alt Hacker NewsOnce upon a time kids had train sets, however, other toys such as LEGO came along and train sets fell out of fashion. However, in time, the boomers that did have train sets retired and some of them built the train sets that their nine year old former selves could only dream of. The toy for kids became a hobby for retirees.
I wonder if LEGO is going to follow the same fate, to no longer be of interest to Roblox and Minecraft obsessed kids, to develop an increasingly elderly customer base, ending up with just retirees.
Daft Punk became a household name in the late 1990s, placing their core audience as Gen X, which is reasonably elderly, and well on the way for the kids to retirees pipeline. Expect LEGO to be grand-pa only in a couple of decades.
What remains of the train set business makes a token effort to appeal to kids, all of it is priced out of their league and not marketed to them in ways of yesteryear. Instead it is all about limited edition, very expensive and highly accurate models that get sold to a diminishing customer base, necessitating ever higher prices and further consolidation in the industry.
Imaginably, LEGO in twenty years time will be like this, making nothing but a token effort to sell to kids yet making money with expensive and even more elaborate reissues of models such as this one.
Hopefully this won't be the future of LEGO, however, they do need this adult market given how kids don't play with toys now they have tablets.
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Only because it's so expensive. You can buy a tablet cheaper than many of the larger lego kits.
The (electrified) lego train set was a solid product and didn't cost anywhere near what star wars lego does. Same for technics.
I wonder if LEGO is going to follow the same fate, to no longer be of interest to Roblox and Minecraft obsessed kids, to develop an increasingly elderly customer base, ending up with just retirees.
I don't think this is true at all. Our daughter played a lot with Duplo and then Lego from ~2-12. Overall, she must have collected thousands of Euros of Lego from birthday, Christmas, and Sinterklaas presents. When friends were over, they usually wanted to play with Lego.
Us older people who remember the days of Lego without franchises and a focus on your own creativity/imagination might be grumpy about modern Lego (though they have been good at making adult Lego sets as well). But Lego is still wildly successful because they found ways to connect with younger generations and the franchise-based Minecraft/DC Comics/Star Wars/Harry Potter/etc. Lego is exactly one of the ways they have managed to do this, along with Lego for specific focus groups (e.g. Lego Friends).
I'm pretty sure this has already happened to LEGO. That's why it is so expensive now, they want their nostalgic core audience to go back and buy more with money. And they don't really sell random 2x4 brick assortments, they sell nice looking models with all sorts of specially shaped bricks that are hard to reuse for any other purpose.
Lego already have a range of very big expensive sets that are presumably aimed at grown ups. For example this £500 Eiffel Tower set with 10,001 pieces: https://www.lego.com/en-gb/product/eiffel-tower-10307
> they do need this adult market given how kids don't play with toys now they have tablets
adults are on their tablets too, tho pretty much shell out for nostalgia
i'm a little miffed mindstorms and the 'smart/connected' lego stuff didnt take off
i could imagine it would be a real cool bridge between generations if they could see a lego light turn on and off in their parents' builds when you e.g. hit a switch in minecraft or did a redstone circuit
I don’t think Lego is going anywhere. My boys (4 and 7) play with Lego at least an hour a day and so do a lot of their friends. The toy pipeline for them has been Magnatiles to Duplo to Lego. Their favorite thing to watch on YouTube are silly Lego stop motion videos.
But they also don’t really know about tablet games yet.
This is a subtly ageist view. The adults buying these LEGO now are likely the same kids who grew up with them. It is good for a company to adapt to their customers as they go through phases in life. This gives old generations and new generations a common ground to bond over, instead of segregating them into separate circles. Also, kids today might not be as interested in LEGO. Know your audience.
> ...placing their core audience as Gen X, which is reasonably elderly...
Wikipedia says that Gen X was born 1965 to 1980. They are therefore aged 61 to 46. Not one of them has hit early retirement age in the US.
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Believe it or not, the very kids who loved train sets are the ones who ended up killing the hobby. They grew up, got money, and companies started making the expensive dream sets they could now afford, increasingly catering to adult collectors instead of the next generation. When parents compare expensive, adult-oriented train sets with affordable toys like LEGO, it's hardly surprising which they buy for their kids.
And that's the crucial point, it's not necessarily that companies are focusing on adults because kids have lost interest. Kids may be losing interest because companies have focused on adults. LEGO could fall into the same trap.