LEGO Ideas Discussion

[dr_spock]

Of the 3 cars that got to 10k, the Corvette is the one I would buy. Not the LandCruiser or the Caterham.

Now if that Cruiser was the pickup variant, it would be different...

And if it would come with a Russian ZU-23 AA gun in the back. Mostly like would have to MOC something like that.

[CM4Sci]

Oddest thing this weekend, I was at the Mall of America LEGO Store this weekend, and as I was walking past it, I looked through those little window displays. One had that Petit Prince Ideas model in it, if not that, then something extremely similar, with the plane and all. Is the guy who made it from Minnesota?

Edited October 13, 2015 by CM4Sci

[Sir Stig]

Love it!

There are many cool cars on Lego Ideas review stage (Corvette, Caterham). I would like them all, but they would saturate the market. There are aslo the Creator Expert cars.

I would bet for the 'vette and maybe this one.

I would only buy the Caterham of those, because I think it is a better build. More realistic, more technical details and a wonderful showpiece that non-Lego fans could appreciate (Also, I think I would be allowed to have it on display in the living room).

[BlueberryWaffles]

Oddest thing this weekend, I was at the Mall of America LEGO Store this weekend, and as I was walking past it, I looked through those little window displays. One had that Petit Prince Ideas model in it, if not that, then something extremely similar, with the plane and all. Is the guy who made it from Minnesota?

I was just down there last weekend to pick up a Hobbit set and I didn't see that, it must be new. Interesting, I know sometimes Lego Stores have featured MOCs from local AFOLs.

[Robert8]

My god they are really having a hard time with that review

It's almost November and still nothing

[XAxles]

My god they are really having a hard time with that review

It's almost November and still nothing

It's becoming a tighter contest. The larger candidate sets look as good as a D2C lineup that's good for two, even four, years, barring Star Wars and the Fairground sub-theme for Creator Expert.

[CM4Sci]

Just a guess, but maybe the winner could be Adventure Time seeing as there's a rumor of some Dimensions sets with the initials AT.

I personally hope the winner isn't any of those cars, cars are so boring. The physics thing to me is too similar to the Marble Maze set (whenever that's coming out)

[Blondie-Wan]

The Adventure Time project is in the batch after the one we're waiting on results for, so it'll be a few more months before we know about that one. I do hope it gets approved, though.

[XAxles]

I personally hope the winner isn't any of those cars, cars are so boring. The physics thing to me is too similar to the Marble Maze set (whenever that's coming out)

BURN THE HERETIC!!!

Really, if it's not the cars, it may just be either of the UCS dinos that will make it, or, disappointingly, Golden Girls.

[Kaanere]

I personally hope the winner isn't any of those cars, cars are so boring. The physics thing to me is too similar to the Marble Maze set (whenever that's coming out)

Something that I and XaxelsX disagree.

I simply need that 'vette.

[AyliffeMakit]

and the winner is...

https://ideas.lego.com/blogs/1-blog/post/46

... nobody!

[Ordinareo]

and the winner is...

https://ideas.lego.c.../1-blog/post/46

... nobody!

None? How? Science Adventures looked like the most likely to pass. But none? What?

Edited October 30, 2015 by Ordinareo

[tomdobs55]

I'm surprised the ISS didn't pass. Most of them seemed like rediculous long shots.

[Umbra-Manis]

Ridiculous!

[XAxles]

Whoa whoa whoa whoa wait a bloody-useless second. None of the proposals, not even the ISS, got through?

.

.

.

.

That's vexing.

• Other projects sometimes come too close to a number of the products that the LEGO Group already has today or has plans for the near future.
  

Looks like there will be a blue '69 Corvette OR a UCS ISS as a D2C, or at least those ones are I think will be the ones that will most likely end up becoming sets after 2 years max (TLG has a Chevy license now thanks to Speed Champs, while the ISS will probably come up in an anniversary).

• Some projects can challenge the rules we have on safe and good building experience for all LEGO builders. We can also have difficulties simply producing some of the larger projects with the production capacity we have for LEGO Ideas.
  

And there you go, coming from the mouth of Ideas themselves.

[BrickBob Studpants]

Well, Science Adventures is rather similar to the Research Institute Ideas set and Little Yellow would have needed Nathan Sawayas consent, so I'm not really surprised that those two didn't make it. The rest also heavily depended on license agreements, so no surprise there either.

To be honest, this sort of thing happening was simply a matter of time

[dr_spock]

It is bounded to happen at some point. The stars didn't line up.

[mediumsnowman]

That's too bad. I would have bought the Titanic.

[CM4Sci]

Ow, what a waste of time.

I don't think anybody would buy that Golden Girls set, how that got 10000 supporters baffles me.

None of the other sets really interest me. Zelda... people gotta stop trying, this is the 3rd/4th project that's been rejected. There should also be a limit to how many pieces a submission can have - really tired of seeing these amazing, giant MOCs with like 10000 pieces getting the supporters knowing they're automatically going to be rejected.

The Science thing, too similar to the Research set. Also, Atalariel or whatever her name is does not need a 3rd winning set. Give others a chance, eh?

I'm still confident Adventure Time will be a winner. Not only because I personally sort of like it, but it's the only set I think kids would like, hence why they're probably adding it to Dimensions. The rest are either too big or retired themes. Oh, and a car.

Edited October 30, 2015 by CM4Sci

[legoman19892]

Well, Science Adventures is rather similar to the Research Institute Ideas set and Little Yellow would have needed Nathan Sawayas consent, so I'm not really surprised that those two didn't make it. The rest also heavily depended on license agreements, so no surprise there either.

To be honest, this sort of thing happening was simply a matter of time

Didnt Nathan Himself submit the project?

[Blondie-Wan]

Didnt Nathan Himself submit the project?

He did. I suspect that one was one of the ones declined on the "building experience" grounds - generally, LEGO instructions give precise positioning instructions for every brick, rather than leaving a third or so of them spilling randomly out of the model into a pile in front. Alternately, they might not have been able to reach a satisfactory licensing agreement with Sawaya. His 1% net sales royalty as a LEGO Ideas project creator shouldn't be a point of contention, but it's possible that as the famous artist who created the original sculpture on which this set would have been based, he might've wanted a higher licensing fee than LEGO would've been comfortable giving him in addition to the standard Ideas royalty.

Science Adventures might have been declined for either the building experience reason (since it's such a small project with a modest build), or for being too similar to an existing product, which of course would be the original Research Institute. That set and this project are now just two of a fair slew of projects consisting of small vignettes showing scientist minifigures in their natural environments, and they might have decided they don't want to foster the impression they'll just automatically give rubber stamp approval to all such projects. Note that The Big Bang Theory is actually kind of similar itself, differing only in being a licensed fictional property, in showing scientists at home rather than at work, and in having a single, larger diorama rather than three tiny ones. If those three differences are set aside, Science Adventures would have been the third consecutive project from the same creator based around the same core concept for a LEGO set, and the previous two were both approved already, with the second one still being widely available.

The Corvette could conceivably be close to a similar model already in development; alternately, it might conflict with their existing licensing agreement with Chevrolet for the Speed Champions theme.

The Frozen project is pretty clearly too fundamentally similar to an existing set, even if the build details differ.

All in all, it's disappointing, but it does at least settle once and for all a question that's occasionally been raised about whether they'd ever have a review results announcement where nothing passed. It's worth noting this actually wasn't the first whole review batch with no approved projects, though - the review where they approved the Female Minifigure Set that became the Research Institute also had a whole review batch with no approved projects (the Female Minifigure Set had been held over from a previous batch).

[rodiziorobs]

TL;DR: long post ahead. Also, I posted the same on Brickset, so my apologies if you already had to slog through this

T. Rex would have been impossible to reproduce faithfully without some significant overhaul to make it more stable, and even then it would have been an issue. Ideas doesn't want another Wall-E debacle.

Corvette would steal customers from the Ferrari model they currently (and possibly for the next two years) produce. I bet we see one eventually. ISS, Titanic, and DC-3, besides being large (but not prohibitively so, unless IDEAS has vastly different production limits) also fall into this category. It seems like TLG only keeps two model-scale vehicles in production at a time, although I may be wrong on that. These are projects that could have been produced at some point (possibly excepting the Titanic), but timing was bad, and if TLG did make them, would probably prefer to not release them under the IDEAS banner. The same could be said for the MMV twin; TLG would rather produce a model like that on their own (when they get around to making historical castles again).

Frozen, Sawaya, Daft Punk, Zelda, and Discworld likely all have IP issues: either from preexisting agreements, inability to reach an agreement (I can see TLG groaning about having to license a project already made out of their own bricks), brand fit, conflicting licenses (not Zelda specifically, but other Nintendo IPs; Nintendo is notoriously picky about its licensees), and Pratchett's estate being handled right now; that might be more of a timing issue than a rights issue, though.

Is there even a market for GG? We were all surprised when BBT landed a set, but that show is still on the air, and references/reverences Lego on occasion. It's no surprise an old sitcom with little overlap to the Lego-buying crowd didn't pass.

I guess Science adventures is the only semi-surprise here, although after all the headaches before with RI--pressure from feminist groups, bad (both negative and/or misguided) press, and production issues--I'm not too surprised they didn't want to have to wade through that again. Also, passing it could have sent a message/set a precedent to make it hard for TLG to refuse similar projects down the road.

I think Ideas has always been a flawed model for creative concept generation, because it doesn't value creativity or marketability so much as popularity (those last two are not the same thing). Then there are all those complaints about how many low quality projects there are that clutter up the site.

My solution would be to have a "like" threshold before you can even submit a project to IDEAS. Make your project, put it on social media, and once it has 100+ (or some other number) likes or retweets, then you can submit it to IDEAS. If you can't rally 100 people on FB or Instagram or something, there is no way you'll be able to do it on IDEAS. That would clear out a lot of the clutter, and prove that IDEAS projects are at least somewhat popular, since that is pretty much all the vote process indicates anyway.

Edited October 30, 2015 by rodiziorobs

[legoman19892]

TL;DR: long post ahead. Also, I posted the same on Brickset, so my apologies if you already had to slog through this

T. Rex would have been impossible to reproduce faithfully without some significant overhaul to make it more stable, and even then it would have been an issue. Ideas doesn't want another Wall-E debacle.

Corvette would steal customers from the Ferrari model they currently (and possibly for the next two years) produce. I bet we see one eventually. ISS, Titanic, and DC-3, besides being large (but not prohibitively so, unless IDEAS has vastly different production limits) also fall into this category. It seems like TLG only keeps two model-scale vehicles in production at a time, although I may be wrong on that. These are projects that could have been produced at some point (possibly excepting the Titanic), but timing was bad, and if TLG did make them, would probably prefer to not release them under the IDEAS banner. The same could be said for the MMV twin; TLG would rather produce a model like that on their own (when they get around to making historical castles again).

Frozen, Sawaya, Daft Punk, Zelda, and Discworld likely all have IP issues: either from preexisting agreements, inability to reach an agreement (I can see TLG groaning about having to license a project already made out of their own bricks), brand fit, conflicting licenses (not Zelda specifically, but other Nintendo IPs; Nintendo is notoriously picky about its licensees), and Pratchett's estate being handled right now; that might be more of a timing issue than a rights issue, though.

Is there even a market for GG? We were all surprised when BBT landed a set, but that show is still on the air, and references/reverences Lego on occasion. It's no surprise an old sitcom with little overlap to the Lego-buying crowd didn't pass.

I guess Science adventures is the only semi-surprise here, although after all the headaches before with RI--pressure from feminist groups, bad (both negative and/or misguided) press, and production issues--I'm not too surprised they didn't want to have to wade through that again. Also, passing it could have sent a message/set a precedent to make it hard for TLG to refuse similar projects down the road.

I think Ideas has always been a flawed model for creative concept generation, because it doesn't value creativity or marketability so much as popularity (those last two are not the same thing). Then there are all those complaints about how many low quality projects there are that clutter up the site.

My solution would be to have a "like" threshold before you can even submit a project to IDEAS. Make your project, put it on social media, and once it has 100+ (or some other number) likes or retweets, then you can submit it to IDEAS. If you can't rally 100 people on FB or Instagram or something, there is no way you'll be able to do it on IDEAS. That would clear out a lot of the clutter, and prove that IDEAS projects are at least somewhat popular, since that is pretty much all the vote process indicates anyway.

The like threshold proposal can be easily manipulated.

[Kaanere]

Well, I had hopes for the Corvette....

Let's hope that lego releases another cool D2C car next summer.

Edited October 30, 2015 by Kaanere

[Blondie-Wan]

T. Rex would have been impossible to reproduce faithfully without some significant overhaul to make it more stable, and even then it would have been an issue. Ideas doesn't want another Wall-E debacle.

Definitely a possibility. Actually, I'd bet this is very likely what killed the ISS. The inherent structure of the subject material would make for a delicate, unwieldy LEGO build incapable of supporting its own weight (much like the real ISS, if it were brought down to Earth). It would require external support at multiple points. That's fine for a MOCer who accepts that it would either have to be attached to a base with not just one but several different support pylons, distributed across multiple mounting points, or suspended from wires, again from multiple points. But TLG surely doesn't want to sell a set that requires that kind of treatment.

Is there even a market for GG? We were all surprised when BBT landed a set, but that show is still on the air, and references/reverences Lego on occasion. It's no surprise an old sitcom with little overlap to the Lego-buying crowd didn't pass.

I'm not so sure. Where's your data saying there's little overlap - are you just assuming it? You might think it's a joke, but... well, Golden Girls was actually an immensely popular sitcom back in the day, with an audience demographic far beyond the demographics of senior women who made up the principal cast, and it ran for many years and continues to run in syndication. And LEGO itself has fandom made up of more than just kids, as everyone here knows well. It has to mean something that the project hit its vote goal so amazingly quickly - far faster even than most projects that have actually gotten approved. Yes, I know that's because of the wild success the creator had in attracting publicity, but it still counts. I do think the set could actually sell well, regardless of the fact the subject matter is so far outside TLG's usual fare - heck, I'd buy it, even though I'm not a particular fan of the show, just for the build and parts. It's worth noting that last time I checked, there were at least three different Golden Girls projects on Ideas, all by different people (and all attracting votes), which certainly suggests there's some overlap between the fandoms of GG and LEGO, bizarre as that might seem.

I half-wonder whether the Ideas team might have been reluctant to approve it because the project is exceedingly similar to another, older Golden Girls project; the two are closer to one another than the two Ghostbusters Ectomobile projects that wound up in the same review batch were to each other, as well as the two Doctor Who TARDIS projects that wound up sharing another review batch with one another. The older one didn't get the huge publicity of the later one, though, and thus didn't collect votes so quickly. But it seems impossible to look at both and not at least entertain the possibility the later one simply copied the earlier one (though to his/her credit, the earlier project's creator appears to have given the later creator the benefit of doubt, and has expressed pleasure over simply seeing a project based on the subject matter do well at all). Perhaps TLG is waiting to see if the other, older project makes it.

Alternately, since this would be a licensed project, perhaps they simply weren't able to come to terms with the rightsholders. Their specific mention of that in this very announcement as a reason why some projects are declined does suggest it's what happened with at least one of these, and it would presumably be one for one of the properties they're not already licensing (which rules out Frozen, Chevrolet, etc., as well as all the non-licensed stuff). Perhaps it happened with Golden Girls.

I think Ideas has always been a flawed model for creative concept generation, because it doesn't value creativity or marketability so much as popularity (those last two are not the same thing).

Marketability and popularity may not be the same thing, but they're close enough / sufficiently interrelated that they're worth thinking about that way. And while it's true the most popular projects may not be the ones with the most creative or satisfying builds, popularity is still very important, because ultimately this whole venture is supposed to be a money-making enterprise for TLG. Pop-culture licenses and other popular subjects sell, whatever we might think of them from a creative LEGO construction standpoint, and since Ideas is ultimately more about business proposals than a building contest, it has to take that into consideration. I'm truly glad it's not the only criterion, and that we do get things like Birds, which is just a lovely set of builds, but we can't forget that TLG wants to make money.

Then there are all those complaints about how many low quality projects there are that clutter up the site.

My solution would be to have a "like" threshold before you can even submit a project to IDEAS. Make your project, put it on social media, and once it has 100+ (or some other number) likes or retweets, then you can submit it to IDEAS. If you can't rally 100 people on FB or Instagram or something, there is no way you'll be able to do it on IDEAS. That would clear out a lot of the clutter, and prove that IDEAS projects are at least somewhat popular, since that is pretty much all the vote process indicates anyway.

I really don't think this is a problem requiring solving; in fact, to be honest, with all due respect I for one would find your "solution" to be a much, much bigger problem than the one it was supposedly addressing.