Why were Technic figures discontinued?

[Takanuinuva]

Just something that's always made me wonder. The Technic figures from the Competition line and other Technic sets were very good figures IMO. They had great pose ability for the time and they acted as your pilots for you Technic vehicles. I know some later Technic sets could have been better with a Technic figure added. So why did Lego stop making them?

[W3ird_N3rd]

Assuming the actual reason isn't publicly known or at best worded with no more detail than "for marketing reasons TLG discontinued Technic figures", I'll give you my best guess.

There's a difference between boys and girls. Yeah, I mean, beyond that one difference. If you give male and female monkeys toys and you give them toy cars and dolls, the male monkey will generally start playing with the car, even if they have no proper understanding of what a car even is. It has moving wheels, it can be pushed down slopes, it speaks to the technical part of the brain. The female monkey will more likely pick up the doll. The "caring" instinct.

A monkey isn't conditioned to like one toy more than the other - so unlike what some think, human boys just naturally have a preference for technical toys and girls just the same are more likely to be interested in dolls and other toys that revolve around social interaction.

That doesn't mean there are no exceptions, but most of the time this is what we observe.

Now back to Lego. Technic is mostly bought by or for boys. Boys are interested in technical things, but when you think about something technical like a car, that usually doesn't involve a human being. A Technic figure is, in it's essence, a doll. It doesn't have a real role - Technic figure is no police officer or fire-fighter that a boy would really want to identify with. At best (but he's lacking the uniform), Technic figure could be imagined to be a crane operator, but this sort of role is harder to imagine because of the lack of a uniform.

Technic figure is, due to the lack of a uniform, just part of the technical fantasy/model. But when a boy is thinking of the moving parts in a supercar, motorcycle or crane, that usually wouldn't involve an operator. The boy himself is the operator. Putting a Technic figure in a model means putting someone else in the driver seat. This part isn't about identification, it's who is in charge.

So why does City/Friends/etc include minifigs? Because here you're making up a story and the minifigs have a role. That's why there are so many and why they have so many uniforms and clothing. It's like directing your own movie. With City/Friends/etc you're not the operator. No vehicle is remote controlled (apart froms trains, but they are borderline Technic), moving parts only move when you move them directly with your hand. You guide their lives, you help them, but you will not "be" them. In Technic models, you are in control. So Technic figure can't be. So it wouldn't sell as well if there were figures in the models.

In short, TLG probably discontinued Technic figures for marketing reasons.

Edited June 22, 2014 by W3ird_N3rd

[jodawill]

I think another reason is that it's easier for them to design models if they don't have to worry about making them figure scale.

[Moz]

From talking to a Technic designer (Ricco) at brickvention he seemed to think it was complexity and scale. The weird gender-essentialist stuff never came up.

If you look at the scale of Technic models they're all over the place. Even just taking flagships there's no "Technic scale", the theme is more "1000 pieces, 2kg, what can we get for that?". Trying to make a couple of models every year that match the figure scale got a bit hard after a while, I expect. Some of the sets with figures were a bit of a stretch IMO.

Then there's the cost. Look at the current minifig sets and generally it's 10/c piece plus minifigs, and a lot of the smaller sets really suffer when they have to include too many to make the scene work. But minifigs are simple, a complex one might have 10 pieces. A bare minimum Technic figure has more than that - about 17 by my count. And those pieces have to be assembled, unlike minifigs where half the parts come bare in the bag.

There would have to be a real price premium in the market to justify adding Technic figs. But if you look at them on Bricklink, it's just not there. Compare that to some of the rare train pieces, or 8880 and powerpuller wheels. So the accountants are looking at that and going "hard set to design, not widely popular, no price premiums.... not worth it".

Ricco seemed to be aware that there are real Technic fig fans and I got the impression that they are discussed occasionally, but there's no way they're going to be produced again.

Edited June 21, 2014 by Moz

[W3ird_N3rd]

From talking to a Technic designer (Ricco) at brickvention he seemed to think it was complexity and scale. The weird gender-essentialist stuff never came up.

If you look at the scale of Technic models they're all over the place. Even just taking flagships there's no "Technic scale", the theme is more "1000 pieces, 2kg, what can we get for that?". Trying to make a couple of models every year that match the figure scale got a bit hard after a while, I expect. Some of the sets with figures were a bit of a stretch IMO.

I would not have called that. They have some really good designers and I would have thought they would have found a way around that, if it's worth it. Just scale the Technic figures as well (I could think of a way to do that, just make them more modular, or simply make large/medium/small versions.), or only include them in larger models and make the larger models roughly to one scale.

Then there's the cost. Look at the current minifig sets and generally it's 10/c piece plus minifigs, and a lot of the smaller sets really suffer when they have to include too many to make the scene work. But minifigs are simple, a complex one might have 10 pieces. A bare minimum Technic figure has more than that - about 17 by my count. And those pieces have to be assembled, unlike minifigs where half the parts come bare in the bag.

I don't think that's a real issue though. Technic figures (I have one..somewhere) could also be disassembled (iirc.. if not, mine's broken) and could be shipped in his original parts. I don't think it would be terribly expensive. I estimate the cost for TLG to be less than $2, more likely less than $1.

..just looked it up, I guess mine may be broken. But they could make a version that can be taken apart.

http://lego.wikia.co...TECHNIC_Figures and http://lego.wikia.co...GO_TECHNIC_guys show though that cost probably wasn't a really big issue. (three figures for 8-9 dollars in 1988 and 1993).

There would have to be a real price premium in the market to justify adding Technic figs. But if you look at them on Bricklink, it's just not there. Compare that to some of the rare train pieces, or 8880 and powerpuller wheels. So the accountants are looking at that and going "hard set to design, not widely popular, no price premiums.... not worth it".

I suspect this ultimately still boils down to what I said in my first post. If it's harder to produce but people are not willing to pay more money for it, what's the point? I find myself as well being not terribly interested in the Technic figures, while I love Technic. Yet I do like minifigs. But it feels like the figures are just not needed in the models.

I guess if you like Technic figures, you should bricklink some (they're not expensive) and take good care of them. They will last longer than you.

Edited June 21, 2014 by W3ird_N3rd

[Rockbrick]

On mine the arms kept breaking off so perhaps that was another nail the coffin for them.....

[Lakop]

We can always make our own figures with technic parts.

H

[DrJB]

The old Technic figures were scale restrictive. Today you can build a truck r car at many different scales ... not sure TLG wants to build a properly scaled figure for each of the scales ... The HUGE collection of technic tire sizes is already pretty .... 'annoying' ... or maybe not necessary.

Edited June 22, 2014 by DrJB

[anton1678]

The old Technic figures were scale restrictive. Today you can build a truck r car at many different scales ... not sure TLG wants to build a properly scaled figure for each of the scales ... The HUGE collection of technic tire sizes is already pretty .... 'annoying' ... or maybe not necessary.

Yes, TLG wanted to make small Technic sets as well, because not everyone has 50$ to spend on something big enough for those figures to sit in. Besides, with Technic, as W3ird N3rd said, you are the one controlling the set, not the minifigure.

Technic has less imagination involved, because it works in real life, no need for imagining much

[Doc_Brown]

I agree with them being a scale issue mostly. I do miss them, and really enjoyed building as a kid a scale vehicle suitable for them.

Slightly of topic, but does anyone have a high res photo of the entire Technic Figure collection?

[1974]

Scale/price was all over the place when techfigs where in production and there where many sets not with techfigs at the same time, so that argument is bunk

When I was a kid we _played_ the shit out of our Technic sets/MOCs. Didn't matter if there was techfigs or not (but we did luv them for sure)

DrJB, the majority of Technic wheels/tires have been retired, there's actually not that many in current production (some are used in System sets mostly anyway)

When TLG does something wierd that makes no sense, it's because they have gone 'focusgroup' on us again, sigh

And TLG is never (cough cough, Galidor, Universe, themeparks, greys, double bankruptcy, multiple changes in board direction etc ad nauseam ) wrong!

[Anth]

Wife bought me a Star Wars Republic tank for Christmas, it uses two of the old technic figure ski poles as cannons 

Its the first time I've seen these since I was a kid :D