Is any art form quite as fraught as the toy-inspired film? Its existence is fundamentally cynical: I can sell toys, therefore I am. And yet, to achieve its true goal, the toy movie must evoke the sincerity, humor, and psychological engagement that children experience when they’re cross-legged on the floor with their dolls or construction sets. “Bratz: The Movie” came out in 2007, when Bratz dolls—like Barbies but more diverse, and styled as if by RuPaul—were at their most popular. But the film tanked, earning a nine-per-cent rating on Rotten Tomatoes. Girls loved Bratz as toys, because they could imagine that the dolls had strong, sassy personalities; as movie characters, the Bratz turned out to be shallow and mean. In a review, Tony Wong of the Toronto Star wrote, “Bratz is a disappointment because the characters come off less as the girly superheroes they should be, and more as, well, brats.” Since then, the Bratz brand has faded. The company that makes the dolls, MGA Entertainment, can hardly blame the movie for everything—among other problems, MGA has been caught up in years of legal battles with Mattel—but it certainly didn’t help.
It was not inevitable, then, that “The Lego Movie” would be good for Denmark’s Lego Group. Sean McGowan, a toy-industry analyst at the firm Needham & Company, remembers talking to Lego executives in 2013, when the movie hadn’t yet come out and few employees had seen it. The company had been growing quickly for several years—much more quickly than the toy sector as a whole—but its momentum had recently slowed. Executives were hopeful about the movie’s prospects, but also anxious. Would it poke fun at the toy? Would it be any good? “They were nervously excited and a little concerned that their hopes wouldn’t be met,” McGowan says. As he remembers it, no one expected the film to alter the brand’s fortunes in any meaningful way. “Nobody at Lego, at this time last year, was thinking, ‘We’re going to turn around what has been a slower year and really reaccelerate.’ ” On Thursday, though, it became clear that the company has done exactly that. Lego is now the world’s biggest toymaker, as judged by sales in the first half of 2014, when it reported revenues of more than two billion dollars.
Mattel, the perennial No. 1 toy company, fell to the No. 2 spot with only two billion dollars. Lego’s chief financial officer, John Goodwin, said in a press release that sales of toys related to the Lego film “provided a significant boost to our sales.” “The Lego Movie,” which was made by Warner Bros., is utterly odd. It’s about an everyman construction worker who falls in with some well-known cartoon characters and superheroes, including Batman, in their mission to defeat a tyrant named Lord Business, who wants to control the world by gluing everything together. In other words, the film has a plot that you and your eight-year-old might have conceived together. This is, perhaps, the reason for its success: it is infused with the same quirky sensibility that a child might bring to playing with Legos. As Anthony Lane noted in March, in his review of the film, there’s a rich irony in the movie’s use of anti-capitalist themes to achieve the aim of selling your kids more toys: “Needless to say, in the wake of a very funny film, the last laugh will be theirs,” Lane wrote of the toy’s makers.
(Lane also wrote about Legos for the magazine in 1998.) Indeed, Lego’s press release announcing its earnings results helpfully includes a list of movie-inspired toys. For $69.99, for example, you can buy Lord Business’s “Evil Lair,” which comes complete with a think tank, a TV studio, and an “infinity drop window.” Lego fans seem impressed. One reviewer on the Lego Web site, presumably an adult, listed seven “Pros.” No. 3: “The desk is well designed with spinning chairs.” No. 6: “It definitely has that ‘evil-lair’ feel.” (The one con: too many stickers.) The movie’s DVD release, earlier this year, could give Lego sales a further boost. This isn’t to say that Lego’s success is entirely attributable to the film; its sales have been growing rapidly for several years, with the exception of a brief slowdown last year. One reason for this, McGowan told me, is that the company has aggressively expanded into products outside of construction sets. For example, Lego now markets video games (one of which, not incidentally, stars a Lego Batman).
In November, 2013, Ted Trautman wrote about how the educational value of Legos (the construction component teaches problem-solving skills; the storytelling encouraged by Lego figures inspires creativity) also might be helping the company’s sales in regions, such as Asia, where parents value educational toys. “You have this emerging middle class—Russia, Eastern Europe, Asia,” McGowan said. “I think that’s going to be a far more important source of their growth.” He added, though, that after years of rapidly rising sales, Lego is bound to slow down at some point. That said, “The Lego Movie 2” is scheduled for release in 2017. Used & new (33) from $65.00 + $5.99 shipping Sold by GLB Toys and Fulfilled by Amazon. Lego The Lego Movie Rescue Reinforcements Construction SetDetailsLEGO Movie 70812 Creative Ambush FREE Shipping. DetailsLEGO Movie 70804 Ice Cream Machine FREE Shipping. LEGO The Movie Exclusive Set #70813 Rescue Reinforcements 18.9 x 11 x 3 inches
2.6 pounds (View shipping rates and policies) 8 years and up #195,415 in Toys & Games (See Top 100 in Toys & Games) #5,635 in Toys & Games > Building & Construction Toys > Building Sets LEGO Movie 70809 Lord Business' Evil Lair (Discontinued by manufacturer) THE LEGO® MOVIETM MetalBeard's Duel Playset w/ Two Minifigures | LEGO Movie 70802 Bad Cop's Pursuit 5 star90%4 star5%2 star5%See all verified purchase reviewsTop Customer Reviewsthis model will be fine. It is a bit challenging at firstkeeps them busy playingGreat Lego Concept, reinforcing being creative all over again!A must have For the CollectorsFive StarsFour StarsFive StarsHappy Grandma See and discover other items: lego the lego movie, lego 2016 sets BBFCInsight mild fantasy violence, very mild bad language Director(s) Phil Lord,Christopher Miller Summary Emmett, an ordinary Lego construction worker, is recruited to join the Master Builders in a quest to stop an evil tyrant from gluing the Lego universe.
Cut All known versions of this work passed uncut. BBFCinsight publication date 04/02/2014 Note: The following text may contain spoilers THE LEGO MOVIE is an animated children's film about an ordinary construction worker who must join forces with the Lego Master Builders to save his world from the evil plans of President Business.ViolenceThere are lots of fight sequences in which the good characters take on various baddies, including Lego robots and Lego skeletons. The Lego figures kick and punch at each other, while leaping around in fantastical style. Very few of the blows are clearly seen to land and all the action involves toy figures rather than humans. Occasionally the heads of the Lego figures pop off during fights, and one character's head is knocked off by a flying coin but continues to talk to his friends. Other sequences have science fiction space ships and robots shooting laser beams at others, causing explosions and crashes. No one is seen to get hurt and the fact that all the fighting involves animated toy figures means that the fantasy nature of the violence is very clear.