Do you love playing with LEGO but don’t know why there is a huge price difference between LEGO and similar brands? LEGO is quite expensive and one of the most popular toys all the time globally.
The higher price tags of LEGO come from a higher quality product, which means good material is used during the manufacturing process, and the precision of the blocks is higher. The modular designs of LEGO last longer and require a premium to charge.
I was also confused about the higher prices of LEGO, so I decided to find a good answer to this puzzling question. Since I didn’t find any article answering this question in detail, I decided to solve this mystery by myself. This article will reveal some facts that will highlight why LEGO’s upfront cost is so high.
LEGO’s high-end quality products and top-quality materials demand to set its prices higher. Certain aspects of LEGO drive its upfront cost higher than other similar brands.
Table of Contents
Attention To Detail
The precise engineering work of LEGO and attention to detail demand a premium to charge. Each mold of LEGO is accurate and precise within 0.004 mm, which is 10x thinner than a human hair! The accuracy level is so high. In fact, the manufacturers of LEGO say that they have a checklist of 20 points to ensure the accuracy and quality of all LEGO bricks.
LEGO sets are so reliable and worth buying. LEGO can replace that one piece if a piece breaks from your set and saves you from purchasing the complete set again.
Higher-Quality Material
The plastic used for LEGO is of higher quality than its competitors, which ultimately reflects the higher prices of LEGO sets. Thermoplastic, famous for its durability and strength, is used to manufacture LEGO sets. The LEGO molds are made of top-quality plastic, which can endure multiple assembling and disassembling without losing their functionalities.
Acrylonitrile Butadiene Styrene (ABS) is a strong and durable plastic used to create standard LEGO bricks. The machines used to manufacture these LEGO bricks have a tolerance of 0.01m which ensures the best fit and stable connection between two bricks.
LEGO Company performs a lot of research before using any material in the manufacturing process. The company’s annual report says they spend over $138 million per year on research and development, forcing them to set higher rates for LEGO sets.
Safe And Secure Toys
LEGO doesn’t compromise on the safety of the toys and aims to make their toys as safe as possible. Since LEGO toys are used mainly by children, it is crucial to make them safer to play with. They use various testing during and after the manufacturing process to ensure that the products are as safe as possible.
All these testing procedures can raise the company’s budget to a higher number, increasing LEGO sets’ overall upfront prices.
Expensive LEGO Molds
LEGO uses expensive molds to ensure connected bricks’ higher precision and accuracy. For example, if you try to fit an old LEGO brick with the one you recently bought, they will fit in without any problem. That seems an extraordinary feat of LEGO sets! Even LEGO offers more exciting perks than this compared with other similar brands.
The LEGO pieces are designed to be precise and strong enough that their structure doesn’t crumble at a minimum touch when joined together. Apart from testing, quality control, and designing, LEGO aims to produce molds that can be that precise, and obviously, all this comes at a cost.
Maintaining the precision and accuracy of bricks is extremely expensive, which ultimately drives up the cost of a LEGO setup.
Modular LEGO Designs
LEGO puts immense attention on its modular designs, making it more interesting and a cool toy to play with. Modular designs mean LEGO uses similar pieces and materials to design completely different structures.
Using the same pieces for different structures lowers the efficiency of the material for that specific material. It adds more complexity to designing and building a structure, which increases the overall production cost.
The Durability Of The Products
LEGO uses 12 different durable plastic materials to design its sets and bricks. LEGO Technic is pretty sturdy, even if it can last anywhere from 100 to 1300 years in the marine environment. The price tag of LEGO may be high, but it comes with an array of remarkable durable features. If you buy a LEGO set for your children, it will still be playable for their grandchildren and grandchildren’s kids!
This type of durability requires a lot of effort and expensive materials, which affect the overall purchasing price of LEGO.
Size Of LEGO Sets
The size and number of pieces in a LEGO set influence its upfront price tag. LEGO Architecture, LEGO Star Wars, LEGO Taj Mahal, and other LEGO themes consist of thousands of pieces and cost in higher numbers. Below are just a few examples of the larger sets.
| SET | NUMBER OF PIECES | RETAIL PRICE |
|---|---|---|
| LEGO Art World Map (31203) | 11,695 | $249.99 |
| LEGO Creator Expert Colosseum (10276) | 9,036 | $549.99 |
| LEGO Star Wars Millennium Falcon (75192) | 7,541 | $799.99 |
| LEGO Star Wars AT-AT (75313) | 6,785 | $799.99 |
| LEGO Harry Potter Hogwarts Castle (71043) | 6,020 | $399.99 |
| LEGO Creator Expert Real Madrid – Santiago Bernabeu Stadium (10299) | 5,876 | $349.99 |
| LEGO Harry Potter Diagon Alley (75978) | 5,544 | $399.99 |
| LEGO Creator Expert Camp Nou – FC Barcelona (10284) | 5,509 | $349.99 |
| LEGO Harry Potter Hogwarts Crests (31201) | 4,249 | $119.99 |
| LEGO Batman Jim Lee Batman Collection (31205) | 4,167 | $119.99 |
| LEGO Art Project – Create Together (21226) | 4,138 | $119.99 |
| LEGO Disney Castle (71040) | 4,080 | $349.99 |
| LEGO Creator Expert Assembly Square (10255) | 4,002 | $279.99 |
| LEGO Ideas Home Alone (21330) | 3,955 | $249.99 |
| LEGO Creator Expert Old Trafford – Manchester United (10272) | 3,898 | $299.99 |
Licensing Fees
LEGO is a famous company and collaborates with the world’s famous brands such as Marvel, Harry Potter, Star Wars, Toy Story, Indian Jones, and Winnie the Pooh, which means higher licensing fees. LEGO will spend approximately $500 million on “license and royalty expenses” in 2020. They don’t keep these costs themselves; they pass them on to consumers. These licensing fees increase the overall company’s budget. As a result, customers have to purchase LEGO sets at higher prices.
Final Thought
I’ve tried my level best to solve the mystery of why is LEGO so expensive! With all the reasons mentioned above, we would say that the initial investment in LEGO is high, but when you look at where the money goes, it’s worth it.
LEGO aims to provide the long-lasting, high-quality, and modular designs of LEGO sets which increase the overall cost of the manufacturing process and ultimately drive up the upfront price of LEGO.
