57
At the end of the day, LEGO is still a company. They do what's best for the company, not their fans. LEGO is not your best friend or big sibling who tries to make you happy and give you everything you want, they are a company who will do whatever they can to help their sales or reputation.
They discontinued the BIONICLE sets, despite the fans' protests. Why? Because BIONICLE was slipping and they wanted something new. They wanted to get their sales back up.
They changed their policy, despite the fans' protests. Why? Legal issues mostly, presumably to avoid any sort of trouble or incidents that could potentially happen in the future.
Yes, it's true that LEGO has worked with the fans many times in the past. Heck, our own admin is currently an ambassador to LEGO. There have been exclusive sets designed by fans and such, but what you have to realize is that this isn't their primary function. Their primary function is to succeed and thrive as a company, whatever it takes.
Just something to consider before acting like everything LEGO has done that you dislike is some sort of a personal attack on the fans.
Hey guys. Know what Lego, as a company, is? A business. And do you know what the point of a business is? To make money. They provide a product in order to garner sales and, thus, to make money. If a product doesn't sell well enough, it gets canned. Remember Mars Mission, or Power Miners, or any of those other Lego themes that didn't sell well and died an early death?
So a couple years back, Bionicle's sales started slipping. It had been going for nearly a decade, it had a good run, but it was losing popularity (fun fact: the members of fansites and clubs, IE most of you guys, only make up a small portion of the overall consumer base!) and making less money for Lego. It was being overtaken in sales by System lines and licensed themes. The storyline at this point had become so muddy and confused (not to mention completely reliant on past knowledge, which makes it -very- hard for a new fan to get into) and the sets weren’t selling well, so the only logical thing was to stop it. Bionicle had run its course.
And Bionicle had an ending. It finished. If they had canceled it totally out of the blue without wrapping up anything in the storyline, I could totally understand you guys’ utter nerd-rage. But the story had an end, and heck; they even gave us a final series of sets (the Stars) as a tribute to some of the line’s most endearing characters! Even the sets had an actual conclusion!
In closing, Lego isn’t your best friend who does whatever you want, they’re a company. And a company does what’s best for business, not for a minority group of buyers like yourselves.
"McCoy?"
"It's dead, Jim."
[from the edge of the forest,
towards the deep green sea]
0 members, 0 guests, 0 anonymous users
