LEGO Ideas Discussion

[TheBohrokMan]

I’m excited to support the bionicle entry.

[Legochaek]

By comparing current Lego ideas prices to the bricklink piece count, I’ve discovered that probably the lowest price of a set will be around £20 with most sets £100+. These are roundabout estimated figures, by the way.

 

(Current, non-licensed, no power functions Ideas sets)

Treehouse-179.99, 3036

Pirates of barracuda bay-179.99, 2545

Blacksmith-134.99, 2164

Apollo Saturn V-1969, £110

Ship in a bottle- 962, £69.99

Dinosaur fossils- 910, 54.99

ISS, 864, £64.99

WON-£19.99, 231

 

(Bricklink sets) 

Quest Builder 3347 pieces (£179+)

Safe 546 pieces (£40+)

Aquarium- 544 parts (£40+)

Anatomini- 2522 pieces (£150+)

Venetian houses-3672-(200+)

Science adventures 201-(£<19.99)

Space troopers 2622 (£179.99)

Seasons in Time 1405 (£90+)

Brickwest 2903 (£179+)

Waterfall 2150 (£120+)

Bowling alley 2458 (179.99+)

Dive shop 2334 (£179.99+)

Castle 1928 (£110+)

Boat house diner 2484 (£179.99+)

Exploratorium - 3173 (£179+)

Construction site 4249 (£300+???)

Windmill 2067 (£110+)

Boat 1470 (£<110)

Ruined house-4016 (£300+???)

Station 3825 (£300+???)

Kakapo 1843 (£<110)

Winter chalet 2628 (£179.99+)

Bionicle- no piece count yet

Pursuit of flight- no piece count yet

Boat repair- no piece count yet

Lego store- no piece count

Temple of Hermit- no piece count

Accelerator no piece count

Observatory- no piece count

 

 

 

 

Edited March 30, 2021 by Lego-fire

[RichardGoring]

That's awesome, but it assumes the same price per piece of a standard LEGO set. But these will be smaller production runs and possibly include more hand packing, removing some of the normal economies of scale. Plus a much higher proportion of the day cost going to the designer (10% vs 1%). Although, no printed instructions, no prints, and little/no marketing cost? Maybe it balances out?

 

What were the piece counts and costs of the original run a few years ago?

[jonwil]

The guy who did the calendar is in our LEGO club and he was talking about the Designer Program process at the BBQ we had last weekend and its clear from the things he had to say that these sets will have a higher price-per-piece than normal LEGO sets.

 

[RichardGoring]

Any thoughts on what? 10, 11, 12c per piece? More? At what level is it just better to buy the parts? About 20c pp?

[chill9394]

The most relevant price guide is probably round 1 of the AFOL designer program that Bricklink did back in 2018. The lowenstien castle was about 2000 pieces and priced at US$200.

Just noticed all of Robenanne's projects have now been archived, comments turned off and listed as no longer participating in the program. That is a real shame. Was really looking forward to getting at least one or two of his designs. I wonder if it is anything to do with him previously licensing those projects to bluebrixx.

[adwind]

22 minutes ago, chill9394 said:

The most relevant price guide is probably round 1 of the AFOL designer program that Bricklink did back in 2018. The lowenstien castle was about 2000 pieces and priced at US$200.

Just noticed all of Robenanne's projects have now been archived, comments turned off and listed as no longer participating in the program. That is a real shame. Was really looking forward to getting at least one or two of his designs. I wonder if it is anything to do with him previously licensing those projects to bluebrixx.

Oh no, the bat repair shops was my second favorite project! :(

Following this ratio, the Season in Time will be around 300$? Oh wow

[RichardGoring]

8 hours ago, chill9394 said:

The most relevant price guide is probably round 1 of the AFOL designer program that Bricklink did back in 2018. The lowenstien castle was about 2000 pieces and priced at US$200.

Just noticed all of Robenanne's projects have now been archived, comments turned off and listed as no longer participating in the program. That is a real shame. Was really looking forward to getting at least one or two of his designs. I wonder if it is anything to do with him previously licensing those projects to bluebrixx.

Useful pricing info, thanks. Suggests a 20-30% increase on the price you might expect if it came directly from LEGO, which is probably fair enough.

Really odd about Robenanne's sets. Surely they knew about the history before including them in the program? You can't get this far into it and then discover it, can you? Although the V-22 Osprey and City Crook's Hideout went even further, so what do I know?!

[Modal]

I find it hilarious how many Ideas sets have been made the past couple weeks that are literally just Medieval Blacksmith ripoffs with a few different colors and shapes. Gotta be a little more creative than that. 

Edited April 3, 2021 by Modal

[Merlo]

10 hours ago, Modal said:

I find it hilarious how many Ideas sets have been made the past couple weeks that are literally just Medieval Blacksmith ripoffs with a few different colors and shapes. Gotta be a little more creative than that. 

Pic or it never happened :)

[Blondie-Wan]

The First 2021 Review batch now has 45 projects!

[BrickG]

Anyone else think they should up the amount of votes required so we stop getting reviews with a ridiculous amount of projects? I don't even look at the reviews until the results anymore!

Make the vote count like 20k or something.

[Blondie-Wan]

1 hour ago, BrickG said:

Anyone else think they should up the amount of votes required so we stop getting reviews with a ridiculous amount of projects?

Why? I don’t get what purpose that would serve, whether for us or for LEGO.

[Modal]

16 hours ago, BrickG said:

Anyone else think they should up the amount of votes required so we stop getting reviews with a ridiculous amount of projects? I don't even look at the reviews until the results anymore!

Make the vote count like 20k or something.

10k or 20k isn’t going to change LEGO’s ultimate decision. Just because there’s 45 projects doesn’t mean LEGO is going to choose more or less. 

They’ll still deny all of them except the LEGO telescope or whatever wacky display piece is next to be covered.

[Merlo]

50 minutes ago, Modal said:

They’ll still deny all of them except the LEGO telescope or whatever wacky display piece is next to be covered. 

This hurts because it's true.

[Blondie-Wan]

A display piece is wacky? Maybe if it’s clown shoes...

It’s a bit of an odd statement to me because display pieces (if by which we mean large-scale, possibly functional recreations of real-world objects, like the globe, typewriter, piano, maze, etc.) make up a significant percentage of Ideas approvals, but not the largest; historically, the largest single category into which Ideas approvals fall is licensed pop-culture entertainment properties, and we’ve often had people in this very thread lament that so many licenses are produced. Other categories of project with lots of Ideas sets include vehicles, and real-life scientific exploration & discovery & research & education (particularly but not quite exclusively space exploration).

On the whole, though, Ideas has grown and expanded. The first few years, everything it yielded fell into one of three core categories (not necessarily by design, but still) - licensed pop-culture entertainment properties, vehicles, and/or scientific discovery and exploration and research - there were no sets over $50, none with Power Functions, no more than four sets a year, etc., and now every one of those barriers has been broken.

____________________________
 

48!!!  

[CopperTablet]

On the Bricklink site, TLG says "Due to other obligations the designer has had to withdraw this design from the program.   We hope that we will be able to work with the designer again in the future!"  for Robenanne's stuff.    I wonder if TLG's legal team told Robenanne to pound sand for two-timing them, or if Robenanne actually chose to stick with Bluebrixx's haphazard licensing of the designs.  It seems that clone brand UrGe straight up stole them from Robenanne's website, and then BlueBrixx struck a deal to pay Robenanne for the license to sell reboxed UrGe sets under the "BlueBrixx Pro" brand, and all of this happened before the sets were chosen for the AFOL Designer Program.

It's a total mess, and it means we'll never see these sets in official Lego form, unless you buy all the bricks for them yourself off Bricklink.

[Legochaek]

It would be cool if someone who has enough posts to make a poll could make one asking people on EB which Bricklink Designer Program set they’re going to pre-order, if any. 

[DadiTwins]

I just noticed that now, all the pics you upload for a Lego Idea must match 3:2 format, otherwise you are forced to crop them... I had all my renders with 1920x1080 (16:9) this really hurts... Does anybody know when this changed?

[adwind]

28 minutes ago, DadiTwins said:

I just noticed that now, all the pics you upload for a Lego Idea must match 3:2 format, otherwise you are forced to crop them... I had all my renders with 1920x1080 (16:9) this really hurts... Does anybody know when this changed?

I guess this relates only to your main image, doesn't it? 

[DadiTwins]

1 hour ago, adwind said:

I guess this relates only to your main image, doesn't it? 

That is what I thought at first, but nope, it affects the 15 images you are allowed to upload!

[adwind]

24 minutes ago, DadiTwins said:

That is what I thought at first, but nope, it affects the 15 images you are allowed to upload!

Well at least they haven't touched existing projects! :) 

[Blondie-Wan]

49!!!

[Toastie]

On 4/6/2021 at 5:03 PM, DadiTwins said:

all the pics you upload for a Lego Idea must match 3:2 format

Well they are always in for something special at TLG, right? ... 10V DC charging wall warts, no one else uses in the known parts of at least this universe, these weird plugs and sockets - no wait, that was solely for safety reasons ... but wait, wait, wait 3x2 sounds very familiar, need to check, back in a minute.

Yeap, I know why that is: They are running their Ideas program on Sinclair ZX Spectrums: 32 columns x 22 lines. Close enough. Each line/column is 8/8 pixels. They are simply saving storage space here! Each Spectrum high-res screen-shot is 8kByte only. 1982 was a good year for high-res ...

Just kidding. Was a long day here. 3x2 sounds really weird. Sorry to hear that you now have to do a lot of work, because simple cropping will be no option, right?

Need to get a beer or two

Have a nice weekend,
Thorsten

[RichardGoring]

All Microsoft Surface computers have a 3:2 aspect ratio. But I suspect it's not that. Maybe it's the classic photography source ratio they're going for. Or just trying to make the images slightly more mobile friendly, as people never seen to rotate their phones, but they don't want to go all the way to the Instagram square.