I saw a piece on London Toy Fair that said the Call of Duty Mega Blocks had sold poorly, and they were trying to work out why.
The guys in my local Forbidden Planet said that both Transformers & Star Trek Kreo had sold poorly as well.
World of Warcraft also seemed to have sold poorly for Mega Bloks.
Dungeons & Dragons bombed for Kre-O too.
Kreons are ugly as humans. The human face print isn't very good either. I wonder if they ever did a lot of focus group research on the design.
I'd say a lot of it has to do with the Lego brand. They've had off brand Ghostbusters before but no one gave a shit, including myself as it's not Lego. There's a nostalgic charm that comes with Lego minifigs and the name that other brands can never match.
Agreed, but there is always a new wave of kids that don't have that nostalgia. This is where IP's such as Minions, Monster High, etc are very important.
LEGO brand is synonymous with quality...something I hope LEGO never forgets.
Even if the clone bricks became even better quality than Lego, I would still go with Lego...I admit I'm crazy
Naw, you're just brainwash like me. LEGO = best quality which is currently true today. Kids today won't have that if clone bricks improve enough.
It seems like the clone brands are increasing their prices to match LEGO. You used to get almost double the pieces for the same price, but now they all selling for like 10 cents a piece too. I remember Mega Bloks being much cheaper than they are now.
While the Spongebob and Minion figures are hard to put together, they feel like quality products. The quality is much higher than the other Mega Blok bricks in the set.
Hmm...I never noticed the price difference as usually buy smallest sets to get the figures and they usually are on sale or clearance.
Price increase may be because Mega Bloks seems to create millions of new moulds. OK, I exaggerate, but Mega Bloks has a lot of specialized parts and they make new minifig moulds for different IPs. Can't be too cheap.
I have yet to get Spongebob ones because they don't have their standard looks. It annoys me to no end.
Yes, the minions look good. It's a good thing there are million combinations they can do with only a few different body moulds. Cha-ching! Those $10ish sets should sell well too. I'm gonna pick some up on a good sale and definitely if they are on clearance for 50% or more.
If we're talking about off-brand block figures, I gotta throw K'nex into the ring. Their sets are entirely different now than what they were when I was a kid but IMO their figures are top notch. The Mario figures, Plants VS Zombies, even Angry Birds. They look -really- good. Hell I think the K'nex AB and PVZ figures look better than the normal action figures of them. And I have the Mario figures all scattered through my Minecraft sets since they fit so well with the blocky "8-bit" look.
Really glad they do those blind bags so I don't have to actually buy the sets to get the majority of the figures. And at least as far as Mario goes it seems that with each series they introduce at least one new character and a good balance between good guys and baddies.
I don't include K'nex because they were stupid and didn't make the minifigs LEGO compatible. I would have loved to exchange their heads, but they have "male" heads instead of the "female" LEGO heads.
Also, they need to do better distributions of their blind packs. There are literally 75% or more bombombs in the latest series after the box has been picked over.
Before Princess Peach; by
Bent Bricks, on Flickr
I have been getting their Super Mario Bros blind bag minfigs. The quality is sucky, but I can't resist the Super Mario Bro pseudo LEGO compatible minifigs.
Their Plants vs Zombie ones are decent and have nice play features on some of them.
I think this hits the nail on the head. The LEGO brand is very strong, and has very strong nostalgic value to almost everyone. They have been in the game so long and been so good at what they do, no matter how good the competition is they will never match up to the general public. Even if LEGO goes in the shitter and the clones surpass them in sets and quality, the clones will never be able to overcome the strong, nostalgic and personal connection almost everyone has with the LEGO brand.
We are LEGO sheeple.
I agree for the most part except for your worst case scenario. LEGO is not invincible.
Need I remind you of Galidor and Jack Stone?
Granted LEGO has learned its lesson, but they should not underestimate the competition.