- cross-posted to:
- world@quokk.au
- cross-posted to:
- world@quokk.au
Lord Busniess must be happy those meddlesome master builders wont be able to build stuff now.
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We can do injection molding in the US, and probably for nearly the same price (as paid by the customer). The reason things like this are produced overseas is to maximize profit collected by the companies, and secondarily to skirt environmental laws (for even higher profits).
The tariffs are stupid, but the reason for so much of the current shit situation is naked greed and short-sighted profit chasing.
Yes in general, but it’s not really economical for Lego to stand up a manufacturing facility in every country they sell in. If their current factory produces enough parts to meet their needs it doesn’t make any sense to open new factories just to skirt tariffs. It wouldn’t be a problem in the first place if the tariffs weren’t ridiculously high. You can’t blame Lego for not wanting to saddle their customers with tariffs on something that’s free to people living in sane countries.
Lego already makes shit all over the world. Look at the back of one of the big kits and there’s a wildly long list of countries of manufacture.
They probably even make some parts here in the US.
The problem is they have tons of parts, and only one or two factories making any given part (other than really common ones maybe). They would have to duplicate each individual mold to have wholly state-side supply. That’s where it becomes impractical.
They would probably have to try to figure out what they were paying for each part from a different country of manufacture, and that would also be a nightmare.
It seems like they have 3 manufacturing regions:
https://brickhobbyist.com/where-are-lego-factories-located-with-video-tour/
Also pick a brick probably ships from a Danish warehouse, so it’s all manufactured in the EU.
I’m pretty sure that Danish shipping companies simply don’t want to deal with the new Trump bureaucracy.
The Danish postal service has stopped all shipments to the US:
We can do injection molding in the US
We “can”. But we end up with Mega Bloks, a product that adults and children alike can agree is objectively inferior to Lego.
We can do injection molding in the US
We “can”. But we end up with Mega Bloks
Hmm. Were they manufactured in the US?
kagis
It sounds like Canada and then China.
https://old.reddit.com/r/megaconstrux/comments/1diz26n/why_exactly_did_mega_bloks_fell_of_so_hard/
Mega Bloks used to be a privately owned company based in Canada. You may remember the old Call of Duty Collector sets had a set of coordinates printed below the logo on their packaging? If you entered those into Google Maps it would show you Mega’s factory or home offices in Canada.
I don’t remember exactly when, eight years ago maybe, Mattel bought out Mega Bloks/Construx. The Canada factories were closed and manufacturing relocated to China.
That bring said, I doubt that the issue is an inability to do precision molding so much as not doing so at the desired price point. As I recall, Mega Bloks aimed to be cheaper than Legos.
The reason things like this are produced overseas is to maximize profit
No the reason is that Lego is an “overseas” company. From a country with much better regulation than USA on all counts, from environmental protection to workers rights.
But apart from that Lego has a huge factory in Virginia, so there absolutely is local production in USA.
https://www.tvsyd.dk/billund/lego-bygger-endnu-en-milliardfabrik
Lego has 7 factories in:
Danmark (Billund)
Hungary
Mexico
Shanghai
China
USA
VietnamSo you could say almost 30% of their factories are in North America, and the majority of the factories with 4 out of 7 are in the “Western” world.
Edit:
Oh and production was moved overseas, but not away from USA, but on the contrary TO USA.while I fully agree with most of your entire comment, that really does not apply to lego
Can we do it at the same price as China? The few times I’ve tried to do injection molding at scales of around 3000 units, it’s been much, much cheaper to do in China.
That is true for a lot of companies, but not for Lego.
Lego is manufactured in Denmark, with a super advanced fully-automated factory. They could build new factories in the US, but then it would be far away from their engineers and based in a country with a failing economy.
Heres a presentation from the Lego engineers that automate the computer systems:
less planes/vans going around for an individual fucking lego brick? rare trump W?
Rare win? Every day he wakes up it’s a win for him (a loss for everyone else)
Every day he wakes up not in prison for treason and/or raping little kids is a win for him (again, this is a loss for everyone else)Yeah but he’s dead now.
