Once 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.
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.