I know this topic gets brought up a lot, the classic "Lego doesn't have as many original themes/sets anymore" discussion. I was wondering, is lego really making more licensed sets than original sets? And if so, how many have they released per year.

So after doing some research I've made the following chart:

I used a stacked Column chart as i think it visualizes the data best, if you want a different type of chart, lemme know and i'll leave it in the comments

First I'll run through the criteria used to define "licensed" sets. First we have the things that are obviously based on existing IP [Star Wars, Disney, Harry Potter, LOTR, Marvel, DC, Nintendo, Fortnite, Sonic, etc.], Vehicle sets with an actual car brand attached were also counted [Lambo's, Volkswagens, every Speed Champions set and a lot of Ferarri's]. Some (modern) buildings were also included as some of those are trademarked and require a license to be released [the eiffel tower, empire state building], Lego Sports sets if they have an irl league or brand attached to it [the NBA sets and a lot of football sets that included an adidas logo], and for the sake of argument i excluded sets of The Lego Movie, Lego Movie 2 and Ninjago Movie, but did include the Lego Batman Movie.

I collected this data from Brickset.com and counted any set defined as "Normal" (no video games, gear, books, collections etc.), CMF's were counted per minifig, which adds about ~48 total sets from 2010 on. Some years also include a bunch of Lego Dacta, boxes and service packs, so that might skew the data a bit.

Now for some specific observations:

From 1990 to 1998 most years just has 1 or 2 "licensed sets" including a Nasa rocket, promotional ferries (such as the Stena Line and Color Line Ferries), Arla and Tine branded milk trucks and even an ANWB (dutch road services) Roadside Recovery Van.

In 1999 they of course introduced the Lego Star Wars theme, but also 7 Winnie The Pooh Duplo sets and some Shell-Branded Town Sets.

2003 is the year with the "most" licensed set in the '00s, but that's mostly due to the large amount of Lego Sports sets that were released including a lot of basketball minifigures. So '03 is a bit of an outlier.

As for Harry Potter Sets, up until the release of the Order of the Phoenix movie in 2007, HP sets were only released in the same year as a movie with all the sets being related to scenes in said movie. No HP sets came out in 2009 with the Half Blood Prince movie. in 2010 and 2011 new HP sets were released, but they were mostly unrelated to the Deathly Hallows films. By 2018 they brought out new sets, some of which related to the Fantastic Beasts series, but most being based on the earliest Harry Potter Films, clearly marketing more towards nostalgia.

Now to look at the trends:

In the 2010's there is a notable increase in the amount of licenced sets being released each year. From what i can tell this went hand-in-hand with the rise of superhero movies, most notably the MCU. But also more collaboration with Disney, Minecraft and other franchises.

One important thing to note, is that there are still a LOT of original Lego Sets being released each year, the orange columns in the '10s are even a little heigher '00s. But of course the percentage of total sets that are licensed has increased to the point that in the past 3 years it's almost a 50/50 split.

Furthermore, the amount of original themes has decreased greatly. The 90's and 00's had Rock Raiders/power miners, aquazone, racers, adventurers, pirates and several space and castle themes. But the last original space theme was Galaxy Squad in 2013 and we haven't had a dedicated castle theme since 2014. Nowadays Space, Adventure and racers/stuntz are incorporated into Lego City. And castle and pirate stuff gets a Lego Creator set once in a while.

This is not to say whether or not this is good or bad. I just wanted to compile the data so we can discuss this topic more accurately. Let me know what you think in the comments

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