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Can The Hobbit Sets Be Considered a Sales Flop for LEGO?
texaspete
Member Posts: 56
Given that most of the major retailers (in the UK at least) have been discounting the new Hobbit sets by 50% (or more; Dol Guldur battle is 64% off at ASDA as I type) only 4 months after they launched, should we assume that this line has been a commercial flop?
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Comments
I think it was just lucky that the theme the big retailers decided to have a price war over was LOTR/Hobbit and look forward to the Star Wars Price Wars (hopefully) coming at the end of the year!
I think things went somewhat south after the 1st LOTR wave. That was mostly great, but the two Hobbit waves and the 2nd LOTR wave had too many 'nothing special' or even boring sets. 3 out of the 4 sets of the latest Hobbit wave are just walls for crying out loud. Of all the Hobbit sets there is only one that I'd rate as being excellent ( #79003 obviously) and about two more that I'd rate good ( #79004 and #79013 but they are still overpriced at RRP).
For me the theme has gone from must collect all (my sentiment when the first LOTR sets came out) to I'll try to pick all up at large discounts but not regretting if missing out on them for a lack of good enough sales - except for a few key sets which I'm willing to buy at only 20-30% off if needed. My enthusiasm is just gone. Not only with the LEGO sets, I didn't bother to watch the second Hobbit movie either so far.
As for The Hobbit, I wouldn't let the movies poison your love for the source material. The sets can easily compliment the book, and you can pretend the movies never happened.
The Hobbit / LOTR discounting does seem to be a price war amongst large retailers started by Smyths, who appear to have had very little stock in the first place.
I doubt if sales of the Hobbit will have any impact on a third wave of LOTR. If it was coming, it will come. If it doesn't come, it probably never was going to come. They would have already designed the sets and had new moulds for characters.
I would echo what has been said above. At retail they are not a great deal, but wait long enough for 30-50% off and they become great either for parts and collectors alike.
Same though with SW line. Great sets if they are at what should be their retail, but horrible if at their RRP.
But £60 is a bit steep. It would be good value as a £45 set.
The Barrel Escape uses some a nice colour, although a fair bit of brown. More like £30 RRP perhaps.
As said though the current Hobbit sets are pretty poor, you basically choose what you can afford then get a wall and a few figs. £20 gets you a tiny wall and 3 dull figs, £30 gets you an extra 3 figs and a bigger wall, much better value, £50 gets you some nicer figs a boat and building, maybe better at £40rrp, even at £25 though seems to take ages to sell out,lastly the biggest wall with a mini tower, at £70, bit crazy, you get the feeling they were kind of hoping people would pay to get Azog rather than pay £1,500 for one off ebay, but more like £50 RRP, feels like they were a bit greedy, weather that's LEGO or the licence terms, I don't know.
Lego have tried to follow the Films rather than following the books.
The sets have therefore failed to inspire the majority of LoTR fans who happen to be adults.
The Worst sets have been from the Hobbit Films which have concentrated on PJ's twisted vision, rather than the actual Hobbit book.
I will not mention the Goblin King set because, .... well just, because.
Beorn is somehow transported to Dol Guldur, instead of being involved in a set based around his house and his animals.
The Mirkwood Spiders set always had the problem of selling spiders......
Maybe the set should have had one more tree and one less spider?
The Woodland Elves have been transformed into Fortress elves. Why are there any Orcs there?
I can only assume Lego expect the Walls and figures to be used to create the Battle of 5 armies.
A similar reasoning must have been behind the Dol Guldur battle set.
Otherwise such A Battle of 5 Armies set would be £150 or more .....
Or somebody at Lego got their marketing research badly wrong.
We will have to wait and see.
The other thing that grinds on me with the latest sets is the suggestion in the instructions to buy multiples to combine, to me that just feels massively lazy of TLG. Sets that are designed to be adaptable and joinable modules don't need that suggest, so TLG printing it comes across as, 'actually this is only half of the set, you want the full thing give us more money!'
That said I love Bag End, I think it's a cracking set and so glad I managed to score one at 50% off. I really wish I had the money and space ro have bought a dozen to make a lego hobbiton!
Part of me wonders if TLGs strategy has been thrown off by the changes in decision to go from 2 films to 3. The mirkwood spiders and (correct me if I'm mistaken) the barrel escape sets being in the first wave but labeled as 'advanced preview' or whatever the label said seemed to match interviews with the cast that said they had expected the first film to end at the barrel escape scene, as was the plan wen only two films were on the cards. It's always hard to know exactly how much inside information the toy makers are given with things like this, some film makers can be massively secretive.
I don't think the wave has been a total flop but I think they missed the mark for the AFOLs, but I think the Black Gate/Orthanc were done for more the AFOL market, although the black gate is nowhere near as impressive as it could have been, especially next to bag end and the pirate ship.
I really do hope that Lego can come up with a third wave of LoTR sets, including
Minas Tirith with battle Trolls set, A Mumak set, and A Fell Beast/King Theoden death battle.
All of those would be great, I'd love to see at least something referencing the battle of pelanor field, even if it's just something like the Star Wars battle pack sets or the Lone Ranger cavalry set. I'd also like to see more of the ents, a set based on the ent moot would be a bit of a dream come true for me but I know it would never happen. There's a lot of stuff I'd like to see in the LOTR theme but I worry that TLG won't want to take any risks and any future sets will be attempts to make 'safe sellers' in the way of play sets that have little draw for more advanced building which a theme like LOTR really needs.
Like most of you, I went from LOTR wave 1 collect them all in multiples, to maybe I'll pick them up on clearance.
I really hope the sets in the next Hobbit wave are a big turnaround - although I think some of these retailers have really shot themselves in the foot. Why would anyone pay full price when there's the potential to get them half price (or better) by waiting four months?
The most important thing to me is that without the Hobbit films, we would never have gotten LotR sets which I love. And I ended up collecting most of the Hobbit sets anyway because I know I'd regret it later. I was just as reticent for some of the Indiana Jones sets and for some of the Space Police sets and for some of the Adventurers sets and some of the Star Wars sets and some of the Superheroes sets...
I think it's a universal truth that our gut feelings on sets tend to change once they retire.
Haven't bothered with the Hobbit sets apart from UG, just too many. I have all the LOTR sets aside from the Tower
This doesn't solve the weird elf-centric nature of the movies, nor the laws-of-physics-be-damned attitude they had. Then there's just the bad writing...Radaghast and his sled-rabbits were supposed to be leading the orcs away from the dwarves, so why'd he keep running in circles around them? Why didn't the eagles drop them a little bit closer to the mountain (or at least not on the top of the peak)? How did the dwarves, encased in broken timber at the bottom of the ravine, not get crushed into pulp when the Goblin King's corpse fell on them? What constitutes the glowing or not glowing of elvish swords besides plot convenience? Who the hell designed Orcrist and its sheath? And so on...
Also, the fact that it's a cartoony sequence with sled-racing rabbits (oh, I'm sorry, Rhosgobel rabbits), doesn't lead me to believe they were shooting for any level of predator/prey tracking realism.
I sure don't know the answer to that. I would guess they are not doing as well as they would have hoped.
If I look at it from the angle of are these sets successful with kids, who are their main audience, I've said all along that I thought they were targeting the wrong age group, since those that read the books are watch the films are much older. AFOL sales are not enough to keep a mainstream line alive.
Out of my kids, the one that has had some interest in Hobbit OR LOTR was my oldest one who has read the books. She has really only requested the sets with females, or with wigs she thought would work for females (elves).
My son has not had interest beyond really wanting Goblin King. The sad part, is that for some reason these sets really miss box appeal. My son loved playing with Helm's Deep, but it was the last set he put together from his Christmas/bday sets. It was a full month after Christmas before he even thought about building it.
I don't think the sets are bad, because my kids have enjoyed the one's that I have picked up on discount/clearance. I was looking at the display my daughter had the other day with Mines of Moria and Weathertop. It looked like a very fun play set-up.
The other issue I've seen... My daughter loved the look of Laketown, but the price was not enough for her to be willing to buy it. Even on clearance, the price was still not enough for her to buy it. The set looked nice, but obviously something was missing to cause that "I must get it" factor.
All 50% or better. Like mentioned above, dol guldur for £25!!! Happy days.
My boy is 5 (6 when he gets them for xmas) and i know he will love them. And I'm happy to be able to get such a quantity for a few hundred quid. For us afol these sets are a bunch of walls and crappy baddies but for the kids... its some awesome walls and some ugly baddies to battle.
I'm also taking a punt on selling a set too see if I can make a bob or two:)
I think the marketing and retail strategy fell short and allowed some early sale prices with some big players in uk retailing. Lego always bounces back. Even the "flops" I bet this is the taster wave ready for the big guns in hobbit 3. It's economics 101... flood the market, get them hooked, increase the demand and hike up the price! Haha gold plated Smaug inbound!!
I agree that a lot the Hobbit sets were kind of lackluster, but I honestly feel that way about a lot of the super hero sets as well - especially MoS and Ironman 3. So I doubt the unsatisfying builds is what keeps them on the shelves bc other themes don't seem to be impacted by minifigure driven sets. It ultimately comes down to the content as a whole and I just don't think that today's 9 year old boys find Bilbo nearly as exciting as they do Ironman, Batman, spiderman, the avengers, etc.
The hobbit sets probably *do* appeal to the target audience, but not just as much as everything else does. So they sit. It takes clearance tags to move the fourth and fifth best.
Around here the stores (except for TRU) are mostly sold out. Wargs for example sat for a ridiculously long time (I bought at 50% off), but Laketown sold pretty quickly, I bought one at $30 thanks to a discount for a dinged box.
I know they say the economy is improving but seeing that the unemployment rate really has not improved I would say expect more crazy deals around the holidays.
As long as any of the sets you are looking for have not been out a while, in which case you have to roll the dice that they will be produced through then but I'm guessing most of the newer Hobbit sets will be around for the holidays.
Now, with that said, I made sure to reread The Hobbit before seeing any of the movies, and I was surprised to notice some odd things in the books. Specifically, how Gandalf would disappear immediately prior to any real danger only to conveniently reappear either after the danger had passed or in the midst of it to save the day. I can fully understand why Peter Jackson put bits of "Gandalf's Adventures in Dol-Guldur" into the movie to make these disappearances feel more meaningful to filmgoers, rather than a contrived means of removing Gandalf from the picture at the moments when he was needed most.
As for other changes, like the decision to put so much emphasis on the elves and orcs/goblins, including the creation of characters that did not exist in the book? I agree, these reduce the accuracy of the source material. I think a big part of this is to help the Hobbit, as a film series, live up to the expectations people have of the film franchise after The Lord of the Rings. In the latter, the story frequently switched between multiple parties when they were separated by various circumstances — a trait shared by the books. The Hobbit, on the other hand, is told squarely from Bilbo's perspective, and few members of the dwarven party get separated from him for very long (and when they do, not much happens that affects the events of the story). But by putting a spotlight on other characters whose path only intersects with Bilbo's on a few occasions, it gives the illusion that the story shares The Lord of the Rings' many independent storylines, when it's really much more of a children's adventure story.
In any case, the first movie managed to lay to rest one of my biggest worries about the film adaptations: the idea that the songs would be cut for being too silly and childish. Sadly the second film didn't fare as well. Bilbo's spider song got cut, and probably others (I forget if there was supposed to be a song in the barrel scene). I wonder if those were filmed and then cut or if Peter Jackson felt from the beginning that they conflicted with the narrative tone too much to fit in.
I honestly don't think that book accuracy vs. film accuracy is likely to have much impact on sales of the sets. Obviously the designers want the sets to appeal to AFOLs and TFOLs, but at the same time, they are definitely not targeting the theme squarely at that audience. If they were I doubt there would be nearly as many sets in the theme as there are. KFOLs are still a big part of the theme's intended audience. And even as a kid who considered himself a lover of the Middle-Earth stories (as the bookshelf in my bedroom still attests), I hardly noticed most of the differences between the book and film versions of The Lord of the Rings in my childhood, and the film versions stuck in my memory a lot better. I don't think the average KFOL who goes to see the Hobbit movies will think much differently.
This time around I don't see that desire quite as much for whatever reason and have been slower to collect the second wave. I assume the sluggishness will only increase come a third wave.
For example,
Smaug - I'll get the set
Galadriel - I'll get the set
Many of the main characters would just be duplicates and not a draw but I guess they need to be in there for purchases made by people that have not already bought into waves 1 and 2. I'm not that bothered by different shirt versions of Thorin for example - although I do have them, but wouldn't have if it wasn't for the other characters in Lake Town.
79015 - Dol Guldur, a small rock
79016 - Lake Town, including Bain minifig
70917 - Battle of the Five Armies
79018 - Erebor (the mountain), including Smaug
79015 - I really don't want to see another Dol Guldur set but if it's just going to be a piddly nothing set then no big loss.
79016 - I suppose more lake town buildings could work well with the Lake town chase set to make a nice display, if its anything like the book - and considering what they were setting up for in the second film I assume this set would have Bard at the bow.
70917 - as I said in last post I can't imagine what that'll look like but could be interesting
79018 - I don't see how they could possibly not do an Erebor set considering it's the focus for the whole story, but you never know.
I'm very curious to see how the film deals with the battle of five armies, those who have read the book will know that in the book you don't get the battle first hand but an account afterwards and I really enjoyed that because of how it related to the characters involved (particularly Bilbo) but I don't think that would work in a film and I'd imagine that PJ would want to make Bilbo into more of a hero - i'm sticking with that assumption so that if the film is faithful to the book at that point I can be pleasantly surprised!
I think LotR (and by implication, the Hobbit, which kinda tries to 'be' LotR in many ways, thanks to PJ) doesn't lend itself well to being Lego sets. Whereas Star Wars is about vehicles, characters and fights (especially duels, but also bigger fights which can be easily scaled down) and Harry Potter was mostly about the characters and individual adventures which could easily be scaled down (to pick two massively popular licensed themes), LotR is about a few key characters, an incredibly long and detailed meta-narrative (harder to pick out individual 'adventures' for sets than it is for HP), amazing scenery and locations (particularly due to PJ's movies), and epically HUGE battles.
Unfortunately, none of those scale so well into Lego sets. I think that's the reason why there were so many of the fight-happening-next-to-small-wall-pieces sets happened. You can't scale Minas Tirith/Moria/Helm's Deep/The Black Gate into small £20-£40 sets. They could only pick one of those to make into a huge £100+ set (Helm's Deep, and later, Isengard). I thought Weathertop was a great representation of a movie scene, but because of it's nature as a building/scenery with an entire brick-built hill, it was also really expensive.
This also explains the splitting up of important characters and the variants madness (which to a certain extent, didn't happen). The characters are a much more important element in the movies compared to HP and SW, and they come naturally in groups (the Fellowship, the Company of Thorin, etc). As such, they had to be split up in order to sell slightly lack-lustre sets by "gotta collect 'em all" factor alone. The variant madness was something I was kinda predicting, but didn't happen - ie, I was expecting to have Aragorn (Ranger), Aragorn, (Final Battle version), Aragorn (Shiny armour version), Aragorn (with ripped clothes after falling off a cliff into a river and being rescued by a horse version), etc, etc.
That said, Lego LotR as a video game was possibly one of the best of that series so far (compared to the original SW games, Indiana Jones, HP, etc). Apparently, an epic book and movie can lead to an epic video game, but not necessarily epic Lego sets.
as for your theory I can see what you are driving at but for the most part I disagree. I really liked the Riddle for the Ring set as a small hobbit set, and the mirkwood spiders set wasn't bad as a play focus set for the price range, so it is doable within the hobbit theme but i think the weakness in this second wave is more in the weakness of the film split - having had two sets that should have been second wave in the first wave scuppered things a bit and i think thats why second wave was a little lack lustre.
I can see why vehicle based licences work well for Lego but frankly I hate mass vehicle themes. I think it's the biggest weakness of the DC superheroes theme, by relying on the vehicle which i admit the high play value in, they skip chances at iconic buildings/settings...Again i get the playability argument for vehicles but Lego is first and foremost a construction toy and look at how well some of the Firestation, police station etc sets sell in the City theme, i think that actually clever designs based on iconic scenes and settings is the key to licence themes.
Galadriel and Witch King are meant to be in Hobbit 5, based on reports from various toy fairs.