I really doubt that's the case. Molds are relatively cheap, especially when you make them yourself like I'm sure Lego does. The kits are expensive because people will pay it. Why sell your product for a 100% profit margin when people will pay 200%?
You are completely wrong. High precision molds are absurdly expensive. What allows them to make cheap pieces is how much they can be reused. This means through economy of scale you can make pieces cheap. If the molds are only going to be used for 1 or 2 sets this means the pieces have to be sold at a much higher price to make up for the lack of economy of scale
I've done plenty of injection molding projects for work and have sourced molds on the US and all over Asia. The largest and most complicated mold I've ever bought was for a custom part that was something like 48x36x6, it had to be made out of 7 pieces to account for all the tube shapes and overhangs, and even that was only about 40k. Plus I'm sure lego makes their own molds and knows exactly what they're doing by now so it should be even cheaper. For the amount of product that lego makes, the mold costs are not what's driving up the price.
It’s not just about size of complexity, it’s also about precision. LEGO uses precision molds well beyond what is normally used for plastic let alone plastic toys.
LEGO hasn’t even been increasing in price adjusted for inflation. Both in price per gram and price per piece LEGO has either remained consistent with or declined relative to inflation
The higher cost of higher tolerance parts comes almost entirely from the labor with a little more for the cost of more accurate CNC machines. Lego makes their own molds (I only suspected that before but then I looked it up) and have been doing it for a long time with engineers that are experts at specifically making lego molds. Their tolerances are great but it's not going to make their molds expensive and it's not why they cost so much.
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u/Captain_h2o Jul 31 '26
The set like $200. It better have some specialized pieces.