And Lego has seen this coming for years and done a lot of amazing things to reinvent itself. They had similar problems during the 90's with knockoff products and such, and was almost bankrupt at some point.
They've introduced Lego Technic and later Mindstorm, which patented or not has no good competitors right now. Lego has a good brand name and a good product in a niche! Also, Lego Land in Denmark is awesome!
I think kids for many generations will find joy in some kind of Lego products! At least I hope so, it's the best things ever!
I disagree about the reinvention. It may just be my advancing age showing, but when I try to buy a Christmas present for my cousin it is rather annoying that the majority of the sets seem to be Star Wars or Harry Potter which to me rather defeat the point of Lego, especially since the pieces tend to be a lot more specific to the particular set than I remember from my youth.
Technic has been around for 20 years or more, since I had that back in my childhood.
I agree that overall it's a great toy and a great brand, I just think that they're going to have problems maintaining their current revenues if producing your own became practical, especially since it's not at all cheap in a store.
I just got my 11 y-o son (yet another) Lego Star Wars set for his birthday and it's amazing the things he makes. Day 1 is just building whatever Star Wars thingy the set is about.
Days 2 - infinity are taking the existing thousands of Lego blocks (that he has sorted into color-coded bins: the only organization I've ever seen him do) and building all sorts of crap out of it. So we end up with Boba Fett fighting Harry Potter on top of Hogwarts with the Indiana Jones's office addition!
And all I can do is build Indy an LED lamp for his desk.
They've introduced Lego Technic and later Mindstorm, which patented or not has no good competitors right now. Lego has a good brand name and a good product in a niche! Also, Lego Land in Denmark is awesome!
I think kids for many generations will find joy in some kind of Lego products! At least I hope so, it's the best things ever!