways. The models are great too; I've got a T-rex by my monitor at work and a (sadly discontinued) crab sitting on my system at home.
The Technic [lego.com] series is still going strong from the eighties. What's not to like?
The City [lego.com] is like the LegoLand sets of old that you probably remember. There are a few other lines that are in the same vein but those little yellow people don't interest me as much as they did when I was a child.
And the new Factory [lego.com] series are designed by fans. I'm strongly recommending that you check them out.
Lego is a for profit company and will continue to manufacture what sells. Licensed products like Harry Potter, Star Wars, and Dora the Explorer are making them money so they will continue to make them. They have had moderate success with their annoying Bionicle line so it is still being added to. All is not lost yet; Lego is still making some decent and interesting products, so go out and support those.
P.S. You can also get buckets of regular blocks. Think about that the next time you want to buy that Star Destroyer.
Re:Stop complaining and buy the good sets (Score:2)
Why do people not realize that these products exist?
Because they don't sell. Lego advertises the licensed products and puts them on their limited shelf space at places like Wal-Mart because those are the fa
Re:Back to the basics (Score:5, Interesting)
My son has just turned 8, and he loves Lego. We buy new stuff regularly (and the odd tub of basic pieces) and he makes them up, pulls them apart and they all end up in that enormous soup of Lego blocks. He makes some amazing stuff from that primordial soup, none of it scripted, but he frequently does use some of those parts that came with the Spiderman sets, or the Harry Potter sets or the X-Pods or the Orient Expedition sets or the Star Wars sets.
In fact I don't see that things have changed a whole heap, except that with a big pile of Lego now you can make a damn site more interesting things than I could thirty years ago when I used to babysit for some kids who had Lego (I had Meccano as a kid myself). I used to build houses (well, with bricks, windows and roofs what else are you going to make?) and the kids I was babysitting for used to play with them for the next few weeks. When their parents would tell them they were going out and they would have a babysitter they would destroy everything, in the hope that I would have some more fun with their lego and they could have some more fun playing with a new set of designs.
Sure, so I never read the books and it was just purely creative play. My son's read all the instructions, but that just doesn't challenge him and he moves on.
Lego, on the other hand, has substantially more variety than it did when I was a kid, and that means that what can be created is exponentially more varied.
Great article though. It would be nice to see Lego producing some of the sorts of kits that are suggested at the end, and perhaps that is what the X-Pods do, and some of the other things that encourage the kids to build and rebuild in different configurations.
Re:Back to the basics (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Back to the basics (Score:2)
Perhaps you should take a look at these new series. They really are VERY good and allow for a lot of things you can make on your own. And btw, these new boxes already come with booklets showing schematics for arou
I don't know what's going on with Big Brick (Score:5, Insightful)
On the plus side, at least they keep on churning out basic tubs.
Re:I don't know what's going on with Big Brick (Score:4, Informative)
Look here [target.com]
We ended up with all limited edition 50th anniversary tubs, too!
Re:I don't know what's going on with Big Brick (Score:2)
The problem with Legos... (Score:5, Insightful)
On the more specific topic of the Mindstorms kit, the author of that article seems to assume everyone who might be interested in Lego would be interested in Mindstorms, which just isn't true. Most people aren't interested in programming their own toys. I know it is difficult for geeks to believe this (and I say this as a professional C++ programmer for the past 10 years), but it is true.
*(yeah, that's right, I called them Legos, suck it down trademark Nazis)
Re:The problem with Legos... (Score:2)
When programmers "play" they may just want to do something that has nothing to do with programming or even sitting at a desk for that matter.
Re:The problem with Legos... (Score:2)
Most people aren't interested in programming their own toys.
Sure, but it wasn't the "most people" that lego had in mind as targets when they created this mindstorm line in the first place
Anyway, i'm pretty sure there are tens of thousands of people around who would like to program their toys. But for that we need at least one company that makes toys that can be rearranged for our needs and that can be programmed in a normal way.
One thing where they went wrong imho is that they put the computing "power" o
They last forever. (Score:2)
-russ
you get what you pay for (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:The problem with Legos... (Score:4, Insightful)
Okay, I just searched on Amazon for Lego, and the first thing that came up was the Lego Creator 1000-Piece Tub: Fun with Building (4496), which sells for $20.99. So you're telling me that $21 for 1000 little machined pieces that can be put together in millions of ways and that will last generations is too expensive? You must be spending all your money on crack.
Sure, you can pay more for specialized things that create flashy toys that resemble other toys (for which Lego probably has to pay a licensing fee to the particular brand it resembles), or you can pay a lot for the Mindstorms kit that includes a microcomputer, but all this talk about Legos seems to be hogwash to me.
Financial Trouble (Score:5, Funny)
No wonder Lego is in financial trouble--Someone is stealing them all [slashdot.org]!
why I lost interest (Score:2, Interesting)
Poor analysis (Score:2, Insightful)
There are likely to be slotting fees that Lego has to pay on an ongoing basis to keep each of its products in stores, and no doubt Lego is trying to make the smart business decision of maximizing profitability by using that shelf space to sell products that have higher volume and the same level of profitability.
No argu
This is a sin (Score:3, Interesting)
I heard that in 2004, American colleges graduated but 40,000 engineers while Pacific Rim ones graduated 450,000. Not only that, when you consider that 1/3 to 1/2 of American students are actually forigners, the picture looks even bleaker!
This is sad and pathetic! America needs a reality check lest we become an Engineering third world country!Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:This is a sin (Score:2)
Re:This is a sin (Score:2)
If you'd put your toys down for a second and stop with your doomsday tantrum, you'd find out that the Lego Group [wikipedia.org] is actually a privately owned company based in Denmark.
$200 (Score:2, Interesting)
Yeah, you can find some on ebay for less, but who's counting those 718 parts?
Over at legoeducation.com you can find school-oriented Mindstorms kits, and you can also buy each of the most expensive parts (RCX, sensors, motors) individually.
Re:$200 (Score:2)
And yet Microsoft had no problem selling their $400 toy last week.
Re: (Score:2)
Useful educational tools (Score:2, Interesting)
When I look at Mindstorm, it's anyone's first step into programmable machines and robotics. It's actually how they teach some Mechanical Engineering and Systems Design Courses at school. It's an extremely versitile tool for learning. The Science/Engineering summer camp that the faculty runs, some age groups have extensive portion
Battlebot (Score:3, Funny)
Someone just finished an economics class? (Score:5, Insightful)
It's an interesting write-up, but I think the conclusions latif's come to aren't warranted. Firstly, all the speculation about Mindstorms price elasticity of demand are based on the assumption that strong consumer interest exists. Lego Mindstorms is competing against (read in the same price range) as Robosapien and the like. These toys are in a premium segment of the market - they're the "big gift" for Christmas and birthdays. Without having seen any sales figures, I'd be surprised if there were strong demand for Mindstorms - the price is just too high. It's anecdotal, but I've only ever seen a few (if any) mindstorm stock items on the shelves in any of the stores I've ever been into. And, they've typically been in electronics stores, not toy shops. That's not typically a characteristic of a high demand item.
To be honest, it looks like someone's just completed an economics course and decided to try applying their knowledge to a real-world problem. I mean, the only point in examining price elasticity of demand in this context would have been if one had already established that Lego was losing money and were interested in determining whether or not Lego could raise prices without sacrificing sales. Same goes for the piece cost analysis. Which doesn't take into account the complexity of unique parts, I might add - Lego can achieve some degree of economies of scale with their common parts (6x2 / 4x2 bricks, helmets, etc). Mindstorms has a large number of parts that are only relevant for the Mindstorms line (such as gears, IR sensors, pulleys, etc). Production costs are likely to be higher, and because they're not piggy-backing on a fad (like Harry Potter or Star Wars), sales are also probably going to be lower.
The assumption that Mindstorms is cannibalising sales is also a stretch, in my opinion. Far more likely that their association with movie brands such as Star Wars and Harry Potter creates substitutable products. Both those brands, as an example, are pitched at the same demographic. And, neither is strictly complementary, from a kid's perspective. Which would you rather - a complete line-up of Star Wars characters, vehicles, and environs, or a blend of HP and SW?
In my opinion, the simpler explanation is that Mindstorms appeals to a very small niche - kids who think with parents who are trying to encourage learning and are willing to spend the time with their kids. Far more likely that they never achieved the scale of sales they were expecting, but because of the sunk costs associated with R&D and brand development, they're unwilling to kill the line entirely. Whether or not that's the economically wise decision depends on their unit revenue and long-run average cost of production.
Re:Someone just finished an economics class? (Score:2)
Have to agree. And I don't think the cost analysis of the RIS brick was very good either. For a start the author seemed to completely forget or ignore the quality aspect. I've owned one of those "brick game" things and the quality is shit. But it's cheap so you throw it away and it's no big deal. OTOH, have you ever heard of an RIS brick failing (other than due to
Lego Has Problem (Score:5, Interesting)
But let's talk about Mindstorms. I bought one when they first came out. They cost $200. That is a lot of money for a kid's toy (you can buy a Nintendo DS and two games for that). You can only program them with the Lego Mindstorms software which I found annoying and limited (I soon found the free C complier for it on the internet). I don't even think it would work with my Mac that I have today.
What kind of sensors did you get? As I remember you got.. 2 touch sensors. Or was it 3. And two motors. They offered rotational sensors (cost extra), a vision system (costs a TON extra), etc. I just spent $200 on a Lego set (that didn't include enough pieces, if you ask me), I'm NOT going to go buy a $50-$100 camera for it (I don't know what it costs, wasn't available when I bought it).
I think that was the last Lego set I bought. I used to love Lego. But there isn't anything like it today that I know of. Legos aren't the same. I remember building house kits, airplanes kits, a moon base with a monorail, the trains, and all sorts of other stuff. Today they seem to license half their product lines and there is almost nothing "normal" like I remember.
Maybe Megablocks or one of the other "rip-offs" is better. I don't know. I never looked. But Lego priced themselves out of my market. A quick check on Amazon shows the set is still $200. What can I buy for $200 bucks? Let's look at some of the things I've been looking at lately. I can buy a little stirling engine [stirlingengine.co.uk] that will run off sunlight or the heat of my had for $140. Or for the same amount, I can buy a Steam Engine [ministeam.com] kit. A working kit that includes a whistle, governor, and more. Both of those leave me with $60 to spend (a video game, perhaps?).
The older I got, the fewer Lego products I got as gifts for Christmas and such. While there were things I wanted, they just got more expensive. About the only models I remember wanting to build since I was maybe 10 or 12 (I'm currently 22) cost $100-$200.
Between the proliferation of video games, other electronic gadgets, and issues like I mentioned above, I think Lego will be a gonner soon. My parents had a hell of a time finding me an Erector set when I was a kid. I don't know if that has changed, but between that and Lego, what is there for kids to build things with these days?
Re:Lego Has Problem (Score:2)
Both very good boxes with lots of very interesting pieces that CAN be used in many interesting ways (like the hinges and other bricks).
Greetings,
Said it before (Score:5, Insightful)
Specialized bricks are what is killing Lego!
There, we may all go on with trying to catch up with all the new stories that just appeared...which are dated several hours ago.
Re:Said it before (Score:2, Interesting)
I've seen several sets recently that I've been tempted to buy, but then I look a
Re:Said it before (Score:2)
Which I'm sure goes hand in hand with the raised prices.
Mindstorms great for education (Score:4, Interesting)
Lego Killing Imagination is what is Killing Lego (Score:2, Insightful)
I was in a club in high school called TSA (Technology Student Association) and one of the most popular events at regional, state, and national levels of competition is the System Control event, which 99% of teams use the Lego Dacta/Mindstorms equipment. However, with all these
perhaps you guys aren't the target market for LEGO (Score:2)
Re:perhaps you guys aren't the target market for L (Score:2)
It's the software, stupid! (Score:3, Informative)
Two guy I work with have a kids who are involved with other 4th and 5th graders doing a club thing with Mindstorms. One guy had me redo an unused five year old laptop from Win2K (which it came with) down to Win98. This is because he heard the software (even the newer version) works best under Win98. Most of my web searches seemed to confirm this information.
If it doesn't work well under XP, which comes on almost every new PC, you aren't going to get a lot of good "word of mouth" advertising.
Here's my 2 cents (Score:5, Insightful)
After owning a RIS kit for some years now + expansion kits, having gone to the Robotics challenge at LegoLand, and demoing the kit at various school functions, here's my observations about it:
This kit has or had potential to hook kids into robotics, but IMHO they should emphasize extending a "video game" interface into real life peripherals (ie, doing something in a "video game" experience causes something in real life with Mindstorms something like augmented reality). Once kids see augmented reality with Mindstorms, then that can hook them into learning how to do the more complex things, like programming. Furthermore, open up the kit so other companies can extend the kit without threats of lawsuits from Lego.
Re:Here's my 2 cents (Score:3, Interesting)
Actually, Lego did something similar to this with their Spybotics [lego.com] system. I never really tried it myself, but saw it demoed in stores. If I recall correctly, you used it to build a little vehicle with a processor simpler than the M
What about Fixed Cost (Score:3, Interesting)
Frankly I find the canibalization idea pretty hard to swallow. It just doesn't seem reasonable to believe that the same people using the RIS would otherwise be out there buying all the different specialized lego models. Most likely they would be the people out there buying the big boxes of assorted pieces if they were buying legos at all. The best explanations I can think of along these lines is that either LEGO was afraid of dilluting it's child friendly brand by marketing toys which might be too complex for some young children or that if feared connecting basic lego sales to something like mindstorms where more savy adult customers are involved might allow FischerTechnik to get a foot in the door. However, neither of these seem plausible.
Ultimately I suspect the economics of selling mindstorms were just more complicated than the author realizes. He never quotes actual mindstorms sales figures, only a positive press buzz, so it is quite posssible they simply never achieved wide enough adoption to make money and there are large costs he never even considers. Marketing, deals with stores for promotions and other costs may all play a role in lego's deciscion.
While I don't think we can really say what the whole story is without more data I think a more reasonable guess is something like this. Despite positive press buzz mindstorms simply don't sell enough to generate significant amounts of profit. While the development of mindstorms itself may be a sunk cost this means it simply isn't work lego's while to develop new addons, promote the product or otherwise devote further resources. Lego discontinued all mindstorm products other than the RIS because these other *mindstorm* products were canibalizing revenue from the RIS. Even though these other product lines may have themselves been profitable without the same sales as RIS they just wouldn't have as high a margin so if a reasonable fraction of people would buy a second RIS if they didn't have these other options lego might improve profitability by dropping these additional sets. If they don't think it is worth investing more money in the mindstorm line this has no real downside for them.
As for why lego doesn't simply adjust prices to make the mindstorms sufficently profitable to justify further investment I suspect things are a little more complicated than the author suggests. The demand curve is likely far from linear which dramatic drop offs in sales if they push the price much above $200 and beyond what most people consider to be in the 'toy' range. So raising the price much isn't really an option but this doesn't imply that lowering the price would have similarly dramatic increases in purchases (the elasticity is far from constant). Likely in order to make mindstorm sales high enough to be worth significant R&D money they would have to lower the price so considerably that then mindstorms would directly canabalize regular lego sales (if you can get the computer set for an extra $30 who wouldn't).
Re:What about Fixed Cost (Score:2)
The Competition is with Computer Gaming (Score:3, Insightful)
When it comes to the play experience, much of the fun of assembling a robot is similar to the fun of building a city or an empire in SimCity or Age of Empires. Instead of gears and pulleys, you manipulate serfs or workers or whatever ... but otherwise it's all figuring out what thingies do what and how to combine them to do what-ever.
Lego has the great advantage of being physical and tactile, but OTOH computer games do much better with graphics and sound. I feel the same sense of pride in a well-built empire as I do in a well-build Lego thingy ... and the computer game has the added element of competition (... and, ahem, cheat codes ... .)
As to the impact on our educational system ... it may be unfortunate that the engineering skills Lego can teach are something America may be falling behind on, based on the number of engineers in our schools. However, the skills of organizing a complex organization (a.k.a. empire) may be just as valuable. Is it better to be a top-notch engineer, or to be the employer of a dozen top-notch engineers?
Eh. Dodgy Article. (Score:2)
There are far to many statements like that in this article. Either the data/facts you are "analyzing" show that there is a strong demand or they don't. He doesn't have numbers to back up his assertions.
He also throws in words like 'ought' & 'should' which have no place in any kind of analysis. This "analysis" doesn't even ha
Mostly (Score:2, Interesting)
IMNSHO... (Score:5, Insightful)
Back in the (my) day, Lego just sold boxes full of rectangular blocks, mostly just red and white ones, with some gray flat plates and the occasional clear or triangular roof tiles. I made TWA jetliners, Apollo rockets (they had to be square, since I didn't have enough curved pieces), space ships, tanks, garages, bridges and tunnels for my Hot Wheels, etc.
The sets didn't include step-by-step instructions for making any of these things. AAMOF, I don't remember any instruction sheets at all.
Inspiration came from the pictures on the Lego box and the imaginations of my friends and myself.
Years ago, I looked back at my Legos and realized it was probably the most influential toy of my childhood. Hence, I wanted to pass this glorious experience on to my son. I spent, along with the help of many relatives, literally thousands of dollars on Lego for my boy.
We started with Duplo, then graduated up the Lego ladder. As time passed, the kits became, as others have noted here, very specific to themes, and highly specialized. Sometimes the pieces were so specialized that they would not work well with other kits.
I watched my son assemble these kits, following the supplied instructions exactly. He was very good at it, and he was very happy with the results he got. He also got to be very good at troubleshooting where he put in the wrong piece in Technics sets. This was a Good Thing(TM), I thought.
Then one day, while he was bored, I suggested that take apart some of his Lego and build something new from the pieces. He looked at me like I had three heads. He asked me where he could get instructions for assembling new objects, since he had already assembled all of the variations of the kits' instruction manuals.
I was crestfallen. It confirmed right then and there that Lego Corporate had, over the years, managed to remove all the imagination and excitement of Lego and kids being creative with simple chunks of plastic.
Then Mindstorms came out! I was so excited that I bought a set right away, plus a few (expensive) accessories for it. I gave it to my son, at the time 9 years old, for Christmas. Once he saw that it contained no instructions for specific projects he lost interest quickly.
Some may read my post and judge my son to be an unimaginitive drudge without capacity for creative thought. He isn't that at all. But he has been conditioned by Lego, through Lego products, to treat Lego as a step-by-step construction project, much like a 3D jigsaw puzzle.
Lego might as well print on the box "No Imagination Required!" on all their products.
Re:IMNSHO... (Score:2)
Re:IMNSHO... (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re:IMNSHO... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:IMNSHO... (Score:2)
Re:IMNSHO... (Score:3, Interesting)
If anything, LEGO is guilty of offering too many options. They have the sets with tons of pieces, and the sets with just a
Re:IMNSHO... (Score:3, Interesting)
Not only did most sets come with instruction sheets as far back as 1964 or so, there were also books of additional instructions for making more stuff. By 1966 there were over 50 sets, including the LEGO train system. By 1970 they had gears and cogs, the forerunner to TECHNIC.
So I think either you're in your 50s or older, or your memory is faulty. Or you did like Ralph W
What went wrong? Marketing & accounting, Not R (Score:2, Insightful)
The person who wrote the article stated that Lego assembly was "scripted" and "devoid of imagination". The only people who wrote that stuff are the people who HAVE not imagination. Generally, this can be attributed to the marketing agency which limits itself to a select few brand names or icons that they b
Bley (Score:4, Insightful)
The light gray and the dark gray changed into a light blueish gray and a dark blueish gray, which were given the derisory name "bley" by the aficionado AFOL community (AFOL=Adult Friends Of Lego).
All new sets since 2004 contain only pieces with the new grays, making it difficult for owners of existing sets to build anything without ending up with a patchwork of different shades of gray in their creations. The brown color was also changed into a more reddish colour.
The official response from the LEGO CEO can be read here: http://f24.parsimony.net/forum61776/messages/9746
As far as I am concerned, I think LEGO is aiming too much towards the market of "grown-up" children who are interested in robots and monsters. The Bionicle sets are cool, but they do not belong in the LEGO construction system. They don't even have studs, they don't interlock with the standard pieces. They sell well, good for them, but they are just one of endless companies to fight in that market.
My feeling is that LEGO could rediscover its roots (and sell) by targeting once again the small children market, with small sets mostly made of standard pieces, as in the famed Legoland series, or the much-loved Classic Space series.
The fact that LEGO is currently showing no sense of direction saddens me to no end.
To conclude with a further tiny bit of information, if you want to find again the old sets that you loved as a child, you might find this site quite interesting: www.bricklink.com [bricklink.com]
Wait, Legos are dying? (Score:2, Insightful)
Specialized bricks have their place. I agree on the one hand that many of them ARE one-use only crap. It's true. I used to love getting their space sets (seems like a popular choice here) and trying
Re:Wait, Legos are dying? (Score:2)
Netcraft hasn't confirmed it.
No love for Castle pieces? (Score:2, Interesting)
I'm suprized they don't have a $100-200 kit that has a motor, video cam, and wheels, so one could wirele
It was limited (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:It was limited (Score:2)
-russ
Maybe Mindstorms turns people on to hacking? (Score:3, Insightful)
This is a bit of a reach, but I know that as a kid I soon lost interest in making real things once I learned to program. You can't save an earlier version of a Lego model before making a revision. And I know I'm not the only one.
Lego... (Score:2)
Simple! (Score:2, Offtopic)
That we still remember the past any other way is just an artifact of the time travel device used. Hemos, we salute you!
Re:prices (Score:2)