Price per LEGO brick, function of the set's theme and license

MaffyD

Thought this might interest some people:

https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/5oh3p5/price_per_lego_brick_function_of_the_sets_theme/

Haven't had chance to look at it myself, but the main takeaway is that Star Wars doesn't have the IP tax we all think it does, apparently. Might be because it's US-centric though.

Fauch

city is the expensive theme in the US. here, it's star wars.
I still think there may be some IP tax, I dunno how much specific pieces cost to produce, but when I compare to ninjago for example, the few star wars sets I built had more basic pieces. they also had less minifigs.

madforLEGO

I just thought that City is skewed this year due to the outlandish prices of #60052 and #60097.

Fauch

if I understand well, 10% of ninjago sets are over 21c per piece. is that a mistake? I really wonder which ninjago sets can be that expensive.

CCC

That's correct, airjitzu sets are expensive on a per part basis. Some of the speedorz were almost that high too. Which is why you need to look at what the parts are, not just the number of parts.

MaffyD

Mindstorms. Those sets skew pretty expensive per piece too...

dbrouge

Food for thought: City sets with big parts like planes, helicopter, boats, probably pull the average upwards.

Fauch

what about the designers? do rehashing the police sets every year takes more time than creating a whole new theme from scratch?

catwrangler

The thing is that whatever they do with a theme, they're probably still going to focus-group it with kids, and that's all time and money...