Lego is perceived as having a 'good value' in terms of a premium toy. The vast vast vast vast majority of buyers have no evaluation of resell value when buying their children's toys. No parent goes "hrmm.. which will have more resell 3yrs from now, xbox or playstation??" - They know Lego is a premium product and the value is in what they get from it as a toy. They know the product will be good quality, won't break, will be fun, and has lots of possibilities. They know the quality of the bricks and complete picture will probably be better than the competitor blocks and will pay Lego's premium because of it. Not because they think they can get 30% more for the used lego brick vs the Megablock. The affluent buyers of Lego are already affluent
It's the same in every hobby, the heavily engaged enthusiasts far overstate their importance in the market. The folks selling MISB kits or "complete with box" used kits are not the center of the market. It's the enthusiasts who like to go through a lot of sets and the speculators. For these first group, knowing the sets have good residual value helps them justify the price because they know they will buy, sell, and buy the next set. These guys don't need increased values to be happy, they are just diffusing costs. The speculators only want appreciation or they are underwater. The resell market is still trivially small compared to the full retail presence of Lego - its why Lego retail has no price pressure from it. The 'bulk' and incomplete sets still dominate the non-enthusiasts used sales.
I agree on the misses in many of the recent lines (I wanted to mention the SuperHeros.. but didn't have anything to back it up) but I think this is more localized to Lego's products. The 'super hero fatigue' is not as imminent as many would want you to believe.
Marketing is one that is very difficult for many to evaluate objectively.... especially without the power of hindsight. I don't agree sets like the Saturn V would be household items if promoted on TV. At the end of the day it's still a 3' long display piece with limited play potential compared to sets costing less and taking up far less space. Be objective, the market is more than our individual preferences.
Back to the topic of the thread - No I don't think UCS reissues and other snubs at the speculator's market are suddenly to blame for Lego's recent 6 month performance. The numbers are just insane. Even by the contributor here who speculated that there would have only been 800 75192 sets sold in the US at launch... look at the scales involved here. 800 sets at 800 dollars is only 640k in revenue. Lego does over 41 MILLION a month in revenue. So even at 130 stores at 10 each.. or roughly 1 million in sales revenue.. that's still only 2.5% of the total activity going on. So while it's a huge amount of money... it's still just a minor contributor to the bigger picture. So it's gonna take a WHOLE LOT MORE to have the 'hit on speculators' to magically be responsible for a 12+month trend that Lego has been experiencing in the US.
Issues with expensive programs like Lego Dimension failing to gain traction, the long term outlook of Digital, and other items I wager are FAR more important to TLG leadership than worrying about the burn a few hundred Lego hoarders are feeling over the 10179 being reissued.