Voting for Licensed IDEAS projects are not a lost cause :-)

[HJR-Holland]

Interesting read at the LEGO IDEAS page on Cavegod reaching 5000 votes for his epic UCS AT-AT:

"While we welcome projects based on current licenses like Star Wars in the LEGO Review, please keep in mind that a project based on an existing LEGO license has a smaller chance of passing the LEGO Review than other projects".

That means that, different than what some claim in various LEGO forums, voting for licensed products is not a lost vote per sé. That's good news for those who have Star Wars (or other licensed) projects on the LEGO IDEAS website.

Would this influence your willingness to vote for, or upload, projects that are licensed such as Star Wars?

[Csacsa234]

It's just enough to look at the recent Cuusoo/Lego Ideas sets. Back to the Future, Ghostbusters, Minecraft, of course licensed creations are not a lost cause.

[TheLegoDr]

Licensed themes sells toys. The CEO (or someone) said so in an interview. Yes, licensed will work. No reason to not vote for them.

This is saying it is really unlikely to get a set passed review that is already under a license LEGO has. There is a chance they were going to come up with that set anyway so it makes no sense for them to give someone else the money when they would do it in-house and keep that money. They came out with an AT-AT for this summer. No it isn't the same set, but they would never produce that large of a UCS model anyway so it doesn't matter.

[VK-318]

No it isn't the same set, but they would never produce that large of a UCS model anyway so it doesn't matter.

Maybe not. After all, the Taj Mahal from a while back had nearly as many parts. The issue would be whether or not they think they can sell enough of a given idea to make it profitable, and since the market for huge, likely expensive UCS sets is pretty limited, the mere presence of 10,000 votes may well represent a large enough potential market for LEGO to give it a shot. This isn't a very large set in its total dimensions, either, when compared with, the Death Star II or Executor models, so I'd say that if Cavegod's AT-AT gets the full number of votes, it may well get the green light - when LEGO goes looking for more UCS models to produce. That may take a while, but it's by no means a lost cause.

And speaking more generally, I don't think there's any reason to not vote for a set that you would like to see LEGO make. After all, so far as I can tell there's no limit on votes you can cast or any cost to voting, so the idea of a vote being wasted makes no sense to me. I may be wrong about that; if so, please correct me.

[rob-cubed]

Assault on Wayne Manor.

https://ideas.lego.com/projects/50007

I'm really, really hoping that particular set gets approved under the existing Batman license. However I'm afraid this and the AT-AT you posted are less likely to be approved for two reasons. The first is that LEGO may already have a similar project underway, so they would be unwilling to underwrite an external project that would compete with it. The second is their sheer size... to date the approved "Idea" sets have been small and exposed LEGO to less financial risk.

It's pretty clear that there's a ton of momentum starting to build behind "Ideas" so perhaps we will see large, licensed sets in the near future. Fingers crossed.

[Mr Man]

"While we welcome projects based on current licenses like Star Wars in the LEGO Review, please keep in mind that a project based on an existing LEGO license has a smaller chance of passing the LEGO Review than other projects".

Less of a chance to pass.

[Brickdoctor]

It's just enough to look at the recent Cuusoo/Lego Ideas sets. Back to the Future, Ghostbusters, Minecraft, of course licensed creations are not a lost cause.

Those weren't existing licenses; this is referring to licenses such as Star Wars, where there's already a license in place and the other party already has some say in what sets get made.

I wouldn't read too much into this; it's mostly just a restatement of what we already knew: that the chance of a concept from an existing license becoming a set is very small. This comment on cavegod's project seems more like the Ideas people trying to be encouraging and acknowledging that it's a concept worthy of being a set but while also "letting the creator down gently" in expectation of the fact that these concepts usually don't pass the review.

And speaking more generally, I don't think there's any reason to not vote for a set that you would like to see LEGO make. After all, so far as I can tell there's no limit on votes you can cast or any cost to voting, so the idea of a vote being wasted makes no sense to me. I may be wrong about that; if so, please correct me.

I agree with this. The whole idea behind Ideas is that you vote for concepts you like so that TLG can get an idea of what fans want. If you try to be too strategic with what you do or don't vote for because you think or don't think the project will pass, then you're, in a way, making the system less effective and less important, and making it harder for TLG to judge what you actually want.

[Master_Data]

I would definitely vote for it. Maybe LEGO will realize we want this and produce it; even if it is not based on the Ideas submission, LEGO can still use this as marketing data to provide sets for us in the future (I hope).

[HJR-Holland]

Well, it's good to see everyone is in good sprit to vote for existing licensed projects. The point of starting this topic was that in the past I've seen a lot of lethargic to negative feedback on posting Star Wars Cuusoo projects where people said 'it's Star Wars, so it won't make it because it's licensed, so I won't vote' and then many times use the UCS Sandcrawler as their smoking gun, as that one didn't make it.

We do know now that with development time being about 2-3 years for a LEGO set, LEGO already had a UCS-esque Sandcrawler in the works, and the Cuusoo project was well thought off, but ill-timed, and so turned down. It was however not turned down for being a Star Wars licensed set. And with the comment of LEGO for Cavegod's project the thought of Star Wars (or other existing licensed projects for that matter) not making it per sé is out of the window. And I find that good news. What LEGO did instead was to warn that a similar situation could arise with the UCS AT-AT: at the time someone launched a project LEGO started off developing a UCS AT-AT themselves, and this could cross one-another. In fact, I would be rather disappointed if LEGO wouldn't have looked at a UCS AT-AT in the 15+ years they've been working on LEGO Star Wars sets

Maybe the quarterly results later this year LEGO will enforce LEGO to make other decisions concerning new projects based on existing licenses, but for now I'm keeping my hopes up

Edited May 14, 2014 by HJR-Holland

[Robianco]

My bigger issue is how Cuusoo is used full stop. Maybe changing it to Ideas is actually more accurate to how it might be used.

When it comes to something like the Sandcrawler, that's a perfect example of what I mean. The submission was beautiful... it really was. But it was at the point of being too large for a release. It was a wonderful MOC but not practical as a Lego product at that size. The 10,000 votes maybe highlighted just how popular the set was... however advanced Lego's plans for the current UCS version.

I just get the feeling that Cuusoo was being used as a way of getting 'likes' for a MOC rather than any realists chance of something being put into production. I must admit... my heart sinks a little when I see a really well made MOC and then underneath there's a link to support it on Cuusoo. Great MOCs don't need recognition via 'likes' or 'high fives' on Cuusoo... Not unless they were designed for the specific purpose of being a retail set... and that's a whole different thing to factor into a MOC.

The Theed Hangar that's featured in the new book is an outstanding MOC... It's fantastic... and it might race to 10,000 votes but I don't see it ever being produced... maybe one fighter with some wall space or equipment for some Naboo Security to hide behind and some Droidekkas... but not the whole thing. The 10,000 votes might just serve the purpose or letting Lego, or indeed Disney, know that a TPM set is still popular... if they actually needed confirmation!

A Helicarrier is a perfect example of how something so utterly huge could get 10,000 votes in no time but would never sell 10,000 times as the cost would be well over £1000 for one even remotely resembling the MOC submission. I bet the people voting like the IDEA of it... but would have neither the financial capacity... or the space... to get one. If and when it got reduced down to a practical size people would then complain it's a shadow of the original submission.

I also got a bit of stick for saying that some submissions were lazy in a previous thread. I don't care how well made a MOC is... how clever the design... but if you're taking an existing item from a licensed set and recreating it larger or smaller then the IDEA can be considered lazy in my opinion. We've had AT-ATs, We've had Batmobile Tumblers, We've had BatCaves... If it exists then the idea itself isn't particularly exciting is it? The MOC could be breathtaking but for me the cleverer submission is something that excites in the same way yet is viable as a realistic system scale or UCS scale release (and that doesn't mean a 15,000 brick X Mansion with 32 minifigures).

The AT-AT highlighted in this thread looks just a touch too large to go into production at this size... it's fantastic, don't get me wrong, but it would need changing to be released. Maybe just the timing is wrong with the new system scale version... I certainly hope something like this gets released at some point. I think all of us SW fans hope for these things but if Lego were to put out a UCS AT-AT then it doesn't actually need submissions to Cuusoo to do it. It wouldn't surprise me if there was a UCS AT-AT constructed at Billund at some point in the last few years for consideration... I don't think it's something that needs 10,000 'likes' to make it real.