21 hours ago, MAB said:

It wouldn't surprise me if all those sold to more people that are not into LEGO  / hadn't bought any LEGO for let's say a year, than sets that appeal to AFOLs.

To me, this is likely the point of Ideas. To get people who aren't into LEGO, into LEGO.

Like many of you, I was gutted that they didn't pick Land Ahoy! It seemed perfect for Ideas.

The BTS set from the last round will be interesting when it releases, given that they've now split up. Will they disappear and be rapidly replaced with the next manufactured band? Maybe get LEGO to think twice about new pop culture things, compared to hitting nostalgia vibes instead.

10 hours ago, MAB said:

But then they decided to do Queer Eye by themselves too.

From what I understand the guy who made Everyone is Awesome is a fan of Queer Eye and somehow convinced LEGO to make the set. It was a really stupid idea. LEGO would have been better off making the Golden Girls house.

13 hours ago, MAB said:

And even if they did ban sitcoms from IDEAS to start making their own sets in a sitcoms theme (or just under ICONS) it wouldn't surprise me if there were complaints of why are they doing sitcoms as mainstream sets when they could have brought back Classic S/C/P instead ?

Yeah, sure. That is the crux of it and you can't have it both ways. Ultimately it's probably a matter of the horse being too big and too fast to ride anymore, i.e. IDEAS being a victim of its own success. That and I tend to think we wouldn't even be debating this if LEGO wouldn't be flooding other series as well with new licensed IP sets plus the overall sheer mass of sets they hammer out. Point in case: It's all drowned out by a flood of other sets and in the end every IDEAS offering becomes just another one to the buying list. It no longer has this magic where you would feel that an IDEAS set was something truly special and important because in this system it has been relegated to being "just another release" out of many.

Mylenium

17 hours ago, RichardGoring said:

To me, this is likely the point of Ideas. To get people who aren't into LEGO, into LEGO.

I believe it was one of the original ideas behind CUUSOO and IDEAS, but also the AFOL/fan engagement side has become just as important, as in "LEGO are great, they listen to what we want and then make those sets".

15 hours ago, Maple said:

From what I understand the guy who made Everyone is Awesome is a fan of Queer Eye and somehow convinced LEGO to make the set. It was a really stupid idea. LEGO would have been better off making the Golden Girls house.

I can't comment on the sales or popularity. I've heard of the series, never watched it, no interest in it and not bought the set even as a parts pack (and I would be no different if it was straight men dressing and styling other people). But LEGO did get quite a bit of press coverage out of the Queer Eye and Everyone is Awesome sets, releasing them around Pride celebrations and that may have been enough for them to justify the release, as there other other positives than sales volumes.

3 hours ago, Mylenium said:

Yeah, sure. That is the crux of it and you can't have it both ways. Ultimately it's probably a matter of the horse being too big and too fast to ride anymore, i.e. IDEAS being a victim of its own success. That and I tend to think we wouldn't even be debating this if LEGO wouldn't be flooding other series as well with new licensed IP sets plus the overall sheer mass of sets they hammer out. Point in case: It's all drowned out by a flood of other sets and in the end every IDEAS offering becomes just another one to the buying list. It no longer has this magic where you would feel that an IDEAS set was something truly special and important because in this system it has been relegated to being "just another release" out of many.

To me, IDEAS has just become a random theme and I don't see it as a theme. I'm not interested in IDEAS sets (as a whole) but I will buy ones that I like. Some people used to collect IDEAS sets, but for me it is way too diverse for that. And that is not necessarily a bad thing, it shows that they are producing fan submitted sets across a very wide range of interests. I have no problem with licenses appearing in other themes. Technic and Speed Champions get a lot of licenses now, and I think that makes sense. I'd prefer to see a real car / vehicle done than a completely made up one and this is probably more true in Speed Champions than Technic. Elsewhere in the more minifigure based sets, we have the big guns - SW, HP and Super Heroes (I'll lump DC and Marvel together) and Disney seems to be coming a fairly evergreen theme, possibly JW and Minecraft too. And of course we get the current movie tie ins that appear and disappear just as quick. They all make sense to me. I think the reason we don't get as many interesting themes in non-licensed is not due to licensed, but due to the popularity of the non-licensed themes they currently have. We used to get a lot of variation back when themes had a one or two year run and that was it. And if they did a theme you weren't interested in, it didn't matter as it would soon disappear and another one would come along soon. Whereas now, City and Friends are solid "town" evergreens, and each have really quite large numbers of sets per year. The same with Ninjago. Even though they are the major non-licensed themes, they get a huge number of sets between them, and all have some form of rotation of sub-themes year on year. Then add in Monkie Kid. I think it is the rotation of the sub-themes especially within Ninjago that stops / covers a lot of the themes we might have expected to see 20-10 years ago. Pirates, steampunk, historical / oriental buildings, sailing ships, cool futuristic vehicles, jets, fantasy and dragons, fast cars, weird and wacky villains in all sorts of forms, they've even got what looks like an Islanders set, Ninjago has covered them all. The popularity and longevity of those ninjas seems to suck in all the ideas that would have been one-year-and-done themes of the past. And that is why people probably look for one off scraps of more distinct unlicensed themes that could have been done outside of Ninjago but never were in IDEAS, as it is the last home (along with Creator) for them in the non-licensed pages of the LEGO catalogue. It's not that Ninjago is a bad theme, it clearly reinvents itself well enough to remain popular year after year, but that is where I often see a huge range of ideas that could have been something else but were translated into Ninjago. The diversity of set types, even within a year, covers way more than any in-house theme used to.

 

 

 

IDEAS, Icons, Creator Expert, Architecture, and even Creator have so many subdivisions, it's more like a box label and not a "theme" of old, and that's not even including licenses.

Even 3-in-1 is walking the line of multiple types of sets being offered, from animal sets, microscale vehicles, minifig compatible vehicles and sets with actual minifigures.

In the end, it's still a big LEGO system so to me the theme name is mainly a direction for discussion, or organizing collections, not something I strictly divide my pieces by.

Edited July 20, 20222 yr by TeriXeri

On 7/18/2022 at 1:31 PM, TeriXeri said:

I don't know, Tech wise Ideas seems pretty saturated.

Saturn V (re-release)  International Space station both are still available sets retiring after this year 

LEGO also released 2 AFOL space nasa sets seperately :

Apollo 11 Lunar Lander 

Big spaceshuttle Discovery seperately from Ideas (currently not retiring).

3 of those sets are retiring 31st december 2022 according to Brickset.

 

That makes 4 AFOL space sets based on Nasa currently on market,

For smaller and younger there are many options this year as well.

• City has a Nasa moon rocket with nasa stickers on it.
• Friends has a Space Shuttle
• 3-in-1 has a Space shuttle / Lunar Lander (alternate)
• Classic has 11022: Space Mission

 

I'd love to see some actual Space ship via Ideas, not Nasa, Not SpaceX, not based on any Tv show , movie, game etc, maybe not even based on a former LEGO theme.

It's too early to know if Barracuda Bay was an exception to a rule of non-licensed, "Classic Pirates" , but I don't expect any former Classic/80s/90s/2000s space themes to be made via IDEAS.

 

There's also a motorized Lighthouse coming, while the Tree-House set is retiring (brickset lists 31 December 2022)

 

 

You're only listing space sets though.

There was the technic Scania, that set looked awesome, but nope. The Big Boy locomotive, no word yet. 

Sorry but the idea line has turned into nothing but pandering to get some adults who were never fans of lego to begin with to buy a lego set and never buy one again.

1 hour ago, canuckster said:

You're only listing space sets though.

There was the technic Scania, that set looked awesome, but nope. The Big Boy locomotive, no word yet. 

Sorry but the idea line has turned into nothing but pandering to get some adults who were never fans of lego to begin with to buy a lego set and never buy one again.

And your evidence for that part I've bolded is... what exactly? Do you know how many people who bought one of those real-world object or sitcom sets have stopped at that, or are you just making it all up because you personally aren't into those?

It seems like the only reason you're mad at "pandering" is because you aren't the one being pandered to.

6 hours ago, canuckster said:

Sorry but the idea line has turned into nothing but pandering to get some adults who were never fans of lego to begin with to buy a lego set and never buy one again.

I am one of those people who were pandered to - only had a couple of small sets as a kid in the 80's, never played with Lego as a kid - we were too poor to have such an expensive toy. Never had a dark ages because my first real experience with Lego was in my 30's. When the Ecto-1 came out my nephew was in to Lego so I bought him one. Liked the thought of it and bought one myself and loved it - then planned on buying up all the castle sets I could and until last year there were none which was disappointing (clearly there was some Lego advertising in my life to know castle was a Lego thing just that it wasn't in my life). That said I have spent thousands on sets since then and never looked back.

There are a lot of "Ideas" I look at and wish I could buy but they never get made. But then I only have a limited budget. If Lego do release a set I like then I will buy it, but won't buy something else. They aren't gaining sales from me, but just moving a sale from one theme to Ideas.

Ultimately the Ecto-1 Ideas set means that Lego now gets a couple of thousand in sales each year from me, additional Ideas sets will not increase that amount, but would potentially be the right theme like the Office to pull in a new fan like me who will then move on to other sets. If they don't move on to other sets it is still a sale they wouldn't have gotten, as opposed to just moving a sale from a City set or the like to an Ideas set.

Now if all of these sets sit in evergreen Lego themes e.g. The Sitcom Theme, then they may still get new fans, but they will potentially miss out on all the free crowdfunding like advertising, news articles, local interest stories which get run around Ideas whether they make it as a set or not. A set that is just dropped on the Lego site rarely gets the additional crowd advertising that Ideas sets get unless it is some new special set like the biggest/largest etc. Note this is just from my own experience of seeing potential Ideas sets etc in local news, but rarely seeing anything for other themes. YMMV.

Here is a correction to the threads title "Lego is becoming bland and dull".

My interest for this company and it's products has been dying ever since 2013.The themes that interested me back in the day are long dead.

For example the golden trio (Space,Pirates and Castle) have been demoted to rare releases of overpriced sets that very few can acquire and thanks to the price increases soon even fewer people will be able to get them.

Another example are the action themes.No more Monster Fighters,Pharaoh's Quest,Agents etc.Now it is only Ninjago and an occasional clone of it,like Monkie Kid currently.

At this point lego is all about profit,gone are the days of creativity and originality.And that is blatantly obvious with the overabundance of licenced themes,which makes sense from a greedy corpo perspective.I mean why create an original theme and then spend alot of cash marketing it when you can make sets based on already popular IP?

The same goes for Ideas.Now they pick the most dull,bland and safe choices because they know that those sets will sell.

On 7/23/2022 at 3:07 AM, Lyichir said:

And your evidence for that part I've bolded is... what exactly? Do you know how many people who bought one of those real-world object or sitcom sets have stopped at that, or are you just making it all up because you personally aren't into those?

It seems like the only reason you're mad at "pandering" is because you aren't the one being pandered to.

It's basic marketing 101, you pander to the fans you already have, not the ones where you might get.

• 82% of companies agree that retention is cheaper than acquisition.
• 75% of consumers say they favor companies that offer rewards.
• 56% of customers stay loyal to brands which “get them.”
• 65% of a company’s business comes from existing customers.
• Increasing customer retention by just 5% boosts profits by 25% to 95%.
• 58% of companies pursue personalization strategies for customer retention. 

8 hours ago, canuckster said:

It's basic marketing 101, you pander to the fans you already have, not the ones where you might get.

• 82% of companies agree that retention is cheaper than acquisition.
• 75% of consumers say they favor companies that offer rewards.
• 56% of customers stay loyal to brands which “get them.”
• 65% of a company’s business comes from existing customers.
• Increasing customer retention by just 5% boosts profits by 25% to 95%.
• 58% of companies pursue personalization strategies for customer retention. 

I never said retention isn't important. But to some extent, that's what Lego's other themes are for. For instance, Lego doesn't need to necessarily keep releasing science/tech/space type sets through Ideas at this point—they've had enough success at that that they can do those sorts of things without crowdsourcing (as they did with 2019's Apollo 11 Lunar Lander or last year's Space Shuttle Discovery) and still be pretty confident that they'll sell well.

The main advantage of crowdsourcing is to identify what sorts of interests or subject matter they aren't capitalizing on, and that can take the form of things like non-traditional subject matter (the various display pieces like the Globe or typewriter fall into this category), or for licenses, things from more niche TV series or movies (especially ones that aren't as current as the kinds of blockbuster hits Lego tends to license full themes from).

On 7/22/2022 at 6:07 PM, Lyichir said:

It seems like the only reason you're mad at "pandering" is because you aren't the one being pandered to.

I would be! Being pandered to feels awesome!

21 hours ago, canuckster said:

It's basic marketing 101, you pander to the fans you already have, not the ones where you might get.

• 82% of companies agree that retention is cheaper than acquisition.
• 75% of consumers say they favor companies that offer rewards.
• 56% of customers stay loyal to brands which “get them.”
• 65% of a company’s business comes from existing customers.
• Increasing customer retention by just 5% boosts profits by 25% to 95%.
• 58% of companies pursue personalization strategies for customer retention. 

LEGO already does all that. Not every product they produce should necessarily appeal to a large number of existing buyers though. When they produce 100s of sets a year, there is no harm in having a small number of them based on new subjects or licenses to keep attracting new buyers too. 

Last good Ideas set was the Caterham, but that's just me cuz i like cars.

I'm seriously thinking about stopping collecting ideas, I have all up to now, but the price point is getting stupid now,.

22 hours ago, jawchef said:

I'm seriously thinking about stopping collecting ideas, I have all up to now, but the price point is getting stupid now,.

Funny you say that, as I don't really see ideas as a theme so much, like Star Wars or Ninjago, where you want to get all the sets of a particular wave. I have always considered it more of an amalgamation of many themes, offering one off sets of existing themes. Although ideas has come up with many great sets and I wish I had far more of them than I do, like you, price is a major consideration, as I am just a simple laborer and will never be rich.

Edited August 24, 20222 yr by Johnny1360

I completely forgot about ideas, I probably stopped with Ghostbuster HQ scandal... It was too much for my taste.

Overall sets from Ideas are mostly nostalgia sets, that kind of nostalgia we never experienced here thanks to poltical situation, so its easy pass for me.

 

 Ghostbuster HQ scandal?!

51 minutes ago, Shiva said:

 Ghostbuster HQ scandal?!

The subset of people who believe that Lego couldn't come up with the Lego Ghostbusters headquarters by themselves and stole it from someone on the Ideas platform. They also brought us the Bansai scandal, the Cactus scandal, and I'm sure a lot of other ones too.

Ahh, that type of scandals.

On 8/25/2022 at 2:15 PM, timemail said:

The subset of people who believe that Lego couldn't come up with the Lego Ghostbusters headquarters by themselves and stole it from someone on the Ideas platform. They also brought us the Bansai scandal, the Cactus scandal, and I'm sure a lot of other ones too.

Timing in these cases are key... They get literally free market research and rob these fan designers in process. There was if I remember 1% cut for them from sales. So there goes the answer...