The Internet is ablaze with the news that an official Doctor Who Lego set will materialise this year. Hurrah, right? Maybe not.
I’ll go with the Radio Times version of the story, although it really is all over every other site in existence right now. Or perhaps that’s how it seems to me. The BBC and the Lego company have come to terms on the Doctor Who licence, and a Lego Doctor Who set will be produced and released at some point this year, based on a design from fan Andrew Clark.
At first I was excited, because I’m nothing if not a rabid Doctor Who fan. For entirely unrelated reasons, I’ve never much liked the term “Whovian”, and I can’t entirely explain why, but that’s neither here nor there. It’s undeniably cool news for Andrew Clark — well done, that man.
The problem, though, is that the Doctor Who set isn’t the result of a licensing deal that’ll see Lego produce Doctor Who Lego en masse. Instead, it’s been produced as a Lego Ideas set. Lego Ideas is a setup where fans can suggest Lego set products based on any kind of IP they’d care to name, and, presuming they get enough support, Lego will investigate whether or not they’re viable products. Or, in other words, how much they’d cost to produce, and especially how much the licence would cost to pick up. Clearly, that bar’s been reached for Doctor Who, and it’s not hard to see why.
The issue here is that Lego Ideas sets are, even within the relatively rarefied pricing structure of Lego, never inexpensive. Because they’re ad-hoc sets produced with a specific licence, there’s more money to recoup, and this typically means smaller sets with higher price points. The Ur example here would have to be the Lego Minecraft sets. They’re undeniably cool, but for the amount of Lego you get for your money, they’re not spectacularly great value. It’s also a single set at this point in time, and it’s more than likely that Lego will keep it that way to drive up desirability.
I would, it’s fair to say, be more excited if Lego announced it had picked up the Doctor Who licence by itself for delivery in a variety of sets, the way it’s done with (for example) The Lord Of The Rings and The Hobbit. That would deliver Lego at a better price, but also with a lot more set variety. Given the more than fifty years of Doctor Who history to mine, you could create some great sets, whether you want New Who Silence figures, or perhaps classic Who black and white figures. But that’s not what’s happened.
There’s also the fact that there’s already been Lego-compatible Doctor Who sets at a more affordable price point, via Character Building. No, they’re not “official” Lego, and they’re obviously so, with slightly cheaper plastic builds than “real” Lego.
The thing is, the Character Building sets had both affordability — which is to say they could be the province of just about anybody, not just someone who could spend $70-$100 on a single small Lego set (I’m guessing here, but I’m probably not that far off the mark) — and a rather wide range of available figures.
Lego, on the other hand, is committing to a single set with a single diorama design. It’s cute, and I’m sure they’ll sell quite a few, but it’s not flawless for the Doctor Who fan. It’s incredibly sensible marketing for Lego, of course. They’ve outsourced the design work entirely while washing their hands of any IP infringement issues in that case, built up a market that’ll buy Lego bricks that are even more expensive than regular Lego bricks, or the many clones that have popped up since Lego’s last set of patents expired, and in doing so practically guaranteed rivers of cash flowing into their headquarters on an ongoing basis.
Which doesn’t mean I won’t buy a set per se. I’m an adult, and if my discretionary income is suitable at the time, freelancing not being the most regular-income job there is, I may buy myself a set as a treat. At the same time, though, there’s part of me that regrets it’ll be out of the price range of kids, and that Lego’s shifted towards this rather inflexible “this is what you build” style of development, rather than genuinely creative play.
Source: Radio Times