>>6977094Markets change and to stay successful, companies need to flow with what works when it works and drop things when they don't. You have to think back to the time period where Lego first came out with Star Wars sets. Star Wars was on fire in the spring of 1999 with the Special Edition recently in theaters and Episode 1 hype, so their timing was perfect to make that deal. The in-house themes were reusing lots of cheap parts and a lot of them were uncreative and unappealing as builds. The non-licensed themes now are much more original with better building techniques. They've found their footing again and then some.
The Star Wars license has a lot of problems attached to it now because of how Disney has handled it. No one's expecting anything great for episode 9 and the buzz over the spin-offs has been lukewarm at best. Even before 8 came out, expectations were cautiously low for a lot of people. After what we got and no sign of things getting better, the series is dead for a lot of people.
Lego is at its best when they're making their original ideas. Ninjago is a good example. Pretty simple concept that's already popular, but since they don't have to play in the confines of someone else's idea, they can get as wild as they want with it.
