Aye, though this isn’t a LEGO Group unique problem - it is industry wide. Obviously, fellow titans like Hasbro and Mattel are doing the same but it’s not just the titans and their dozens of subsidiaries (be it literal or effectively so via contract/relations). And I do suggest one pays attention to the wider world of things like this as all companies, private and public, are still forced to respond to the same stimuli.
Though if everyone doesn’t mind an anecdotal tale, I did attend a panel at this past San Diego Comic Con called, “How to become a Toy Designer.” It had three industry veterans who have been in the business for decades who got in by various means, plus a related person from Netflix as the moderator. When it came to the Q&A portion, someone asked the elephant question about how toys seems to be more for adults than children and their thoughts on it.
According to the panel, that is the main discussion in the toy industry (and beyond) for the last however many years and still today. The LEGO Group has used different terms for it but the panel called them “kidults” (kid+adult). For decades, while the industry has largely focused on children (and their parents by extension), they have also long had a focus on collectors as well. Companies have known about the niche collector market and have catered to them. If you ever wondered what the big expensive playsets and other super expensive toys were for, it was very rich families and collectors. Not every collector product is directly called out as such.
Kidults are not traditional collectors. Just like in the same way Lego has separated out Lego Fans and Fans of Lego, kidults aren’t collecting things for the sake of it. No, the primary trend is that this growing demographic of normies have stopped seeing toys as childish items and more like art pieces. But what about toy art that appeals to kidults is not the same thing as children or traditional collectors. As largely proven by Funko, what appeals to kidults is, in my words, normie slop.
That said, according to the panelists, everyone in the industry expects this trend to die. When? Who knows, but most are prepping for when they’ll need to lessen production on design for kidults and refocus on kids. This is why kid-focused products haven’t been abandoned entirely in favor of kidults, which has proven massively profitable so far. . . There’s just a smaller child demographic right now and this is how they’re all going to keep afloat until that changes.
All that to say we might see Lego be more like a toy again (believe it or not but SmartBrick is part of the more toy-like move). . . It just might be a few decades is all.
) and didn’t see existing examples just on Lego Ideas. 
