[potatototoo99]

Yes, they have kept up with inflation, and that is the problem. Manufactured goods like Lego bricks should fall in price through innovation in processes, scale, etc. What does raise higher than the average inflation should be be labor-intensive products/services. In other words, it feels much stranger today how expensive Legos are compared to 47 years ago.

[atomicnumber3]

Lego is branding, curation and quality bar, though. They're the Apple of bricks (weird sentence).

There's tons of lego-knockoffs and of not even such lesser quality that the difference can be perceived by casual inspection. The set-to-set quality bar is really where it is, especially among their set lines not targeted at children or low-end of market.

But none of those sets have any kind of staying power. There's Expert/Creator/Modular sets from 20 years ago that sell for $500-1000 _opened and pre-built/re-disassembled_. That's all brand power.

So they're less about $/brick (though i know people scrutinize it) and more about price point and brand. Phrased differently, having your brick company race to the bottom sounds like a losing strategy.

[AdamN]

Yeah I don't know what this person is on about. Lego is obviously premium and ... charges premium prices because ... they're a business. People (consumers) who want premium products ... pay the premium.

I would be much more frustrated if they became cheaper and reduced the quality of the product.

[pibaker]

There is a prevalent view of economy that insists businesses sell their products at the minimum price they can still make a profit at (but not lower or you are dumping.) A Marxist view of economy, if I must.

Whenever I meet one of these people, I ask if they are willing to negotiate a wage reduction with his HR. My logic is simple. If you think it is wrong for a business to sell a product at the maximum price they can demonstrably get away with like Lego does, then why is it right for you, a professional worker selling your labor, to sell your labor at a price higher than what is necessary for subsistence?

[Viliam1234]

> There is a prevalent view of economy that insists businesses sell their products at the minimum price they can still make a profit at [...] A Marxist view of economy, if I must.

That's actually how competition is supposed to work in capitalism. If you sell your products at much higher than the minimum price, someone else can make a profit by selling slightly cheaper and taking over your market share.

[abustamam]

That's contingent on the competition offering a similar experience and quality, at a smaller price point. As a parent comment pointed out, no LEGO knockoff has been able to provide the same experience as LEGO.

I think what the commenter is getting at is that it's not even about competition. People get mad when companies charge more than is necessary to make what they deem a reasonable profit.

Of course, as you mention, in capitalism, a competitor is free to go in and undercut the leading brand, but they have to be able to sell why they're better AND cheaper.

[AdamN]

Interestingly that's one of the Marxist critiques. The market simply is not efficient enough to work fully. The effort to get Lego2 off the ground is simply too high and Lego gets an effective monopoly in their market segment (premium blocks).

If Lego was nationalized then the excess earnings that go into the owners' pockets as dividends or asset value would be realized by the people. But that of course leads to different inefficiencies (investors don't invest, etc...).

[zeratax]

imo it's not just that other brands are of similar quality but often of way higher quality than lego. you get so much more for less money from other brands, while lego sets are becoming kind of a joke. using stickers everywhere and randomly colored bricks on the internal sides of the set

[sixo]

Prices are constrained by demand moreso than by cost of production. Lego pieces are expensive because they can be, they still sell, and this is largely due to the quality. As long as the quality moat persists, they can charge as much as people will pay, and--good for them!

That you personally would prefer lower prices does not mean they "should" be lower. Those lower costs of production, to Lego company, "should" mean higher profits, not lower prices, and again--good for them!

[mcphage]

> As long as the quality moat persists

The risk Lego faces is that they don't actually have a quality moat any longer. You can get non-lego sets with no stickers, plenty of prints, LED lighting, at a cheaper price, and with the exact same piece quality. I purchased this set: https://www.lumibricks.com/collections/steampunk-world/produ... over Christmas, and I paid $105 because it was on sale. The pieces were indistinguishable from Lego in quality, and the lights and lack of stickers was a quality increase from what Lego offers.

What moat Lego has is: brand recognition and licenses. Which aren't nothing, but don't offer much protection.

[abustamam]

Not disagreeing with you, but at least when I hear "lego knockoff" I think of the shitty ones, because I've never seen a Lego knockoff that wasn't shitty.

Lumibricks seems like a promising brand, but I've never heard of them, possibly because they don't spend as much on marketing as lego. And if they did spend more in order to compete with Lego, they might need to increase price!

[mcphage]

> but I've never heard of them, possibly because they don't spend as much on marketing as lego

It’s a newer brand—they changed their name to it some time last year. But they seemed to spend a lot on advertising last Christmas—at least on YouTube, it seemed like tons of reviewers were talking about their sets. That’s how I found out about them, at any rate. And I’ll say—the one I got came together nicely, and looks great. The tons of lights are just, really neat.

> when I hear "lego knockoff" I think of the shitty ones, because I've never seen a Lego knockoff that wasn't shitty.

The cheap-o ones you get like at the dollar store, absolutely. But Chinese manufacturers have been making good quality knockoffs for a while. A decade at least? I bought my first knock-off technic set around 10 years ago, and it was 90% the quality of Lego at 25% the price. But the quality has only gotten better since, and is now totally on par with Lego. Admittedly, the price has gone up, too.

[abustamam]

Interesting. Gotta check those out! Not that my family needs more LEGO... The remains of our Millennium Falcon after my nieces came over glare at me everytime I look at a new LEGO set.

[mcphage]

I don't want to sound like a shill, because I don't know them at all, and I still spend enough money on actual Lego. But I am really happy with it. Pieces were great, quality was great, I love the lights, I hate Lego's stickers. And the piece count was 2x or 2.5x what I'd get from Lego at the same price. And I love steampunk, and Lego doesn't have a steampunk line. I'll absolutely buy more from them, so (for me at least) their big Youtuber push last year worked.

[sixo]

A reputation moat is still a moat. It seems to me that Lego prices will drop as soon as they are forced to by competition, and not before, and this is fine.

[mcphage]

> A reputation moat is still a moat.

It is, absolutely, but it’s a lot more shallow a moat than having a product quality moat.

> Lego prices will drop as soon as they are forced to by competition, and not before, and this is fine.

I agree, they’ll survive quite well. But the large profit margin they’ve grown accustomed to might disappear, and that probably doesn’t bode well for their management.

And heck, maybe they’ll stop shipping stickers on expensive sets, too. That would be nice.

[mmustapic]

What you mention is true, but Lego sets are (almost always) very well designed, specially the ones for kids.

[alpaca128]

I've seen enough reviews of recent Lego sets to doubt this. Sets with a brick or two where the color is off, sets where the final model falls apart if you look at it wrong, and when there's fan designed alternatives which are more solid and better looking it's clear it wasn't a physical limitation.

Not to mention sets that indeed just feel like a ripoff, like the pyramid of giza which costs $130 and is actually just half of a pyramid, but the backside of the model has slots that let you connect it with another half if you buy two of them. And they even admit in the marketing it's an incomplete product with "Complete the pyramid - This model comes with clear instructions and can be connected to a second model (sold separately) to create a full pyramid", of course only visible after scrolling or looking at more product pictures.

[mcphage]

They are. I should have added that Lego’s designers are a bit better still. You can get botanical sets from a lot of manufacturers, but the Lego ones are just nicer.

[mytailorisrich]

Anything that has only kept up with inflation over the last 50 years is cheaper today than it was 50 years ago relative to people's incomes, which is the relevant definition of "cheaper".

Not sure exactly how Lego prices have evolved but, as others have said, Lego is a brand and is unique. Their sale prices have little to do with their costs.

[autoexec]

For most people anything that has only kept up with inflation over the last 50 years is more expense today than it was 50 years ago because wages have stagnated while prices have soared.

[mytailorisrich]

No, that's not the case.

For instance, the median household income in the United States in 1976 was $12,686. That's $72,857.55 today based on inflation (Google/Census Bureau Data + online inflation calculator).

However, Google's AI overview says "As of early 2026, the median household income in the United States is estimated to be approximately $84,000."

So the the median household income in the US today is about $11,000 ahead of inflation since 1976. People in the US are richer now that they were then.

[autoexec]

> in real terms average hourly earnings peaked more than 45 years ago: The $4.03-an-hour rate recorded in January 1973 had the same purchasing power that $23.68 would today. (https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2018/08/07/for-most-...)

[s1artibartfast]

The key terms in this discussion are disposable income and discretionary income.

Housing share if income has outpaced inflation, as have many other categories.

You can simultaneously make more and have less if your income doubles but rent goes from 25% to 50%

[abustamam]

I remember reading in a personal finance book, it's not about what you earn, it's about what you keep. I think the concept applies here too, even if the context is slightly different.

[galaxyLogic]

Ok, but, what about median household size? Shouldn't we calculate the "richness" based not on how much each household makes but how much each member of a household gets from it? My guess is that households are smaller these days, but don't know.

[mytailorisrich]

Well if today's households are smaller that makes them even richer (more money split over fewer people).

[rfrey]

Now what about the change in the number of earners per household? Houses don't earn wages, people do.

[abustamam]

I'd be curious to know if in '76, most households were dual income or single. My intuition is that many families could afford to have a parent stay at home with the kids back then.

Additionally, let's not ignore the fact that housing appears to have gotten more expensive disproportionately to income rising. And if two parents are working they often have to pay $1000+ for daycare

[mytailorisrich]

Most replies don't like my comment because it hurts the narrative that people want to believe even after I quoted hard data. Especially since the 70s in the US were rife with economic and social issues. Very interesting how the mind works.

[abustamam]

I wouldn't say people didn't like your comment. You don't seem to have been downvoted as far as I can tell. You did cite hard data but multiple other commenters explained why the data you provided doesn't tell the whole story. Just because people disagree with you doesn't mean they don't like your comment. They're just trying to understand more.