Which LEGO themes are WAY OVERPRICED?? The ACTUAL Cost of Licensing: Our Analysis

The price markup for LEGO themes like Disney, Star Wars, Harry Potter & more is SHOCKING

If you’re ever wondered how much of a markup we pay for LEGO licensing for themes like Disney, Harry Potter, Star Wars & More, you’ll be happy to hear we did the math and actually determined what percent increase we are paying to be able to have LEGO sets that include Mickey Mouse, Luke Skywalker, Ron Weasley, and other characters we love! This is not a perfect analysis, but it is useful and a very interesting insight into what licensing costs actually are and how they impact the price of a LEGO set.

To do this data analysis, we gathered data from Brickset.com for all LEGO sets in 2020. We only chose sets from 2020 to avoid any additional variables such as inflation, change in licensing agreements year-to-year, etc. This data contained the price, number of pieces, and theme for each LEGO set. From there, we calculated the mean, median, and the slope of the best fit line to get a range in averages (none are perfect, all are useful). The range in averages helped us interpret an actual percent markup because this analysis cannot account for number of new molds in each set, the size of pieces (4+ sets typically have larger pieces), or overall weight of the set (which is sometimes thought to be a better metric for set value), so having a range was very useful!

Next, we examined the average price per piece for LEGO’s own IP (Friends, Ninjago, City, Creator Expert, etc) to get a baseline for what LEGO sets cost without having to take IP into account. This was followed by an up-close view of Disney IP sets (Marvel, Disney D2C, Disney Princess, Star Wars) to see a range in cost for each of those themes since I assumed this would be the most expensive IP. The final plot we look as was a plot of all of the licensed LEGO sets compared to LEGO’s own IP to see how they vary.

Finally, we examine the actual percent markups in a table. This is given as a range because we used three types of averages. This is done for all of the parent companies from which LEGO uses IP including Nintendo, Disney, Dreamworks, Warner Brothers, Universal Studios, and Microsoft. The overall range in percent markups for some licensing was absolutely insane, and some of the licensed sets have just about the same cost as LEGO’s own IP.

This analysis is not perfect and there are other things we could take into account in the future, time permitting. Additional factors that could impact the price per piece of a LEGO set include new molds, number of minifigures, color of pieces, type of pieces, size of pieces, and overall weight of a LEGO set.

If you found this type of analysis useful or informative, please let us know what you thought about it in the comments below. If you have any suggestions for future analyses we could do on LEGO sets, I’d love to hear them. Thank you for watching!

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#LEGO #DataScience #Analytics
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Birthday Haul!
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Army Building:
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REVIEWS:
LEGO 2021 Modular Police Station:
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LEGO City Haul! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SBKemulhO4U&t=111s

CHAPTERS:
00:00 Intro
01:04 What is Intellectual Property?
02:03 Data, Methods, and Assumptions
03:03 Calculations (Averages)
04:13 Cost of LEGO’s own IP
09:01 Cost of Disney IP (Disney, Marvel, Star Wars)
10:37 Average Cost of Each LEGO Theme
15:30 Actual Percent Increase By Theme
19:09 Discussion/Final Thoughts