LEGO Ideas Discussion

[Blondie-Wan]

23 minutes ago, Exetrius said:

At this point, I think it's save to say that no Star Wars set is ever going to pass the Review stage. I think BB-8 would have been the safest bet of the batch: based of a character that is already famous beyond the SW fanbase; having an adorable function and a moderate parts count; not really fitting in with the scale of the other sets of the line... Such a shame! 

I wouldn't say no Star Wars set will ever be approved; every set that's ever gotten the votes has had some other, obvious strike against it. Remember, back when they still explained why the declined certain projects, they even gave us an explanation for a Star Wars one, and it wasn't that they simply won't do Star Wars sets through Ideas. The Dark Bucket project was declined because, as a project consisting entirely of minifigures, it was deemed too much of a "figure set" and not enough of a "building toy", so it conflicted with another Star Wars toy licensee's rights to make action figures.

In the case of this BB-8, it was pretty certain to many of us that it was even less likely to be approved than any other Star Wars project to date, because it had a potential issue with the absolute #1, trumps-everything-else concern that the review team considers: safety. There's a reason that not only LEGO but practically every other toy maker stopped making magnets that small years ago. If not for the greater-than-usual risk that the set might kill a child, I think BB-8 would have easily clinched it because of the cleverness of the build, but safety concerns are paramount, and supersede everything else.

30 minutes ago, XAxles said:

Also... Tough luck for Jason, though I'll be honest, the appeal of the Particle Accelerator would rapidly thin, methinks.

Oh, I think Jason will be fine - he's already one of the small number people to have gotten a set made through Ideas, after all (and I think he has a good chance of having another made, as well). But I would have loved his Particle Accelerator.

Edited October 6, 2016 by Blondie-Wan
Cleaning up text

[JGW3000]

I don't think any sets with PF components will ever pass review, they are too specialized and always seem to be in limited supply.  I'm guessing LEGO only has enough PF parts on hand for those sets that need them.  Hence no BB-8 or no particle accelerator just for this reason, on top of any other reasons.

[x105Black]

59 minutes ago, Exetrius said:

At this point, I think it's save to say that no Star Wars set is ever going to pass the Review stage.

I figured that was common knowledge already.

Excited that the Fishing Store made it through, though I didn't expect it to.  There were other submissions I thought were much more likely.

[AFOLguy1970]

7 minutes ago, JGW3000 said:

I don't think any sets with PF components will ever pass review, they are too specialized and always seem to be in limited supply.  I'm guessing LEGO only has enough PF parts on hand for those sets that need them.  Hence no BB-8 or no particle accelerator just for this reason, on top of any other reasons.

I think a set might have a chance if adding PF is optional, such as a train, especially if the optional installation is possible and can be added in the instructions.  

1 hour ago, Exetrius said:

At this point, I think it's save to say that no Star Wars set is ever going to pass the Review stage. I think BB-8 would have been the safest bet of the batch: based of a character that is already famous beyond the SW fanbase; having an adorable function and a moderate parts count; not really fitting in with the scale of the other sets of the line... Such a shame! 

The choice for the Fishing Store was a great and pleasant surprise, though. 

I agree that BB-8 was a strong case.  Like Blondiewan indicated, I would bet that the magnet issue did it in.  If it were not for that, I see no reason why Lego and Disney would not realize the appeal that would have had.  

[xboxtravis7992]

On 9/27/2016 at 9:56 PM, Robert8 said:

Whaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaat?

more than 1m?

Dang, that will be an AWESOME set. I am thinking with today's announcement of the Fishing Shop in addition to the Beatles set and the Saturn V, next year will be a great year for Ideas sets. So far my only Ideas set is Wall-E, but I want a lot of the ones coming next year! I think Ideas and most of the D2C sets Lego are making right now are making my wishlist grow constantly bigger and more expensive... 

[Robert8]

Can't believe the Gingerbread House didn't make it! 

[1980-Something-Space-Guy]

11 minutes ago, Robert8 said:

Can't believe the Gingerbread House didn't make it! 

Yeah, neither do I, I was so sad. I watched the video to the end hoping they would say they were reconsidering it. Hopefully the reason they rejected it is because they plan to release a gingerbread house as part of the Winter Village line of sets sometime in the future. Otherwise, that's just sad...

[eve nightfall]

I am so happy, that the Fisherman Store did make it! It was my absolute favorite in this group! I hope that the wonderful details are going to be in the be in the final product! I love the colors and the style of it so much!

As far as I can see it is the first "house" buidling that is going to get real from ideas? I hope it is not the last!

[touthomme]

3 hours ago, XAxles said:

Also... Tough luck for Jason, though I'll be honest, the appeal of the Particle Accelerator would rapidly thin, methinks.

 

2 hours ago, Blondie-Wan said:

Oh, I think Jason will be fine - he's already one of the small number people to have gotten a set made through Ideas, after all (and I think he has a good chance of having another made, as well). But I would have loved his Particle Accelerator.

Haha, yeah, I'll be okay. :) The particle accelerator always had a very low chance in my eyes. Too many things working against it. Use of power functions, use of parts no longer in production, size, limited appeal, etc. I hope at the very least it re-enforced the idea that there is interest in science based ideas. Psyched about the Saturn-V coming, and have high hopes for the Observatory next round.

Also psyched that the fishing store got approved. Such a beautiful model and really excited that Ideas is continuing to evolve. I'm always excited when a non-IP model achieves success!

J

[Robert8]

14 minutes ago, BrickHat said:

Yeah, neither do I, I was so sad. I watched the video to the end hoping they would say they were reconsidering it. Hopefully the reason they rejected it is because they plan to release a gingerbread house as part of the Winter Village line of sets sometime in the future. Otherwise, that's just sad...

Agree.... I hope there is one in the works, because I don't really get why it didn't pass the review!

It has a good size, they already have the minifigure, the gingerbread houses are very popular during the holiday season, and they have almost a year to produce it for Christmas 2017

[Blondie-Wan]

41 minutes ago, touthomme said:

 

Haha, yeah, I'll be okay. :) The particle accelerator always had a very low chance in my eyes. Too many things working against it. Use of power functions, use of parts no longer in production, size, limited appeal, etc. I hope at the very least it re-enforced the idea that there is interest in science based ideas. Psyched about the Saturn-V coming, and have high hopes for the Observatory next round.

Also psyched that the fishing store got approved. Such a beautiful model and really excited that Ideas is continuing to evolve. I'm always excited when a non-IP model achieves success!

J

Indeed. I think the back-to-back approvals of the Apollo 11 Saturn V and the Old Fishing Store make the LEGO Observatory Mountain View project look like a much likelier contender than it did five or six months ago. They've been steadily pushing the upper range of size and price for Ideas sets higher and higher for a while now, and I think the days when we could almost automatically count on a $100+, 1000+piece project getting nixed may now be behind us.

I love your Particle Accelerator (and your creations in general, both on Ideas and not), but I always thought it was a long shot for all the reasons you've described, plus the fact that it's designed to propel a ball as fast as it can go - it just looked very much like an immediate red flag on safety grounds, if you'll forgive my saying so. It's still great, though (and the video you made for it gives its project page some of the greatest entertainment value to be found on any Ideas page).

I'm hopeful for your Pop-up Book. Also slightly irritated, because one of the projects I've had percolating in my mind for years is also a pop-up book, but that's my own fault for foot-dragging on building and submitting my projects, and yours is far from the first Ideas project I've seen that used a similar idea to one I've had but not submitted (another one I was beaten to was the Beatles' Yellow Submarine, and now that's actually becoming a set! Oh, well...). Anyway, congratulations on your well-earned success so far, and best of luck in the future (and I hope you'll resubmit your shamefully overlooked daVinci Flyer! I want to support it again).

[Robert8]

It seems the Fishing Shop has already a sequel: the Dive Shop

 

 

This guy just loves the sea too much 

Edited October 6, 2016 by Robert8

[Lyichir]

50 minutes ago, Robert8 said:

Agree.... I hope there is one in the works, because I don't really get why it didn't pass the review!

It has a good size, they already have the minifigure, the gingerbread houses are very popular during the holiday season, and they have almost a year to produce it for Christmas 2017

I think the reason for it being rejected is more likely to be that Lego DID make a gingerbread house just last year as a seasonal set. Yes, it wasn't minifigure-scale, but to be honest any project (including UCS Star Wars models) that are essentially just "something Lego's already done, but BIGGER" are probably going to have a tough time passing review. Lego Ideas, after all, is meant for finding fresh new ideas that Lego might not have otherwise considered producing, so anything that Lego has already produced before is already at a disadvantage.

Another factor that may have been involved is the fact that, unlike the fishing store, the gingerbread house didn't really have any interior to speak of. So apart from the building experience it'd function almost solely as a display piece.

In any case, I'll be interested to see how the final product of the Fishing Shop shapes up!

[RetroInferno]

Any IP Lego made products of are a no go with Ideas, I thought people were aware of the rules change.

 

[Alpinemaps]

11 minutes ago, RetroInferno said:

Any IP Lego made products of are a no go with Ideas, I thought people were aware of the rules change.

 

That's not the rule change.  The rule change was that once an IP has been approved in the Ideas process, then no more Ideas submissions from that IP will be accepted.

You can still submit Star Wars, or Ninjago, or Super Heroes, because there has never been an Ideas set based on those.  However, you can no longer submit a Doctor Who, Ghostbusters, or Back to the Future Ideas set because they have already had a successful Ideas submission.

[jonwil]

Great that the fishing shop got through and I want one.

As for the other things, I suspect the fossil museum got rejected because of the size, difficulty of making it into a set, requirement for so many different parts and also the fact that they did a dinosaur skeleton in the Research Institute set.

Gingerbread House probably got rejected because of the one they did previously or because they have their own plans for xmas/seasonal sets (gingerbread houses or otherwise) and they dont want to have this trying to fit in with those.

Jedi High Council Chamber was just too big, same with the Jurassic Park Visitor Centre. Modular Train Station was also likely too big (its certainly bigger than the fishing store and possibly bigger even than a regular TLG modular).

The particle accelerator has the problem of not being very appealing to kids plus the safety factor of having balls flying around that fast where they might fly off the track and hit someone. Plus the fact that (as far as I can tell) the only way to produce the track itself is to use 4.5v curved track parts which are long out of production and wont be comming back.

BB8 has the magnet safety problem.

And Johnny 5 might have had issues with licensing (i.e. TLG couldn't get the license for some reason) or it might have been too big or too difficult to make into a buildable set. Or TLG may have decided that it was too similar to the existing WALL-E set (which is still on the shelves/available)

[jonwil]

As for the next batch, Voltron makes sense if they can get the license and its not too big (I dont think there is anything TLG is doing or planning to do that it would conflict with).

Spaceballs will never happen for license reasons.

Addams Family Mansion is probably too big (it looks bigger than the Haunted House which was already fairly expensive).

Merchant House may be too big or complex or need too many pieces (it looks bigger than the fishing shop)

Large Hadron Collider just wont sell to anyone other than science geeks (things like the Mars Rover work because even non-geeks liked it and saw all the pictures of Mars on the news and stuff)

Observatory may be too big and/or too niche a project to make sense.

Modular Construction Site could work, it doesn't look like its that big and its an interesting subject matter with some play features (the crane and stuff). It may get rejected because TLG are doing more construction sets in their City line though and dont want this set to conflict with that.

Women of NASA has a chance of getting approved, it could be done similarly to the Research Lab. Although they would likely need permission to use the names/likeness of the specific women they use (unlike movies where such permission is generally granted by the actors as part of doing the film)

UCS Landspeeder just looks too big.

They already have a relationship with Volkswagen to produce sets so a Lamborghini in Ideas (cool though it is) may not make sense. Also its big (bigger than the Caterham from the look of it and even bigger than other large size car sets TLG have made) plus they may see a Lamborghini being too much of a competitor to the Ferrari F40 set (in ways the Caterham definitely isn't)

I think Lovelace and Babbage is cool but I am a computer geek and a fan of computing history. How many kids have even heard of them, let alone would be interested in a set like that?

Little House on the Prairie has the problem of the license (for a TV show from the late 70s/early 80s that kids have probably never heard of and even many adults probably dont remember) and the size.

 

The fishing shop made sense as it was a building that wasn't so big as to be unviable for Ideas plus it was something TLG would never make themselves in any regular line (not with building techniques like that), there is no license attached and it can probably be produced without a large number of new recolors or new prints.

[Sarah]

16 hours ago, jonwil said:

 

Little House on the Prairie has the problem of the license (for a TV show from the late 70s/early 80s that kids have probably never heard of and even many adults probably dont remember) and the size.

 

I assure you, Little House on the Prairie is Quite Well remembered among a significant segment of the adult population. WIth great fondness.  The books are still read. The reruns still show on TV and a book called Pioneer Girl:An Annotated Biography was recently published with extensive scholarship about the facts on each detail. I pre-ordered the book and it was so popular it took me 6 months past publishing date to receive my copy and I know others waited even longer.  It is now on its 9th printing (since 2014!)

https://pioneergirlproject.org/

There was recently a stage musical called Little House on the Prairie that toured the US:  Melissa Gilbert played Ma.

http://littlehouseontheprairie.com/about-us/little-house-on-the-prairie-the-musical/

There MAY be a movie in the works:

http://www.today.com/popculture/little-house-prairie-get-film-adaptation-paramount-studios-t69321

A recent article about Little House tourism: http://midwestweekends.com/plan_a_trip/history_heritage/ingalls_wilder/wilder_pageants.html  Several of the towns even have annual plays/festivities around the Ingalls/Wilder family stories.

 

 

Edited October 7, 2016 by Sarah

[Kaanere]

I think that  Lovelace and Babbage is the likeliest of the batch: science-related, unlicensed and not too big.

[x105Black]

44 minutes ago, Kaanere said:

I think that  Lovelace and Babbage is the likeliest of the batch: science-related, unlicensed and not too big.

I agree, and I think it serves the cause of feminism better than Women of NASA.

That said, I really want that Voltron set.

[jonwil]

Of whats in the next batch, I am interested in Voltron, Modular Construction Site, the Lamborghini and Lovelace & Babbage. And maybe the Observatory.

 

 

[Khscarymovie4]

Fishing store passing is a great surprise. The set might end up being one of my favorite Lego Ideas if it's as good as I think it will be.

[Taiphun]

Not sure if it's already been asked, but with all the submission ideas and the official releases, has anyone tried replicating the submitted models to compare with the Lego release?

I'm particularly interested in the Exo-Suit and the Caterham..  

[jonwil]

Even if Little House on the Prairie is popular with adults and stuff, its got none of the kid appeal that many of the other Ideas sets do. And even among adults, the overlap between Little House fans and LEGO fans is going to be a lot less than is the case for things like Big Bang Theory or Doctor Who.

I predict Little House will get rejected for much the same reasons Golden Girls got rejected.

 

In terms of items not yet in review but close to 10k, the boat repair shop (which has hit 10k) wont get approved because TLG are already doing the fishing shop by the same person (and this one is very similar).

The Agents of Shield set wont get made because its too big (even in light of the fishing store) plus Marvel isn't doing any merchandising for the show AFAIK (only for whichever of the Marvel movies they want to promote)

Hulkbuster UCS, they only recently did a Hulkbuster set and likely already have all their Marvel sets planned out for a while so I dont see this one being made.

Vintage Tram has possibilities (I like it and would probably consider buying one).

Venator Class Star Destroyer looks like its too big (looks Helicarrier sized if not bigger) and they already have their Star Wars stuff planned out so they probably wont do a Star Wars Ideas set unless its totally different to what they would normally do whilst still being possible under their license agreement.

Diner looks neat (it looks to me like it has elements of Googie architecture as well as Art Deco and Streamline Moderne) I just dont see it having the wide appeal necessary to make an Ideas set work.

Not sure Blues Brothers is popular enough with mainstream audiences to be suitable for a set.

Same thing with Red Dwarf (nowhere near as popular as Doctor Who).

Rey's speeder, again they have their own plans for UCS Star Wars sets and are unlikely to do something like this as an Ideas set.

 

[Robert8]

"Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. "The Bus" LEGO Set" from Savath_Bunny, achieved 10000 supporters today and it will be the next project to be rejected in the next review