Published in the Wall Street Journal a couple days ago:

Lego A/S shook off the malaise affecting the wider toy market and fended off an onslaught of fresh competition in the building-block segment to continue its winning streak in 2012, booking a 25% revenue increase that vaulted it into a near tie for the No. 2 slot in the global toy business.

The Danish toy maker enjoyed sustained success for its popular Lego City and Lego Star Wars sets. Its new Lego Friends theme, targeting girls, sold twice as well as initial expectations and helped triple sales to girls.

Lego's growth has been attributed in part to more sets aimed at girls. Above, Lego Friends characters at the New York toy fair earlier this month.

In an interview Thursday afternoon Chief Executive J

The 3D printing thing would only serve to replace missing parts for me. I don't have much creativity and there's hardly a chance I could come up with anything better than what the Lego designers do. As far as the knock-offs go, I once had an off brand lego set...it was junk. Pieces were loose and didn't fit properly, the minifigs were useless, etc. Plus, the models aren't as good. There is NO competition for Lego in my opinion.

The 3D printing thing would only serve to replace missing parts for me. I don't have much creativity and there's hardly a chance I could come up with anything better than what the Lego designers do. As far as the knock-offs go, I once had an off brand lego set...it was junk. Pieces were loose and didn't fit properly, the minifigs were useless, etc. Plus, the models aren't as good. There is NO competition for Lego in my opinion.

I agree. Lego doesn't have competition when it has 85% of the market. Their quality cannot be beat by the other competitors. However, will TLC's quality be affected by its decision to make more parts in China? I've noticed slight changes on white bricks having a yellowish color and I've had some printing errors on some Star Wars figures.

i am no expert, but it would seem to me that the raw materials cost for thse printers is pretty high. i am not sure how many bricks a typical 1 kg spool of the plastic would produce. does anyone have one of these printers and could post costs in producing bricks,etc?

As Yellow mentioned in his latest article, 3D Printers are becoming more popular, but apparently, they don't mind if consumers make their own bricks!

Thanks for the shout out and plug ComicBlast!