Lego Toys for Stressed Adults Elisabeth Briggs finds calm in clicking small, interlocking bricks together and turning piles of multicolored plastic into something recognizable. Sometimes she has a beer while playing with Lego bricks — at 37, she’s allowed — or watches TV. But she keeps the instructions close by, following them to the block. For Briggs, this ritual has become a kind of guided meditation with a tangible reward at the end: a big city skyline, perhaps, or an iconic building she can display in her office. She picked up her first Lego building set, a 321-piece copy of the Eiffel Tower, for $35 after a trip to Paris and now has nearly three dozen kits that mirror her travels, including Buckingham Palace, the Louvre, and the Golden Gate Bridge. “It’s fun to zone out and follow someone else’s instructions,” said Briggs, a math teacher at Olympic College near Seattle. “It wasn’t until I got older — and had a job and more money — than I saw value in that.” Lego, the world’s largest and most profitable toymaker, is zeroing in on a growing demographic: stressed-out adults. The 87-year-old Danish company increasingly bills its brightly colored bricks as a way to drown out the noise of the day and perhaps achieve a measure of mindfulness. The company’s newest kits — which include the Central Perk cafe from the sitcom “Friends” and a vintage 1989 Batmobile — tap into Gen X nostalgia, while its Ideas and Forma lines are being targeted to adults who want to occupy their hands but keep their minds loosely engaged. Adults have become a coveted market for toymakers confronting increased competition and waning sales growth, and it doesn’t hurt that they are more likely to drop $800 on a 7,541- piece Star Wars Millennium Falcon set or $400 for the Harry Potter Hogwarts Castle, which is on Briggs’s wish list. “Adults with high-pressured jobs are telling us they’re using Lego to disconnect from the mania of the day,” said Genevieve Capa Cruz, Lego’s audience marketing strategist. “They’relooking for a relaxing, calming experience — and they like instructions because that’s what helps them be in the zone.” The company spent the past five years revamping instruction manuals to make kits foolproof for frazzled adults, she said. Last year, Lego introduced a line of koi fish and shark models with soothing movements to appeal to builders in search of a “joyful creative challenge.” 

The toy giant is increasingly looking beyond die-hard hobbyists to court the casual builder in search of modern-day tranquility. “Need an escape?” asks a recent Lego ad on Instagram. “Building with Lego bricks reduces stress and improves your well-being. It’s zen, in the shape of a brick.” Mindfulness is a meditative practice rooted in ancient Buddhism and Hinduism that focuses on the present without dwelling on the past or worrying about the future. It has been shown to alleviate stress and anxiety, improve sleep and even lower blood pressure. In recent years, mindfulness has become a mainstream buzzword, with corporations such as Apple, Nike, and HBO adding meditation rooms for employees, and apps such as Headspace and Calm promising to help the masses find peace. Lego is hardly alone in latching on to it as a selling point: Companies now offer “mindful knitting” workshops, and a growing roster of books promises mindfulness through coloring, crosswords, and crafting. Any repetitive activity — embroidering, sweeping, or, yes, clicking together Lego bricks — can help strike the right balance between mental engagement and relaxation, said Carrie Barron, director of the Creativity for Resilience Program at the University of Texas at Austin’s Dell Medical School. “To focus singularly on a task is a form of mindfulness.”

Required

Explain Lego’s launch strategy in a new segment?

What is Lego’s competitive advantage against other toymakers?

Explain how did Lego go about collecting market information before getting into the adult toy segment?

What kind of perception do you have about Lego? Has this case or information changed your perception of the toymaker in any way?

What need/want does Lego fulfill in its adult consumers?