Bionicle saved Lego from their crisis of the 90s, when they nearly went bankrupt. It's a serious oversight that this video doesn't mention any of that. (The 2004 slump pales in comparison.)
@@Buildnstack , the star wars line helped, but a lot of the money made from it went to Lucas film. Bionicle was by far a better asset to LEGO at the time(economicaly speaking).
I think the strongest part of LEGO is the fact that they haven’t changed for decades. My grandma has a box of LEGOs from 15-20 years ago when one of my older cousins was a kid, and they can still be connected with brand new ones. The backwards compatibility is amazing.
Backwards compatibility would imply that there were new versions of the same parts. The old parts were pretty untouched and the new parts still use the same system
My grandma has Legos from when my Dad and his brothers were children (80s). They're super fun and still compatible with the new, slightly better quality bricks.
I worked for LEGO for 7 years from 2005-2012, and the major contributing factor to their second rise was the aquisition of the Star Wars IP, and the creation of the Bionicle line. Those two were the biggest contributors to their second rise, which, kinda goes against your first point, because they were making double the variety of specialty pieces than they were before, to accommodate the two new IP's they were pushing. That and they pushed people to go to LEGOLand, and spent more money on all their theme parks, judging by what we were told. Not to mentiom they dissolved their inhouse software company for more licensing deals, creating such things as the Lego Star Wars games, and the ultimate flop which was LEGO Universe. That's just what we were told, but it doesn't sound anything like what you said. Idk, doesn't sound anything like the rise that I lived and worked through to me.
I like Company Man but it's not like he's writing a 500 page book about these companies or market trends, nor does he have stunningly brilliant or insider insights. I expect a bit of Wiki-superficiality.
APotatoGuy LikesDogs actually Star Wars had more to do with it. Bionicle did well, but Star Wars has been their best selling line since it debuted. There’s a reason the first Tt LEGO games were Star Wars.
@@ThunderfallFilms NO. Star wars is a licensed property so Lucasfilms got nearly all the profit, bionicle was a lego original idea so all the profit was for them, solo in a 100 starwars sets they made the profit of 10 bionicle (of the same price)
ravio de lorule and they sold Star Wars sets like hotcakes. That low margin added to a lot of profit for Lego. Without licensing their toys, Lego would have failed, full stop.
I'm surprised you did not mention how getting Star Wars as a licensed theme in 1999 and the creation of Bionicle in 2001 contributing to Lego gaining strength at the turn of the millennium. Bionicle itself solidified the importance and viability of original Lego IP's, many of which gave Lego its most popular sales and of which Lego gets 100% of the profit (compared to only getting a share of profits for their licensed themes). Ninjago is currently their most popular original IP bringing in strong sales since 2011 and selling particularly well in 2018 following the Lego Ninjago movie. The rise of Lego video games also began in 2005 and definitely increased profit. Finally, I would be remiss if I did not contribute some of the lower profits to backlash to the Last Jedi. Star Wars in general has taken a hit since 2017 (directly after the Last Jedi) with Star Wars toys for the first time in recent memory not making up the core of Lego sales as per their latest quarterly reports. If anyone else is interested in learning more about Lego's history as a business there is a fascinating episode about Lego in a documentary TV series called "The Toys that Made US". It's all on Netflix with Lego's episode being in season 2 I believe. The also cover other popular toys like Star Wars, GI Joe, He-Man, Barbie, My Little Pony and many more.
BIONICLE not only helped save the company in 2001 (It was mainly Star Wars that saved it), but it was the sole reason LEGO didn't go bankrupt in 2002 and 2003. As you can see in the graphs at 5:47 in the video, LEGO wasn't doing well those years. In the book "Brick by Brick: How LEGO Rewrote the Rules of Innovation and Conquered the Global Toy Industry " which talks heavily about the fall of Lego during this time and what it did to fix that. (It also has its own section of BIONICLE.) The book explains that: *"In 2003-the year the rest of LEGO came crashing down-Bionicle's soaring sales accounted for approximately 25 percent of the company's total revenue and more than 100 percent of its profit (as the rest of the company was tumbling to a net loss), making it a financial anchor in turbulent times...."* Brick by Brick, p154 And also: "As it turned out, Bionicle racked up its peak sales in 2002 and then began a long but very profitable return to earth." -Brick by Brick, p177 So BIONICLE is one of the reasons LEGO didn't go bankrupt in 2001 and is the sole reason LEGO didn't go bankrupt in 2002 and 2003. It *REALLY* needed to be mentioned.
No interesting new vehicles in The Last Jedi expect maybe those AT-M6’s. No one wants a Resistance Bomber. No one wants those little speeders. No one wants a half-built AT-ST when a much better one came out a year ago
@@scarletspdstr_ Agreed. But I'm sure LEGO basically had to make those sets because Disney told them to. That lazy designing is all on Lucasfilm, not LEGO.
@@hm-sg9sm I'm making clone wars mocs and galactic civil war mocs. I dont have any on my channel yet but I'm planning on uploading my moc of umbara were the 212th fight the 501st next week or so
I think the toys r us bankruptcy had some effect on Lego. For the 2017 holiday season Lego couldn't sell as well because there was no major toy store to sell them at.
gamr 505 Toys R Us was still open during the holiday season last year though. They filed Chapter 11 in September 2017 but this year will be the first holiday season TRU is closed.
I also think that Star Wars toys in general took a hit following the Last Jedi backlash. A huge amount of Lego sales comes from Star Wars and a recent quarterly report did not list Star Wars as being a primary earner for Lego for the first time in recent memory.
LEGO also needs to make some Formula E sets in Speed Champions. Happy to see that they're doing an unofficially licenced NASCAR Chevy Camero next year, but they're only releasing it because Chevrolet gave them the OK to make it, not NASCAR.
This video felt... rushed... it glossed over many parts of the fall of Lego, like how they were doing really bad in the 90’s and Star Wars wasn’t helping, so they made Bionicle In 2001, surprise surprise, it was a smash hit and the theme went on for about 10 MORE YEARS, this video is severely rushed and I suggest you redo it, for now, I’ll watch the toys that made us on Netflix, because they give a more proper and in depth look at “The Rise and Fall... and Rise Again Of LEGO”
It's even ironic that his conclusion was "Lego became successful again by going back to the bricks", when Bionicle was literally HATED by some fans of Lego because of how it wasn't bricks, and yet it was pretty much what saved them from bankruptcy.
I feel like Lego is easily one of the best products ever made. It's so simple and offers so much variety for everyone. Lego's success is complete deserved and I hope they continue to grow as they have great plans as a company in the upcoming years as they try to become an incredibly environmentally friendly company.
@@Turkey_b0i thats like the most desired toy item and one of the most desired collectors item in history. speak for urself lol every1 loves that set including adults. its j too damn expensive but ppl still buy it
When Lego brought out their Architecture series, it was like they were saying, "We are making it okay for adults to still play with Legos." Thank-you Lego!!!
Love the video as always but you failed to mention the huge impact that the Bionicle line had on Lego. They got the Star Wars license to help get them out of the slump but it didn't help much, and Bionicle was a huge gamble, they weren't sure about making their own story for their product and also weren't sure about it fitting their free play belief, but boy did it pay off. It became a hit, and while it wasn't the single reason for Lego hitting their stride again, it was most certainly one of, if not the biggest reason.
I single handedly financed Lego as a kid. I could not give them enough money for Bioicles. I hope I still have my OG Tahu Nuva with the lava surfing. That was my shit back in the day. And dont forget the movie, computer game, and comic book series.
When I was 6, I once made the Eiffel Tower with Duplo and my sister got angry at me for some reason. She kicked my Eiffel Tower. The end result was not good.
I'm soon to be 35 years old and always wanted a Mustang car, so this christmas my gf bought me the LEGO Mustang. I didn't own any LEGO and kind of thought "wtf, i'm not a child" , but when I was done assembling it I was totally hooked! It looked so cool and was so much fun I now spent about $600 on the lunar lander, disney train, jurassic park and steamboat willie. I'm not even ashamed to say it's my new (expensive) hobby. I think LEGO needs to keep focus on these detailed iconic display-pieces that appeals to adults. They are often expensive, but it really scratches that nostalgic itch and it's a perfect activity you can do with your child(ren).
Part of the reason for the company's decline was because of their questionable decisions during the early 2000s. They cancelled iconic themes in favor of ugly overly simplified sets for 4 year olds and fans hated it. Over time they brought them back in new form and cancelled their 4+ sets to bring back consumer interest. They did bring back 4 and up sets many years later as part of the Juniors line of toys, which are much better overall and thankfully don't take up a large margin of their library.
Fun fact: I was invited to the North American LEGO headquarters in 2015, and I took a tour of the offices. An employee confirmed to me that when the company was on the decline on the late '90s, what eventually saved them was the usage of licensed property like Star Wars, Spider-Man, and Harry Potter. By the way, I have two tattoos of minifigures on my right arm (you can occasionally see them in some of my videos).
A rare disappointing video. It kinda glosses over the changing market of the 90s that saw video games and such making Lego feel outdated, as well as ignores the change in the design philosophies of the company which started to rely more heavily on models with complex step-by-step instructions, a higher awareness of adult customers, the big brand recognition boost that came with Traveller's Tales Lego video games starting in 2005, adjusting their approach to licensing deals so that they weren't killed by booms and busts as movies came came out and left theaters (they are a manufacturing company in the end and crazy volatility in demand is not good), focused more of their marketing to girls, expanded into the Asian market, developed their own brands like "Lego Friends" and Ninjago. Just putting the whole turnaround to closing down the extraneous stuff only covers part of the picture. The 90s decisions were based on what they thought was a changing market that they had to adapt to. They had figured simple toy bricks would be a diminishing product in the digital age. When that failed and they got back to basics, they didn't just get rid of stuff that wasn't working, they also rethought the whole strategy and built on some of the successes they did have in their experimental phase. I'd suggest a re-do on this video. The conclusions are just too basic.
If anyone else is interested in learning more about Lego's history as a business there is a fascinating episode about Lego documentary TV series called "The Toys that Made US". It's all on Netflix with Lego's episode being in season 2 I believe. Other episodes cover other popular toys like Star Wars, GI Joe, He-Man, Barbie, My Little Pony and many more.
Add the feminist Star Wars factor, hipster movie burn out, and of course neckbeard man children finally aging out. 30 year olds building ridiculously expensive death star models is finally lame again, as it should be. The soft hands that can't even change their own oil or a tire playing with childrens toys. Adults appropriating childrens culture has killed it, and it has to die to live again.
@@woooweee Dude, chill out. There is nothing wrong with adults buying and playing with Lego. It's like engineering and only adults have the capabilities to build some of the crazy creations seen at conventions will millions and millions of bricks. I don't even know what this "feminist Star Wars factor, hipster movie burn out" means but you have provided not evidence for these outlandish claims so they are irrelevant.
Lego was my favorite childhood toy and I still build stuff with it. (My big planned project is a rotating platform for filming close-ups of small items.) I don't feel like Lego has slowed down on making new brick shapes. It is frustratingly difficult to find a set with a bunch of basic bricks in normal colors now.
Couldn't agree more - a lot of their new stuff is very individual build specific. They always were fairly innovative in adding new pieces - from the corners of the castles to the hulls of the pirate ships and even the implementation of electricity in the trains. But even those individual pieces relied primarily on their core pieces.
My first LEGO set was a mission to Mars series one. Oh how I loved the old series! The pirates! Police! Orks and dark wizard/medieval stuff And many more I can’t remember. And the LEGO club magazine every month!!
@@jeremygibbs7342 In the early 2000s Lego had low sales and was not doing well. Bionicle was popular enough that it kept the company above water long enough for them to refocus and make a comeback. I think the Lego episode of The Toys That Made Us on Netflix touches on this.
@@ToonamiT0M Actually it was Star Wars that saved them. The large UCS sets marketed to adults brought in a new market for them. Bionicle is the bastard child of LEGO. It was good, but did average sales for them. Plus all the new molds they made for them, the profits would be slim. The problem with 2017 was the crap Star War sets they had. They had no must have sets or minifigures. They have ran out of ideas, so now they are re releasing old sets. Then the price increase and more price increase and more price increase.
I think LEGO’s 2017 can be attributed to the fact they have way too many IP based sets. Those are naturally expensive and many of those IP themes end up flopping.
Star Wars toys in general also took a hit following the Last Jedi backlash. A huge amount of Lego sales comes from Star Wars and a recent quarterly report did not list Star Wars as being a primary earner for Lego for the first time in recent memory.
@@Obi-Wan_Kenobi yeah and the han solo movie was a flop. I worked at the lego store in my city over the summer, and from what I remember, the most popular themes were marvel, friends, city, and duplo.
As a Lego enthusiast, the 1st issue can be addressed to a single problem: specialized parts that couldn't be used in more than a single context. Big parts are essential to building sets, but back in the 90s - early 2000s, Lego was producing very large pieces that couldn't be put into another creations due to the way that they were produced. Fortunately now they've gone the other way around, producing small and very useful pieces to allow for more complex and detailed builds.
Legos are great. As an 80s kid they were great! My kids played with them and we spent probably thousands of dollars over a decade and a half on them. That said, they are terribly expensive.
They are a lot of money. Honestly I think it's an elastic market, which if you don't know, basically means I feel better spending $100 and getting two sets than I do spending $65 and getting one set.
Being Danish and having gone to a business college, I did a hell of a lot of reading on the Lego turnaround back in '11 to '14 when it was evident that they had done it. And you're pretty much spot on with your dissection of their problems and how they solved it. But you seem to underplay just how horribly they had managed their global supply chain. They had factories on every continent with a major market, factories in Japan and in China, they lost control with the production of their product and eventually had a hard time managing their series' IPs. Lego consolidated their factories and did away with regional branding. They were trying to specifically target regional markets with exclusive products, especially China and Japan were brought up as markets that were made overcomplicated by the company's marketing efforts. So when they simplified their product catalogue and centralized production of the lego bricks, it did wonders for their bottom line. I'm not quite sure why you rag on the Lego games department, as far as I understand, it has in no way been shut down, since their console games were massive successes, just like their movies. I know my nephews spent hours on end playing the Lego Starwars and Lego Indiana Jones games. All in all, a pretty good breakdown of Lego's rise and fall and rise again.
I had a bunch of the sets that were repurposed into Bionicle pieces as well as a whole lot of the actual Bionicle sets, punching me right in the childhood here
@@titsmcgee1611 look on ebay to see if you can find any you like, last month I bought Tahu Nuva and the Red Rahkshi, finishing my collection of the Rahkshi, I just need one more of the Toa Nuva and that's it for my favorite wave of bionicle
They have so many licenses. Star Wars, Harry Potter, Litteraly all of Disney, marvel, DC, those are just some of the ones available, not including things like indiana jones or Jurrasic World or Jurrasic Park. They also have to run a theme park, pay workers, keep factories running, pay for ads to be created and pay for them to be shown, make video games, make movies, they do it all. So of course they have expensive products. They are the Disney or Apple, no Disney AND Apple of toys
The rise and fall...and rise and fall...and rise and fall...and rise again. They made lots of money on cards and toys in their early days, switched to video games, almost got bankrupted by Radar Scope, managed to save themselves with Donkey Kong and become the leader of the industry with the NES and the Mario series, had a few rough patches with the N64 and GC, jumped back out in front with the Wii, had another rough patch with the Wii U, and are now climbing back with the Switch. Of course, I'm not looking at the full picture since they've dominated the handheld game system market for the past 40 or so years, going all the way back to the Game & Watch.
@@tylerlarsen1842 Saying they were going bankrupt over Radar Scope is an overstatement. Nintendo wasn't betting the company's future on expanding into the American arcade market. All it would have been was a losing venture. For that matter, Nintendo went through a few years of losses, starting with the tail end of the Wii, but was back to being quite profitable even while the Wii U was still their flagship console. Besides the company's got like $9 billion in cash reserves. They're a highly stable company that have had a near monopoly on the handheld market since they pioneered it almost 30 years ago. The Gamecube era that you call a rough patch included was highly profitable.
Rise, Fall, Rise.... Stuck..... Roller coaster, going backwards.... Now it's going in circles.... What is wrong with this bar graph!? MAybe a bigger then you know but I am unsure they have that? They own other Companies like Intellgent systems and next level games while also connecting well with game freak. I'll be surprised if there is a lot more.
I remember hearing from somewhere that Bionicles wasn't as big of a success as Lego were hoping for for the money they were putting into it. That's why they killed the line a few years later with little fanfare. For me though, Bionicles was much niche!
@@dojokonojo It was a huuuuge success that just dwindled after a while, it's telling that it was the first theme other than City to last for as long as it did; a "few years" was almost a decade!
@@dojokonojo That is 100% wrong. BIONICLE and LEGO Star Wars saved the company in the early 2000's/late 90's. It's one of the most successful and important LEGO lines of all time.
@@dojokonojo I think you're thinking of the 2015 reboot. The orignal BIONICLE managed to last from 2001 all the way to 2010. That's longer than most themes even have a chance of making, and even then some behind the scenes guys say the OG ended for "average sales" and not low ones.
More expensive simpler smaller sets. Great. Remember those dragon and knight sets and large Star Wars sets? The star destroyer that originally sold for 250? Don’t have more sets like that anymore.
I hear a lot that Bionicle was one of the themes that really helped Lego out in the early 2000’s by being an evergreen theme that lasted way longer than they were expecting, going all the way up to 2010. Don’t take that as fact, but especially in 2006 and 2001, the theme’s most popular years, I think there may be some truth to that.
It's sad that they lost money because of what they did in the late 90s, but I don't care, those sets were fantastic, and some of the special pieces that enhanced the sets! I wish they were still around today
luuk Pollaerts yep, that looks like the one. In my opinion, airports since haven't really measured up to that one-sure the planes got way bigger, but since 10159 the terminals have all been rather pathetic. Thanks man!
There were other issues in the fall, like different floor managers in the factories preferring different plastic suppliers and dips in general popularity (in the early 2000s only like starwars and bionicle were doing that great).
As a 90's kid who genuinely loved the theming of my childhood the 2000's were generally less good and the designs kinda stagnated. Even the basics, like Town, City and Racing weren't good at the time. The early Star Wars stuff existed, but it lacked the refinement (and price tag) that current Star Wars Lego tends to have.
I will however mention that BIONICLE was very good, though it certainly feels like its own thing and somewhat detached from standard Lego even if it's *technically* compatible if you try hard enough.
To me, my interest in the brand was killed when they killed most of the features of the LEGO Website in 2017. They shut down the message boards, the LEGO Club, and the Galleries, all the places where LEGO Fans built their sense of community. The replaced them all with the LEGO Life app, but the app doesn't allow for any type of chat/commenting other than their stickers and emoji so it's impossible to really build a sense of community and brand loyalty in it like you could with the message boards, club, and galleries. The LEGO.com games have also suffered. Back in the heyday of Flash games, LEGO.com was full of really high quality games with lots of strategy, leaderboards, incentives to keep playing them, multiplayer aspects, and often groundbreaking graphics. This built excitement for the sets, kept you involved and interacting with the brand, and spreading it to your friends. Now, the games are nearly all endless runner type games that only someone under 10 would find amusing. The website itself is also a mess. It's split between the adult side, which is just the shop, and the kid side which is set up like a messy pegboard with no text, just images you click on and have no idea if you're going to get a video, product ad, game, comic etc. There's no organization at all. So without an official place for LEGO fans to assemble and build community, a messy official website, and the shutting down of all the features LEGO fans knew and loved all happening in 2017, it's no wonder their sales dipped.
Oh what a load of crap. TLJ did fantastic at the box office. The only people who have a problem with that movie are butthurt adult men who love nitpicking at incredibly minor things and/or got butthurt about Laura Dern's purple hair. I *promise* you that little kids buying Star Wars LEGO don't have the same stick up their butt and are buying Star Wars LEGO in the same quantity they've always been buying it. Not to mention the fact that TLJ didn't come out until the end of 2017, so event if it had been that catastrophic (and it wasn't), that wouldn't have affected 2017 very much.
Matthew Chenault I love how all of you guys seem to think that their sales are somehow down because of one youtuber who makes rambling videos where he ignores the slots of empty stock and only points out the stock that’s still there.
@@zackakai5173 your forgetting if a star wars movie(s) are not received well chances are most won't buy the toys and also a good portion of toy shopping is done near end of the year for Christmas by the parents not by the kids. I'm guessing you won't see the majority of the hit in toy companies that made Star Wars toys until the 2018 figures are out as you find the toys they made for Star Wars still not selling much and then it still will be only a limited hit depending on how much of that product is made and not sold.
@@joesmith701 and the quality drop of star wars toys where any cheap ones you might buy as a kid are super cheap plastic and lack proper playability aside from the gimmics
@Matthew Chenault 1. if the supposed abhorrent quality of the film (which I maintain is a load of nonsense, the movie is just fine) was actually the reason for the poor sales, then that trend would only start *after* the release of the film, even if the toys were available several months before. And the fact that toy lines from years ago are still on sale at major retailers is an indicator that it's pretty standard practice to make more toys than will sell immediately and not down to TLJ specifically or even Star Wars as a whole.
Legos are a huge part of my childhood. I was born down the road from the original '99 lego land in California a year after it opened. Man those were good times. I hope lego stays running for a long time, they really are something special and i imagine a big part of other kid's childhoods as well :)
I know I'm probably gonna be in a supercompilation for this, but... The bricks themselves aren't called "legos" or "a lego". They're called "lego bricks"
The wooden toys you show at the beginning of your video were the types of toys my father and his brothers played with when they were kids. Back then toys were an escape from "child-appropriate chores" like planting and hoeing the garden, picking grapes, digging potatoes, and harvesting whatever produce was ready in order to survive the Great Depression. They spent hours playing with those toys. My grandmother kept those toys as a reminder of the good times they found in the middle of very bad times. Thanks for your videos.
You should do a follow up video to this. Just checked revenue again as of late 2023 & they have been having record years. May be worth an update & talk about how Covid may or may have not affected sales.
Fun fact: the second Legoland was opened in Germany in 1973. Just a few hours away from the first one! It was sold in 76. It's still open today, just not as Legoland
Lego sales are popping off since the covid lockdowns a few years ago. They are selling more than ever before. People have more time to build them now plus they have sets for everyone. My sister loves all their plant and flower sets
I remember thinking in the 90's that all those specialized sets with pieces that only worked in the set were a terrible idea, and turned me off of Lego. Glad to see that I was right, and that Lego was able to learn.
I def agree with you guys! I was a huge fan to. Its almost like legos were cool when I was like 5-9 and then I upgraded to k'nex cause I thought you had to be more intelligent to build stuff with them cause they had so many morw building options then legos cause k'nex had small joints/elbows and big joints/elbows with multiple slots in each joint or elbow piece...and then you could build cars cause they sold wheels with actual rubber. Look up the Harley Davidson k'nex someone made a lifesize Harley Davidson out of k'nex and it weighed a total of 50lbs
2011 definitely brought a small rise for them with LEGO Ninjago largely due to the animated show that went along with it and it got even more popular at 2012 with the next season exploding in popularity. Then they made LEGO Legends of Chima in 2013 which was almost as successful as Ninjago but for some reason they didn't move along with it.
Everytime I go to a Lego section in a store, I always hear someone saying lego is too expensive. One guy went as far to say they'll have to sell both kidneys just to get one Lego set
7:23 honestly i think that was a great idea. look at the TT games' lego movie games, especially star wars complete saga. and i loved the now defunct mmorpg "Lego Universe".
I am from Denmark, and my mother and stepfather are Co-founders of "Byggepladen" right in my their back yard. I have went out and been with them, around Europe for different Lego stuff, competitions, a lot of exhibition where I have been putting up my own creations. So I do know those two words "Leg" and "Godt" Always nice to see something about Lego from different people :-)
No mentions of Bionicle? The lego franchise that literally was credited as the one to save Lego?
Didn't expect to see you here, also the Star wars line.
🅱️ionicle> girlfriends
Did not expect u here
Bionicle saved Lego from their crisis of the 90s, when they nearly went bankrupt. It's a serious oversight that this video doesn't mention any of that. (The 2004 slump pales in comparison.)
@@Buildnstack , the star wars line helped, but a lot of the money made from it went to Lucas film. Bionicle was by far a better asset to LEGO at the time(economicaly speaking).
Lego is not a good toy...
It is the BEST toy.
I litteraly have some on the floor right now, in a box
Expensive
@@Clay3613 well they need to pay licence's for movies like star wars and they need to make some sort of profits themselves
No the dildo is
well I mean... you know... there's those dinosaur pills that grow on water... yeah I think those are a little bit better than Lego tbh
Don't forget, LEGO is tied to Marvel too (the Infinity War sets were huge sellers, no surprise). Hopefully The LEGO Movie 2 will bring sales back up.
Good to see you caught this one Just2Good
Just2good finally watched a company man video
Hi
Oh. I didn't expect him to be here.
I have been fighting for this vid forever
I love Legos don’t get me wrong, they’re just SO DAMN EXPENSIVE.
IceCreamJunkie exactly my thoughts. Can’t wait till I’m older tho imma be in my mid 20s buying Lego😂
Julian Diaz yeah when I was growing up we could never afford them but I’m 17 now and I’ve been building my collection ever since I got my first job
They can be as low as 5 bucks.
Legos LEGOS AS GRETA SAYS HOW DARE YOU!
@@juliandiaz1081 I buy bootlegs to make my life easier
*When you realize queen Elizabeth is 93 so that Means she has 6 more years to enjoy LEGO*
Lego releases a limited edition Queen Elizabeth Lego set for Her Majesty's 100th birthday. Her Majesty can't play with said Lego set.
Hahahahahaha
still not enough
Her Majesty looks on with envy and disgust as Queen Margrethe II of Denmark happily plays with the new Queen Elizabeth set at age 86.
:(
The land mines of childhood
Oh god, carpet+legos+bare feet=the seemingly never ending life lesson
I see you everywhere lol
I never stepped on a Lego I feel like im missing out on alot ;-;
Unless you’re in Afghanistan, then it’s just actual land mines.
Lol just finished watching the Rhett & Link video
I think the strongest part of LEGO is the fact that they haven’t changed for decades. My grandma has a box of LEGOs from 15-20 years ago when one of my older cousins was a kid, and they can still be connected with brand new ones. The backwards compatibility is amazing.
Backwards compatibility would imply that there were new versions of the same parts. The old parts were pretty untouched and the new parts still use the same system
My grandma has Legos from when my Dad and his brothers were children (80s).
They're super fun and still compatible with the new, slightly better quality bricks.
My dad's Legos work with the ones I have now
20 years is nothing
@@11Survivor 40 years is nothinf
I worked for LEGO for 7 years from 2005-2012, and the major contributing factor to their second rise was the aquisition of the Star Wars IP, and the creation of the Bionicle line. Those two were the biggest contributors to their second rise, which, kinda goes against your first point, because they were making double the variety of specialty pieces than they were before, to accommodate the two new IP's they were pushing. That and they pushed people to go to LEGOLand, and spent more money on all their theme parks, judging by what we were told. Not to mentiom they dissolved their inhouse software company for more licensing deals, creating such things as the Lego Star Wars games, and the ultimate flop which was LEGO Universe.
That's just what we were told, but it doesn't sound anything like what you said. Idk, doesn't sound anything like the rise that I lived and worked through to me.
Was Bionicle not mentioned in the video?
@@person.w9780 nope, Bionicle a decade,long franchise by Lego getting disrespected
I like Company Man but it's not like he's writing a 500 page book about these companies or market trends, nor does he have stunningly brilliant or insider insights. I expect a bit of Wiki-superficiality.
Dang the LEGO Movie is that old?
I remember when it came out.
Bruh, it feels like yesterday
So do all of us
Yeah man, I fell the same
You guys are like 12
Forensic 🤮
Remake this video
And talk about bionicle saving LEGO
APotatoGuy LikesDogs actually Star Wars had more to do with it. Bionicle did well, but Star Wars has been their best selling line since it debuted. There’s a reason the first Tt LEGO games were Star Wars.
@@ThunderfallFilms NO. Star wars is a licensed property so Lucasfilms got nearly all the profit, bionicle was a lego original idea so all the profit was for them, solo in a 100 starwars sets they made the profit of 10 bionicle (of the same price)
ravio de lorule and they sold Star Wars sets like hotcakes. That low margin added to a lot of profit for Lego. Without licensing their toys, Lego would have failed, full stop.
And Ninjago!!!!
@@josetheclassicstarwarsfan8514 Ninjago didn't really save them, especially not as much as Bionicle.
I'm surprised you did not mention how getting Star Wars as a licensed theme in 1999 and the creation of Bionicle in 2001 contributing to Lego gaining strength at the turn of the millennium.
Bionicle itself solidified the importance and viability of original Lego IP's, many of which gave Lego its most popular sales and of which Lego gets 100% of the profit (compared to only getting a share of profits for their licensed themes). Ninjago is currently their most popular original IP bringing in strong sales since 2011 and selling particularly well in 2018 following the Lego Ninjago movie. The rise of Lego video games also began in 2005 and definitely increased profit.
Finally, I would be remiss if I did not contribute some of the lower profits to backlash to the Last Jedi. Star Wars in general has taken a hit since 2017 (directly after the Last Jedi) with Star Wars toys for the first time in recent memory not making up the core of Lego sales as per their latest quarterly reports.
If anyone else is interested in learning more about Lego's history as a business there is a fascinating episode about Lego in a documentary TV series called "The Toys that Made US". It's all on Netflix with Lego's episode being in season 2 I believe. The also cover other popular toys like Star Wars, GI Joe, He-Man, Barbie, My Little Pony and many more.
Its world wide!
You’re a bold one
BIONICLE not only helped save the company in 2001 (It was mainly Star Wars that saved it), but it was the sole reason LEGO didn't go bankrupt in 2002 and 2003. As you can see in the graphs at 5:47 in the video, LEGO wasn't doing well those years. In the book "Brick by Brick: How LEGO Rewrote the Rules of Innovation and Conquered the Global Toy Industry " which talks heavily about the fall of Lego during this time and what it did to fix that. (It also has its own section of BIONICLE.) The book explains that:
*"In 2003-the year the rest of LEGO came crashing down-Bionicle's soaring sales accounted for approximately 25 percent of the company's total revenue and more than 100 percent of its profit (as the rest of the company was tumbling to a net loss), making it a financial anchor in turbulent times...."* Brick by Brick, p154
And also:
"As it turned out, Bionicle racked up its peak sales in 2002 and then began a long but very profitable return to earth." -Brick by Brick, p177
So BIONICLE is one of the reasons LEGO didn't go bankrupt in 2001 and is the sole reason LEGO didn't go bankrupt in 2002 and 2003. It *REALLY* needed to be mentioned.
No interesting new vehicles in The Last Jedi expect maybe those AT-M6’s. No one wants a Resistance Bomber. No one wants those little speeders. No one wants a half-built AT-ST when a much better one came out a year ago
@@scarletspdstr_ Agreed. But I'm sure LEGO basically had to make those sets because Disney told them to. That lazy designing is all on Lucasfilm, not LEGO.
Lego is the literal definition of my childhood
Knex is the definition of mine.
CallMeCar legos literally the definition of my life
Child hood to teen years and it's not stopping any time soon for me. I make tons of mocs and dont plan on quitting
@@usernate5995 what kind of mocs are you building?
@@hm-sg9sm I'm making clone wars mocs and galactic civil war mocs. I dont have any on my channel yet but I'm planning on uploading my moc of umbara were the 212th fight the 501st next week or so
The Two Rules of Lego
1. Don't drop a creation, unless you want to see all of your hard work shatter into a million pieces.
2. *DON'T STEP ON THEM.*
Stepping on them doesn't hurt as much as people think, smh.
Having your mom work for lego when you’re 6...
That was cool
Did you get free Lego?
@@vilkua3471 that wouldve been sick
@@kabadanis yeah it would be.
Lucky bastard!!!
ViLKUA hell yeah my man
I honestly hope they never go out of business. They’re a hardworking business.
Juan c Gonzalez they never well there to successful
Honestly the company’s too big to fail
@@Bowsermmbbrealthat is dumb
I think the toys r us bankruptcy had some effect on Lego. For the 2017 holiday season Lego couldn't sell as well because there was no major toy store to sell them at.
gamr 505 Toys R Us was still open during the holiday season last year though. They filed Chapter 11 in September 2017 but this year will be the first holiday season TRU is closed.
Not in Canada; Toys R Us is still thriving here especially after they got a much needed cash injection from their new owner, Fairfax Financial.
I will never buy Legos at Toys R Us. They sell them at an insane markup.
I also think that Star Wars toys in general took a hit following the Last Jedi backlash. A huge amount of Lego sales comes from Star Wars and a recent quarterly report did not list Star Wars as being a primary earner for Lego for the first time in recent memory.
Obi-Wan Kenobi Fucking critics, TLJ is overhated, And Lego shouldn’t suffer for it
LEGO is awesome! LEGO needs to make a 501st Battle Pack before the fall again though!
MandRproductions ice been gunning for this vid for ages
501st
GGs Mnr
They might even cuz #CloneWarsSaved!!!
LEGO also needs to make some Formula E sets in Speed Champions. Happy to see that they're doing an unofficially licenced NASCAR Chevy Camero next year, but they're only releasing it because Chevrolet gave them the OK to make it, not NASCAR.
“Gathered friends listen again to our legend of the bionicle”
"In the time before time..."
"The Great Spirit descended from the heavens..."
@@Obi-Wan_Kenobi AND MAKUTA SAID NOPE
@@SpudChickenSaltedChips on the island of mata Nui
I think everything has gone wrong with their company since that man fell into the river at Lego City
I already knew these comments will come
I knew I’d see something like this.
Bruh
What
@@sarathomas8499 wHaT
This video felt... rushed... it glossed over many parts of the fall of Lego, like how they were doing really bad in the 90’s and Star Wars wasn’t helping, so they made Bionicle In 2001, surprise surprise, it was a smash hit and the theme went on for about 10 MORE YEARS, this video is severely rushed and I suggest you redo it, for now, I’ll watch the toys that made us on Netflix, because they give a more proper and in depth look at “The Rise and Fall... and Rise Again Of LEGO”
Bionicle where litteraly my favorite Childhood toy
It's even ironic that his conclusion was "Lego became successful again by going back to the bricks", when Bionicle was literally HATED by some fans of Lego because of how it wasn't bricks, and yet it was pretty much what saved them from bankruptcy.
@@legoworld246 now technic is dead
Toy that made us is good my dad keeps rewatching it.
Imagine a childhood without bionicle
Yeah.. you know what lego is instantly after you STEP on one LOL
Today I Found Out did an episode that.
Cornholio, TP for my bunghole huhuhuhu
Or a British plug
Queue Craig Ferguson censor flag when you step on one.
The Batman mask is the worst one
Can't forget about how Bionicle managed to keep them alive in the early 2000s, and adapted to Lego's adapations (such as fewer pieces) later on!
its multimedia marketing is to this day cited as an example of how to market a product in the internet era.
Bionicle sucked...
My Name Jeff is a dead meme dude, why do you have such a shit old meme as your name
@@RTGMonika U wot?
@@PeruvianPotato Bionicle sucked well in my opinion at least I never liked any thing Technic like it just wasn't the Lego I knew ya know?
I feel like Lego is easily one of the best products ever made. It's so simple and offers so much variety for everyone. Lego's success is complete deserved and I hope they continue to grow as they have great plans as a company in the upcoming years as they try to become an incredibly environmentally friendly company.
For some of the sets I wouldn't say simple *cough cough* ucs millennium falcon *cough cough*
luke skywalker I meant more like the brick itself, but yes, some sets are definitely not simple
@@Turkey_b0i ok then get megabloks star wars
@@timohara7717 I could build the UCS falcon , I'm not bothered about the complexity I just wouldn't call it simple
@@Turkey_b0i thats like the most desired toy item and one of the most desired collectors item in history. speak for urself lol every1 loves that set including adults. its j too damn expensive but ppl still buy it
When Lego brought out their Architecture series, it was like they were saying, "We are making it okay for adults to still play with Legos." Thank-you Lego!!!
And the sets with the 18+ rating
"This wooden duck...which is a fine toy i suppose...but its no LEGO..." idk why, but i busted out laughing when he said that
U should do the Rise and Fall...and Rise again for Viagra.
You mean just the rise ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)
Toasty Engineer
Nice pun
That pun *rocked*
I almost choked on my lunch when I read that 😂
dude, i can't laugh, im at work!
Love the video as always but you failed to mention the huge impact that the Bionicle line had on Lego. They got the Star Wars license to help get them out of the slump but it didn't help much, and Bionicle was a huge gamble, they weren't sure about making their own story for their product and also weren't sure about it fitting their free play belief, but boy did it pay off. It became a hit, and while it wasn't the single reason for Lego hitting their stride again, it was most certainly one of, if not the biggest reason.
I single handedly financed Lego as a kid. I could not give them enough money for Bioicles. I hope I still have my OG Tahu Nuva with the lava surfing. That was my shit back in the day. And dont forget the movie, computer game, and comic book series.
Y'all need to stop complaining about stepping on regular Lego blocks
I FRICKING STEPPED ON A DUPLO BLOCK
Yeah Lego blocks never hurt me but I have stepped on one it hurts bad it's like someone punched you really bad in your foot 😂
Lego bricks not blocks
@@ArkOnUA-cam PROBABLY ACTUAL BRICKS
@@ArkOnUA-cam They are called LeGos®
When I was 6, I once made the Eiffel Tower with Duplo and my sister got angry at me for some reason. She kicked my Eiffel Tower. The end result was not good.
I'm soon to be 35 years old and always wanted a Mustang car, so this christmas my gf bought me the LEGO Mustang. I didn't own any LEGO and kind of thought "wtf, i'm not a child" , but when I was done assembling it I was totally hooked! It looked so cool and was so much fun I now spent about $600 on the lunar lander, disney train, jurassic park and steamboat willie. I'm not even ashamed to say it's my new (expensive) hobby. I think LEGO needs to keep focus on these detailed iconic display-pieces that appeals to adults. They are often expensive, but it really scratches that nostalgic itch and it's a perfect activity you can do with your child(ren).
If you are in to Star Wars, or just like their ship designs, I would recommend at looking into LEGO Star Wars UCS Sets
Part of the reason for the company's decline was because of their questionable decisions during the early 2000s. They cancelled iconic themes in favor of ugly overly simplified sets for 4 year olds and fans hated it. Over time they brought them back in new form and cancelled their 4+ sets to bring back consumer interest. They did bring back 4 and up sets many years later as part of the Juniors line of toys, which are much better overall and thankfully don't take up a large margin of their library.
Fun fact: I was invited to the North American LEGO headquarters in 2015, and I took a tour of the offices. An employee confirmed to me that when the company was on the decline on the late '90s, what eventually saved them was the usage of licensed property like Star Wars, Spider-Man, and Harry Potter. By the way, I have two tattoos of minifigures on my right arm (you can occasionally see them in some of my videos).
That's pretty cool
Bionicle as well.
@@person.w9780 That's true too -- the person I spoke to there confirmed that.
Cool! That plug of your YT channel tho.
Bionicle only gave LEGO a boost up the mountain
I was a supervisor for a Lego Store for 4 years. Really good company to work for.
You need to be the CEO of lego
@@lackofficial8324 It would definitely go bankrupt after my first day 😂
A rare disappointing video. It kinda glosses over the changing market of the 90s that saw video games and such making Lego feel outdated, as well as ignores the change in the design philosophies of the company which started to rely more heavily on models with complex step-by-step instructions, a higher awareness of adult customers, the big brand recognition boost that came with Traveller's Tales Lego video games starting in 2005, adjusting their approach to licensing deals so that they weren't killed by booms and busts as movies came came out and left theaters (they are a manufacturing company in the end and crazy volatility in demand is not good), focused more of their marketing to girls, expanded into the Asian market, developed their own brands like "Lego Friends" and Ninjago. Just putting the whole turnaround to closing down the extraneous stuff only covers part of the picture. The 90s decisions were based on what they thought was a changing market that they had to adapt to. They had figured simple toy bricks would be a diminishing product in the digital age. When that failed and they got back to basics, they didn't just get rid of stuff that wasn't working, they also rethought the whole strategy and built on some of the successes they did have in their experimental phase.
I'd suggest a re-do on this video. The conclusions are just too basic.
Agreed, see my similar comment above. This video was rushed and the core reasons regarding their rise was speculative and glossed over
If anyone else is interested in learning more about Lego's history as a business there is a fascinating episode about Lego documentary TV series called "The Toys that Made US". It's all on Netflix with Lego's episode being in season 2 I believe. Other episodes cover other popular toys like Star Wars, GI Joe, He-Man, Barbie, My Little Pony and many more.
Add the feminist Star Wars factor, hipster movie burn out, and of course neckbeard man children finally aging out. 30 year olds building ridiculously expensive death star models is finally lame again, as it should be. The soft hands that can't even change their own oil or a tire playing with childrens toys. Adults appropriating childrens culture has killed it, and it has to die to live again.
@@woooweee Dude, chill out. There is nothing wrong with adults buying and playing with Lego. It's like engineering and only adults have the capabilities to build some of the crazy creations seen at conventions will millions and millions of bricks. I don't even know what this "feminist Star Wars factor, hipster movie burn out" means but you have provided not evidence for these outlandish claims so they are irrelevant.
and not even a mention of bionicle and its revolutionary marketing
Welcome to the Salty Spitoon, how tough are ya?
I once stepped on 1x1 brick and only cried for 20 minutes!
Dang. Mine was 2 hours, tops.
I don't cry when I step on a LEGO. I would be internally screaming though.
What a noob, I only cried for 19 minutes!!!
Ha! I only said 'ow' 20 times!
I layed in legos and thought it was comfortable
This mans voice sounds like he’s reading his own breakup story
You should do one on Nintendo
They only failed with the vr
Mike ADHD wiiu too :(
What about SEGA? Not the same series, but maybe a "Bigger than you know"?
I can already imagine the title now.
*The Rise, Fall, Rise, Fall and Rise again of Nintendo*
@@psyxypher3881 dreamcast didnt play dvds and sony was lit with us ads
Lego was my favorite childhood toy and I still build stuff with it. (My big planned project is a rotating platform for filming close-ups of small items.)
I don't feel like Lego has slowed down on making new brick shapes. It is frustratingly difficult to find a set with a bunch of basic bricks in normal colors now.
Couldn't agree more - a lot of their new stuff is very individual build specific. They always were fairly innovative in adding new pieces - from the corners of the castles to the hulls of the pirate ships and even the implementation of electricity in the trains. But even those individual pieces relied primarily on their core pieces.
Anyone remember that MMO they made called Lego Universe?
Oooh I member
I had forgotten about LEGO Universe until just now! That website was so fun.
Shame it didn't last.
Nobody:
Me scrolling through the comments: ...
The comments: bIoNiCLe
Yeah. It's annoying. People should look and see if someone has already made the point they are planning to make.
Lieutenant Itami yeah
Its sucks
nObOdY:
@@rattfish eVeRyBoDy
My first LEGO set was a mission to Mars series one. Oh how I loved the old series!
The pirates!
Police!
Orks and dark wizard/medieval stuff
And many more I can’t remember. And the LEGO club magazine every month!!
The police sets were my favorite. Now I hear they might stop making the police Legos, you know, because politics. Sad.
Man, the Lego club magazine was lit
FYI. Lego would not be here today if Bionicle had not kept the company afloat during the early 2000's.
Really?? I find that hard to believe
@@jeremygibbs7342 In the early 2000s Lego had low sales and was not doing well. Bionicle was popular enough that it kept the company above water long enough for them to refocus and make a comeback. I think the Lego episode of The Toys That Made Us on Netflix touches on this.
I'm bonkers for bonkle
@@ToonamiT0M Actually it was Star Wars that saved them. The large UCS sets marketed to adults brought in a new market for them. Bionicle is the bastard child of LEGO. It was good, but did average sales for them. Plus all the new molds they made for them, the profits would be slim. The problem with 2017 was the crap Star War sets they had. They had no must have sets or minifigures. They have ran out of ideas, so now they are re releasing old sets. Then the price increase and more price increase and more price increase.
I'm not that into Bionicle but thank Jesus that it saved Lego as a whole
I think LEGO’s 2017 can be attributed to the fact they have way too many IP based sets. Those are naturally expensive and many of those IP themes end up flopping.
Star Wars toys in general also took a hit following the Last Jedi backlash. A huge amount of Lego sales comes from Star Wars and a recent quarterly report did not list Star Wars as being a primary earner for Lego for the first time in recent memory.
@@Obi-Wan_Kenobi yeah and the han solo movie was a flop. I worked at the lego store in my city over the summer, and from what I remember, the most popular themes were marvel, friends, city, and duplo.
Military grade land mines for children! $19.99
As a Lego enthusiast, the 1st issue can be addressed to a single problem: specialized parts that couldn't be used in more than a single context. Big parts are essential to building sets, but back in the 90s - early 2000s, Lego was producing very large pieces that couldn't be put into another creations due to the way that they were produced. Fortunately now they've gone the other way around, producing small and very useful pieces to allow for more complex and detailed builds.
I wonder if LEGO ever tried to see EGGO waffles.
"LEGO MY EGGO!"
Ain't that from flapjack studios
Legos are great. As an 80s kid they were great! My kids played with them and we spent probably thousands of dollars over a decade and a half on them.
That said, they are terribly expensive.
Check out lepin it’s a cheaper alternative with the same quality and sets
They are a lot of money. Honestly I think it's an elastic market, which if you don't know, basically means I feel better spending $100 and getting two sets than I do spending $65 and getting one set.
Being Danish and having gone to a business college, I did a hell of a lot of reading on the Lego turnaround back in '11 to '14 when it was evident that they had done it. And you're pretty much spot on with your dissection of their problems and how they solved it. But you seem to underplay just how horribly they had managed their global supply chain. They had factories on every continent with a major market, factories in Japan and in China, they lost control with the production of their product and eventually had a hard time managing their series' IPs.
Lego consolidated their factories and did away with regional branding. They were trying to specifically target regional markets with exclusive products, especially China and Japan were brought up as markets that were made overcomplicated by the company's marketing efforts. So when they simplified their product catalogue and centralized production of the lego bricks, it did wonders for their bottom line.
I'm not quite sure why you rag on the Lego games department, as far as I understand, it has in no way been shut down, since their console games were massive successes, just like their movies. I know my nephews spent hours on end playing the Lego Starwars and Lego Indiana Jones games.
All in all, a pretty good breakdown of Lego's rise and fall and rise again.
I believe he meant the computer games era of the early 2000s, the console games produced by TT were a different marketing attempt in the late 2000s.
Who else loves Bionicle?
Used to be obsessed with there commercials as a kid but never had any of them. :(
Major nostalgia
Always hated when someone got me bionicle as a kid
I had a bunch of the sets that were repurposed into Bionicle pieces as well as a whole lot of the actual Bionicle sets, punching me right in the childhood here
@@titsmcgee1611 look on ebay to see if you can find any you like, last month I bought Tahu Nuva and the Red Rahkshi, finishing my collection of the Rahkshi, I just need one more of the Toa Nuva and that's it for my favorite wave of bionicle
*A MAN HAS FALLEN INTO THE RIVER IN LEGO CITY*
*THIS RANDOMLY CAME IN YOUR RECOMMENDATIONS TOO LETS RAID LEGO HQ WHO'S WITH ME?*
The Muffin Man who the hell hurt you
@@rattfish 900 2x2 lego bricks that came falling from their shelves as my retarded boomer boss at the store fired me for his mistakes 🗿
I'll come I want to find the Legos that have studs on all sides! Let's raid Lego HQ!
“They were selling them for less than they’d like” WHAT? They’re already so expensive as is!
Likely selling off excess inventory meant for Toy R Us due to their closure.
They have so many licenses. Star Wars, Harry Potter, Litteraly all of Disney, marvel, DC, those are just some of the ones available, not including things like indiana jones or Jurrasic World or Jurrasic Park. They also have to run a theme park, pay workers, keep factories running, pay for ads to be created and pay for them to be shown, make video games, make movies, they do it all. So of course they have expensive products. They are the Disney or Apple, no Disney AND Apple of toys
Everything is awesome,
everything is cool when your part of a team.
Everything is awesome,
when you're living out a dream.
dojokonojo Yes
SubscribePls No
@@TheWeekndGaming you're next...XR PICKLE
SubscribePls ok
15 years later, The LEGO Star Wars Stardestroyer is still my dream kit to build
J Mathews The UCS one with the Tantive 4 or the playset one?
Vulpes Inculta not sure, but it was the large boxed one they sold at Toys R Us for about $150
No LEGO Death Star that’s the way to go.
I had that one. I dropped it like a year after and to this day I haven't repaired it. I'm sure I'm missing like 50 pieces
You should make a video about nintendo. They have a really interesting history. Maybe a rise, fall, and rise again?
The rise and fall...and rise and fall...and rise and fall...and rise again. They made lots of money on cards and toys in their early days, switched to video games, almost got bankrupted by Radar Scope, managed to save themselves with Donkey Kong and become the leader of the industry with the NES and the Mario series, had a few rough patches with the N64 and GC, jumped back out in front with the Wii, had another rough patch with the Wii U, and are now climbing back with the Switch. Of course, I'm not looking at the full picture since they've dominated the handheld game system market for the past 40 or so years, going all the way back to the Game & Watch.
@@tylerlarsen1842 Saying they were going bankrupt over Radar Scope is an overstatement. Nintendo wasn't betting the company's future on expanding into the American arcade market. All it would have been was a losing venture. For that matter, Nintendo went through a few years of losses, starting with the tail end of the Wii, but was back to being quite profitable even while the Wii U was still their flagship console. Besides the company's got like $9 billion in cash reserves. They're a highly stable company that have had a near monopoly on the handheld market since they pioneered it almost 30 years ago. The Gamecube era that you call a rough patch included was highly profitable.
Rise, Fall, Rise.... Stuck..... Roller coaster, going backwards.... Now it's going in circles.... What is wrong with this bar graph!?
MAybe a bigger then you know but I am unsure they have that? They own other Companies like Intellgent systems and next level games while also connecting well with game freak. I'll be surprised if there is a lot more.
Also Lego really doesn’t listen to their fan base.. *cough* 501st Battle Pack *cough cough*
Lmao
i hope they release it in the march wave
@@kabadanis yeah
Preach brotha
"Lego doesn't listen to their fanbase"
LEGO Ideas: Am I a joke to you?
10:19 LOL The subtitles say “You’re in the gun store”!
I take the minigun sir
*LEGO* WILL NEVER FALL
I wonder if he will mention Bionicle helping Lego out of its slum in the early 2000s.
Watch Toys That Made Us on Netflix. they did an episode on Legos and they do talk about Bionicle
I remember hearing from somewhere that Bionicles wasn't as big of a success as Lego were hoping for for the money they were putting into it. That's why they killed the line a few years later with little fanfare. For me though, Bionicles was much niche!
@@dojokonojo It was a huuuuge success that just dwindled after a while, it's telling that it was the first theme other than City to last for as long as it did; a "few years" was almost a decade!
@@dojokonojo That is 100% wrong. BIONICLE and LEGO Star Wars saved the company in the early 2000's/late 90's. It's one of the most successful and important LEGO lines of all time.
@@dojokonojo I think you're thinking of the 2015 reboot. The orignal BIONICLE managed to last from 2001 all the way to 2010. That's longer than most themes even have a chance of making, and even then some behind the scenes guys say the OG ended for "average sales" and not low ones.
More expensive simpler smaller sets. Great. Remember those dragon and knight sets and large Star Wars sets? The star destroyer that originally sold for 250? Don’t have more sets like that anymore.
I used to buy the creative buckets. I hated the kits because you could only build 1 thing with them. But that's what Minecraft is for now.
Alex xeon inflation sucks
Man how can you not mention bionicle? Literally actually credited with single-handedly saving the company
The Lego Technic sets are so badass... looks like they have become highly collectable, too.
Even the small ones!
As an AFOL (Adult Fan Of Lego) I totally agree!
As a LEGO employee, I feel like you did a great job summing up LEGO. Hands down the best company to work for
I hear a lot that Bionicle was one of the themes that really helped Lego out in the early 2000’s by being an evergreen theme that lasted way longer than they were expecting, going all the way up to 2010. Don’t take that as fact, but especially in 2006 and 2001, the theme’s most popular years, I think there may be some truth to that.
2006 was the release of the Inika and Piraka series for Bionicle, and was also the big turn-around year. Coincidence? I think not.
Yeah LEGO deserves everything they have
It's sad that they lost money because of what they did in the late 90s, but I don't care, those sets were fantastic, and some of the special pieces that enhanced the sets! I wish they were still around today
Oddly enough, the early 2000s was when I had the most fun with Lego.
Well the younger you are the more fun you have. I don't play with them really I just collect as much as I can
They had a nice airport available in 2004-05. The set I wish I’d had.
luuk Pollaerts yep, that looks like the one. In my opinion, airports since haven't really measured up to that one-sure the planes got way bigger, but since 10159 the terminals have all been rather pathetic. Thanks man!
There were other issues in the fall, like different floor managers in the factories preferring different plastic suppliers and dips in general popularity (in the early 2000s only like starwars and bionicle were doing that great).
As a 90's kid who genuinely loved the theming of my childhood the 2000's were generally less good and the designs kinda stagnated. Even the basics, like Town, City and Racing weren't good at the time. The early Star Wars stuff existed, but it lacked the refinement (and price tag) that current Star Wars Lego tends to have.
I will however mention that BIONICLE was very good, though it certainly feels like its own thing and somewhat detached from standard Lego even if it's *technically* compatible if you try hard enough.
Don't forget video games played a huge part in their rise.
Yeah I agree. I think he it's completely discounting how those videogames led tol the movies and got Lego a lot of attention.
You should look at the Rise and Fall of the Friendly's restaurant chain.
To me, my interest in the brand was killed when they killed most of the features of the LEGO Website in 2017. They shut down the message boards, the LEGO Club, and the Galleries, all the places where LEGO Fans built their sense of community. The replaced them all with the LEGO Life app, but the app doesn't allow for any type of chat/commenting other than their stickers and emoji so it's impossible to really build a sense of community and brand loyalty in it like you could with the message boards, club, and galleries.
The LEGO.com games have also suffered. Back in the heyday of Flash games, LEGO.com was full of really high quality games with lots of strategy, leaderboards, incentives to keep playing them, multiplayer aspects, and often groundbreaking graphics. This built excitement for the sets, kept you involved and interacting with the brand, and spreading it to your friends. Now, the games are nearly all endless runner type games that only someone under 10 would find amusing.
The website itself is also a mess. It's split between the adult side, which is just the shop, and the kid side which is set up like a messy pegboard with no text, just images you click on and have no idea if you're going to get a video, product ad, game, comic etc. There's no organization at all.
So without an official place for LEGO fans to assemble and build community, a messy official website, and the shutting down of all the features LEGO fans knew and loved all happening in 2017, it's no wonder their sales dipped.
They did bad in 2017 because of how bad The Last Jedi did after the initial week.
Oh what a load of crap. TLJ did fantastic at the box office. The only people who have a problem with that movie are butthurt adult men who love nitpicking at incredibly minor things and/or got butthurt about Laura Dern's purple hair. I *promise* you that little kids buying Star Wars LEGO don't have the same stick up their butt and are buying Star Wars LEGO in the same quantity they've always been buying it.
Not to mention the fact that TLJ didn't come out until the end of 2017, so event if it had been that catastrophic (and it wasn't), that wouldn't have affected 2017 very much.
Matthew Chenault I love how all of you guys seem to think that their sales are somehow down because of one youtuber who makes rambling videos where he ignores the slots of empty stock and only points out the stock that’s still there.
@@zackakai5173 your forgetting if a star wars movie(s) are not received well chances are most won't buy the toys and also a good portion of toy shopping is done near end of the year for Christmas by the parents not by the kids. I'm guessing you won't see the majority of the hit in toy companies that made Star Wars toys until the 2018 figures are out as you find the toys they made for Star Wars still not selling much and then it still will be only a limited hit depending on how much of that product is made and not sold.
@@joesmith701 and the quality drop of star wars toys where any cheap ones you might buy as a kid are super cheap plastic and lack proper playability aside from the gimmics
@Matthew Chenault 1. if the supposed abhorrent quality of the film (which I maintain is a load of nonsense, the movie is just fine) was actually the reason for the poor sales, then that trend would only start *after* the release of the film, even if the toys were available several months before. And the fact that toy lines from years ago are still on sale at major retailers is an indicator that it's pretty standard practice to make more toys than will sell immediately and not down to TLJ specifically or even Star Wars as a whole.
I miss LEGOs. I want to be a kid again and experience the pure innocent thrill of creating new things, and playing with them for hours.
Rest assured, I buy a set every now and then and it's every bit as magical as it was back then. It's not too late.
Brings back many memories of putting together bionicles and reading the bionicle books and comics.
Legos are a huge part of my childhood. I was born down the road from the original '99 lego land in California a year after it opened. Man those were good times. I hope lego stays running for a long time, they really are something special and i imagine a big part of other kid's childhoods as well :)
people over 99 who play with legos watching this video: sweating nervously
I know I'm probably gonna be in a supercompilation for this, but... The bricks themselves aren't called "legos" or "a lego". They're called "lego bricks"
FINALLY someone knows how to say it.
Decline of GameStop????
HinataSoul oh cool. I hope company man sees this
Never got games there but I bought a crap ton of their used DVDs from 2006-2010 timeframe. 3 for $10.
Never got games there but I bought a crap ton of their used DVDs from 2006-2010 timeframe. 3 for $10.
I need subs done
However they do it, as long as I keep getting Ninjago episodes I'll be fine.
The wooden toys you show at the beginning of your video were the types of toys my father and his brothers played with when they were kids. Back then toys were an escape from "child-appropriate chores" like planting and hoeing the garden, picking grapes, digging potatoes, and harvesting whatever produce was ready in order to survive the Great Depression. They spent hours playing with those toys. My grandmother kept those toys as a reminder of the good times they found in the middle of very bad times. Thanks for your videos.
You should do a follow up video to this. Just checked revenue again as of late 2023 & they have been having record years. May be worth an update & talk about how Covid may or may have not affected sales.
Girl are you legos?
Cause I wanna build a relationship
ua-cam.com/video/6zXDo4dL7SU/v-deo.html
Luna Moonstar 😂😂😂😂
@Luna MoonstarAHAHAH! XD Fuckin hell!
Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahha 😂😂😂😂😂😂😂
Ofc
Lego literally helps with my depression, they better stick around, I'll miss em for sure if they do!
Bionicle: "Am I a joke to you?" 😢
Fun fact: the second Legoland was opened in Germany in 1973.
Just a few hours away from the first one!
It was sold in 76. It's still open today, just not as Legoland
Lego sales are popping off since the covid lockdowns a few years ago. They are selling more than ever before. People have more time to build them now plus they have sets for everyone. My sister loves all their plant and flower sets
lego ninjago was such an awesome show. hopefully they get greenlit for a season 10
It getting seson 11
I remember thinking in the 90's that all those specialized sets with pieces that only worked in the set were a terrible idea, and turned me off of Lego.
Glad to see that I was right, and that Lego was able to learn.
I agree. If it goes together in only one way it is a puzzle, not a creative building toy.
@@wbcc3388 Damn I never thought of it that way but you're totally right
*Do K'nex now...they were my favorite havent heard of them since I was a kid*
yea same here, great idea!
Why not Capsela? en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capsela
lol i loved building random things with my K'nex
I was a big fan of their toys. I actually preferred them over Lego. I built a jeep and a ferris wheel. They were a lot more fun to assemble.
I def agree with you guys! I was a huge fan to. Its almost like legos were cool when I was like 5-9 and then I upgraded to k'nex cause I thought you had to be more intelligent to build stuff with them cause they had so many morw building options then legos cause k'nex had small joints/elbows and big joints/elbows with multiple slots in each joint or elbow piece...and then you could build cars cause they sold wheels with actual rubber.
Look up the Harley Davidson k'nex someone made a lifesize Harley Davidson out of k'nex and it weighed a total of 50lbs
Those Lego blocs are a charm to step on barefoot when they are hidden in a shaggy rug.
Also a thing to remember is, that the patent for lego recently expired, which have made copycat companies flood the market with cheap copies.
If you want to know more, watch The Lego Story. It's a lego made 3D animated documentary that goes into a ton of detail.
2011 definitely brought a small rise for them with LEGO Ninjago largely due to the animated show that went along with it and it got even more popular at 2012 with the next season exploding in popularity. Then they made LEGO Legends of Chima in 2013 which was almost as successful as Ninjago but for some reason they didn't move along with it.
Everytime I go to a Lego section in a store, I always hear someone saying lego is too expensive. One guy went as far to say they'll have to sell both kidneys just to get one Lego set
Its true though.... Even when I worked there and could buy with a huge discount, I found that too expensive!
Company Man: Lego saved themselves by simplifying their business.
Bionicle after not being mentioned: -_-
LEGO made an animated short film detailing their history, it’s well done and definitely worth a watch
I stumbled onto this episode and it hurt.
Did you step on it?
@@veryfarawayhorse7 that, that was the joke...
7:23 honestly i think that was a great idea. look at the TT games' lego movie games, especially star wars complete saga. and i loved the now defunct mmorpg "Lego Universe".
3:13
The blue 1x8 flat plate makes me so sad. IT’S BENT SO HORRIBLY!!!
Edit: Also the bricks at 6:19 aren’t real Legos…
Not LEGO's, it's Lego, no s
When LEGO SpongeBob came into the picture in 2006, the sales went up!
I am from Denmark, and my mother and stepfather are Co-founders of "Byggepladen" right in my their back yard. I have went out and been with them, around Europe for different Lego stuff, competitions, a lot of exhibition where I have been putting up my own creations. So I do know those two words "Leg" and "Godt"
Always nice to see something about Lego from different people :-)