Current Events > When did LEGO become outrageously expensive?

(+) Yeah! (+)

Looking at Harry Potter sets and they're all like $100+. And they're the sets with missing parts and no instructions

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The price of toy plastic has gone up in recent years iirc. There's some kind of shortage.

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late 80s.

it just seems worse now because the sets are a lot bigger than they used to be.

the licensing also drives up the prices, but not by as much as people want to think.

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the sets have been expensive for a while. being an 80s kid we rarely got those and mostly had just the regular blocks.

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When they focused mainly on highly demanded licensed tentpole properties than original creations.

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I knew they were always a but pricey, but they can't have been that expensive if my parents could afford me all the legos I had as a kid and this was throughout the 90s.

Speaking of, my company did some work for these wealthy people and they had TONS of Legos for their kids. I looked up only some of the kits and I'd bet they had over $10,000 worth of lego sets.

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Southernfatman posted...

I knew they were always a but pricey, but they can't have been that expensive if my parents could afford me all the legos I had as a kid and this was throughout the 90s.

the price of "a lego set" has absolutely gone up on average. but not because the price of "a lego brick" has gone up by all that much or because there's a movie logo on the box. they're more expensive because the average number of bricks per set has gone up, and the number of bricks in the largest sets has gone waaaaay up.

that doesn't mean the smaller, cheaper sets don't still exist. they're just not the "default" thought when people think about lego anymore.

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My gut feeling is also that the average piece size today is much smaller than in 1990. Lots more small connecting bits, fewer big blocks on average.

They've been that way for decades, but the licensed ones are the most expensive presumably because it costs them a lot to get those licenses

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I remember my mom saying, "wow, this is the price of a new video game" in regards to one of the smaller ones I got, so it's been that way for awhile.

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Who here has joined the Lego Club back in the day?
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Til you find out lego sells mystery character packs for 6 bucks.

1 CHARACTER!!

Theres some cheap 15-20 lego sets that bring 2 or 3 plus the building pieces.

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Medussa posted...

late 80s.

it just seems worse now because the sets are a lot bigger than they used to be.

the licensing also drives up the prices, but not by as much as people want to think.

Yeah, it's been nuts for at least 30 years.

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The Star Wars license increased prices, which opened up a new world of licensed stuff, which meant larger models as well.

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licensed stuff is probably even worse. But they've always been a lot. It's just that it used to be our parents paying instead

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Medussa posted...

late 80s.

it just seems worse now because the sets are a lot bigger than they used to be.

the licensing also drives up the prices, but not by as much as people want to think.

And also because "you" are the one buying them now and not just having them magicallybpoof into existence from your parents as a kid.
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They've been that way for a long time, unfortunately.

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Lego has been expensive for a long time. Those Christmas sets are like $300. Actually I remember my parents not being able to afford the pirate ships back in the 80s.

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Jagr_68 posted...

When they focused mainly on highly demanded licensed tentpole properties than original creations.

This. I admit that I loved the early Star Wars sets, but it quickly became apparent that the licensed stuff was going to cause problems.

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