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LEGO: thank you for your packaging, a tale of two brands

Posted: Mon Mar 05, 2012 12:24 am
by Bruce N H
Hey all,

For his birthday we got my son two main gifts, 8487, Flo's V8 Cafe:
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and this big Playmobil castle:
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Both sets from well respected toy companies, both sets with lots of little pieces in plastic bags, both sets with multi-page instructions for dad (at this point my son is really too young for the age range on the box, but he plays with my System LEGO already anyway). The difference is this. When I opened the LEGO set, the instructions told me to go to bag one. I opened it up and there were all of the pieces for the first few pages of the instructions, some of which were further subdivided into smaller bags, which gave me three of the Cars characters. Then bag two gave me the other three characters. Then bags three and four gave me the parts of the building.
Now turn to the Playmo set. I open the box to find a ton of small bags, and let me tell you that there was no apparent organization to their contents. Parts of the figures, their accessories, pieces of the castle, etc, were all in the same bags. To complete the first two pages of the instructions I had to open a bunch of different bags. It was pretty frustrating (not to mention having two small children excited and trying to 'help').
Oh, one other thing. The Playmo instructions had a few places where they were showing how to put a black part onto another black part. I've got good eyesight and was in a well-lit room, and it was still really hard to see what they were trying to show.
Anyway, thank you, LEGO, for putting thought into how you package things. It's one thing when I'm buying for myself, because I pretty much just want the pieces and am largely unconcerned with the official design, but when I've got a three year old who's excited to be playing with his Lightning McQueen, it's really helpful that building the set is not a complete scavenger hunt.

Bruce

Re: LEGO: thank you for your packaging, a tale of two brands

Posted: Mon Mar 05, 2012 12:45 am
by lord_of_orks
really Bruce....playmobil :raiseone:

Re: LEGO: thank you for your packaging, a tale of two brands

Posted: Mon Mar 05, 2012 1:21 pm
by mencot
Yea I thought too, whut playmobile.(When I was I kid i hated playmobile SO much :D) But great to see a comparison between these two brands

Re: LEGO: thank you for your packaging, a tale of two brands

Posted: Mon Mar 05, 2012 10:59 pm
by Medieval Guy
The quality of the packaging depends on the set, but from your description I'd say the worst Lego packaging may be better than the Playmobile.

Re: LEGO: thank you for your packaging, a tale of two brands

Posted: Tue Mar 06, 2012 2:33 am
by OverLoad
Medieval Guy wrote:The quality of the packaging depends on the set, but from your description I'd say the worst Lego packaging may be better than the Playmobile.
Being that I buy sets just for the parts and minifigures, I probably do not have the highest of standards when buying sets. But IMO, I've never had a LEGO set that was packaged badly. I mean, i've had the occasional folded instruction booklet (again, something I wouldn't need, but still) and maybe a dent in a corner, but LEGO packaging has always seemed top-notch packaging.

Now, misprints on pieces are something I can get behind and complain about (pink Lion Knights of 2010, anybody?). :lol:

Re: LEGO: thank you for your packaging, a tale of two brands

Posted: Tue Mar 06, 2012 9:42 am
by andhe
If Playmobil could learn by taking a leaf from Lego's (instruction) book, perhaps Lego could take a leaf from Playmobil's (design) book and give us those themes we've been craving!! (Romans, egyptians, to be honest the Playmobil design team has gone crazy in the last few years. When I was a kid it seemed to be just modern day or cowboys).

Re: LEGO: thank you for your packaging, a tale of two brands

Posted: Wed Mar 07, 2012 12:42 am
by Medieval Guy
OverLoad wrote: Being that I buy sets just for the parts and minifigures, I probably do not have the highest of standards when buying sets. But IMO, I've never had a LEGO set that was packaged badly. I mean, i've had the occasional folded instruction booklet (again, something I wouldn't need, but still) and maybe a dent in a corner, but LEGO packaging has always seemed top-notch packaging.

Now, misprints on pieces are something I can get behind and complain about (pink Lion Knights of 2010, anybody?). :lol:
I dunno, MMV's packaging seemed pretty silly to me. The way it was organized was based on piece size, which would've been fine, but there were several bags for each size group. The minifigs were spread throughout most of the bags too. They could've done much better.

Re: LEGO: thank you for your packaging, a tale of two brands

Posted: Thu Mar 08, 2012 9:54 pm
by Merlin of Lego
Medieval Guy wrote:
OverLoad wrote: Being that I buy sets just for the parts and minifigures, I probably do not have the highest of standards when buying sets. But IMO, I've never had a LEGO set that was packaged badly. I mean, i've had the occasional folded instruction booklet (again, something I wouldn't need, but still) and maybe a dent in a corner, but LEGO packaging has always seemed top-notch packaging.

Now, misprints on pieces are something I can get behind and complain about (pink Lion Knights of 2010, anybody?). :lol:
I dunno, MMV's packaging seemed pretty silly to me. The way it was organized was based on piece size, which would've been fine, but there were several bags for each size group. The minifigs were spread throughout most of the bags too. They could've done much better.
I agree it would have been nice to have this bagged each building seperate. I wanted to have my two oldest each do a building and it was not bagged for that.