LEGO Ideas Discussion

[ArturFer]

After I have ordered the Castle, I have read on, the set will be released on January of 2022.

This is disgusting, I have suppossed to get my exclusive construction before this november... Why do they need too much time?

Edited July 1, 2021 by ArturFer

[tomorrowboy]

2 hours ago, Wesley D said:

I really hope it lasts longer than the Vintage Car in january. Having experienced today's Bricklink fiasco, I already feel stressed out just thinking about trying to get the ship!

I'm still frustrated about missing out on the Vintage Car. 😢

For the designer preorders:

• Sheriff's Safe is sold out everywhere but Asia/Oceana. 
• Pursuit of Flight is sold out in Europe.
• Pursuit of Flight and Kakapo also hit 3000, so Bionicle and Particle Accelerator are out of luck.

I think letting people buy up to five of each set is kind of ridiculous tbh.

Edited July 1, 2021 by tomorrowboy

[Scarilian]

Well that was a complete and utter disaster. Castle sold out within minutes and the amount of people trying to pre-order the sets in general crashed Bricklink's servers (Something Lego and Bricklink acknowledged). Bionicle suffered massively as the pre-ordering broke almost completely for those in the US who were unable to place orders and eventually gave up, sadly trolls are trying to use it as an excuse for why Bionicle should never be brought back

They need a better system in future so that sets of a similar price range are put in categories so that the cheaper sets don't immediately win and exclude more expensive sets. They also need to handle the servers a lot better. Think this entire thing has just left the community frustrated and disappointed.

[tomorrowboy]

29 minutes ago, Scarilian said:

Think this entire thing has just left the community frustrated and disappointed.

Ah yes, the Lego motto. 😅

[JintaiZ]

4 hours ago, TeriXeri said:

So Creator Expert just got a classic Farm truck with vegetables and a milk can, and currently theres a minifig farm with such a truck in review, hmm.

That could be a possibility.

But I wouldn't be surprised if LEGO has already quietly rejected the Ideas project...

Edited July 2, 2021 by JintaiZ

[Lord Insanity]

I have been saving up several hundred dollars for a few months waiting for the Bricklink "put your money where your mouth is" Ideas program.  I get home from work and find the only two projects out of the seven available that I wanted were sold out ?!  The entire point of crowd funding and pre-paying is so they know how many to make.  A hard limit of 5,000?  I would have expected 5,000 to be the minimum number to even produce the things.  I could see a hard limit of 5,000,000 due to logistics but 5,000 from the number one toy company in the world.  Yeah right. 

You know what the LEGO company has achieved here.  They have completely destroyed any moral reservations I have about just buying the inevitable Chinese bootlegs of the sets I wanted.  Ironically the dark red bootleg parts are likely to be better quality than the dark red LEGO parts anyway. 

[Friscorays]

6 hours ago, Scarilian said:

Well that was a complete and utter disaster. Castle sold out within minutes and the amount of people trying to pre-order the sets in general crashed Bricklink's servers (Something Lego and Bricklink acknowledged). Bionicle suffered massively as the pre-ordering broke almost completely for those in the US who were unable to place orders and eventually gave up, sadly trolls are trying to use it as an excuse for why Bionicle should never be brought back

They need a better system in future so that sets of a similar price range are put in categories so that the cheaper sets don't immediately win and exclude more expensive sets. They also need to handle the servers a lot better. Think this entire thing has just left the community frustrated and disappointed.

It seems unlikely that the site glitches disproportionately effected Bionicle fans.  I think the fact that the Bionicle and particle accelerator sets lagged behind the other offerings is an accurate indicator of relative interest in each of the sets.  This may or may be a good gauge of the viability of Bionicle and Physics as possible future themes as people were only asked to put their money where their mouths are for the particular fan designed examples in question.  Even so, I imagine even the two excluded sets would have achieved support if they had remained available to order for the remaining 40 or so days.

As to price playing a factor, the most expensive set (Castle) sold out first followed by the second most expensive set (fishing boat) so I don't think that can be pointed to as a significant factor in the fact that the Bionicle and accelerator sets did not do as all as the other offerings in this particular pre-order game.  If asked to place a bet ahead of time, I would have been very confident that the accelerator set would gather the least support in this group and I am not particularly surprised Bionicle was not that far ahead of it.

Edited July 2, 2021 by Friscorays

[Vlado_sk]

Well so... there is only 5000 sets to become produced from one project. One person can pre-order 5 - so in the worst case there is chance only for 1000 people. And the biggest mistake  - not worldwide, but separately in world locations. Now, when Im writing this comment I could order "Pursuit of Flight" because there is sold like 4500/ 5000 but I CANT because of locations.

 

Like.. huh? Doesnt it looks weird to you, Lego?

 

I mean... I know there should be some exclusivity for these projects... but ...WTF. There are thousands of companies with less profit, lower number of employees and better MANAGEMENT like you.

 

Im really dissapointed.

EDIT: And Im not complaining because of miss something (sets i want werent in this 1st crowdfunding) but I can feel others, who were in work for example.

 

Edited July 2, 2021 by Vlado_sk

[Merlo]

I mean, I'd join the complaints, but those sets are not even available in my country and most of the world so... I guess all the voting and hoping was for nothing.

[Lira_Bricks]

I am out of the loop... Was this for why we had to vote for a theme to bring back? I looked on ideas.lego.com but could not find anything about any Bionicle or Castle themes recently posted...

Does someone have an article or something with more information?

[Scarilian]

6 hours ago, Friscorays said:

It seems unlikely that the site glitches disproportionately effected Bionicle fans. 

Bionicle was the only product listed with several hundred comments from those in the US about being unable to pre-order the set.

Other aspects were also a factor, but the glitch did disproportionately affect the Bionicle set and it was never fixed for the Bionicle set.

34 minutes ago, Lira_Bricks said:

I am out of the loop... Was this for why we had to vote for a theme to bring back? I looked on ideas.lego.com but could not find anything about any Bionicle or Castle themes recently posted...

Does someone have an article or something with more information?

Some of the Lego Ideas sets were given a second chance via Bricklink.

[ProfSrlojohn]

54 minutes ago, Scarilian said:

Other aspects were also a factor, but the glitch did disproportionately affect the Bionicle set and it was never fixed for the Bionicle set.

I also have seen on several forums that a lot of people thought they would either A) have more time to order in the week when paychecks/time/ etc. were more available, or B) were at work and couldn't order immediately.

I think what killed it for Bio, as well as some of the others like the PA, was the hard 5-set limit. Logically, if they know they need a minimum of 3000 in order to turn a profit on any of these sets, therefore it shouldn't matter how many do or don't reach it, it just needs to reach it. I understand an upper time limit, but a limit in product number only makes sense if lego is only giving them enough resources to do so. I don't think BL, or anyone else expected all 5 to fill up within a day, considering they gave us about 48 days to do it.

[Friscorays]

1 hour ago, Lira_Bricks said:

I am out of the loop... Was this for why we had to vote for a theme to bring back? I looked on ideas.lego.com but could not find anything about any Bionicle or Castle themes recently posted...

Does someone have an article or something with more information?

https://www.bricklink.com/v3/designer-program/introducing.page

[karmajay]

It feels they really underestimated the demand for Ideas sets. Even the 2 that did not make the cut only missed because the others hit the min limit first. Another week and they all would have made it most likely and definitely hit the max within 40 days.

It seems Lego could make extra money if they just created small batches of ALL the Ideas sets that make it through the 10k and had creators willing to go through this design type process. They could still pick Ideas sets to mass produce but allow pre-orders for the ones that don't make it, money up from just like a lot of figure companies do like Good Smile, AmiAmi etc etc. Even T-shirt companies have shirts where they'll throw up a design and they won't produce it unless a certain number purchase the shirt. 

[Lira_Bricks]

1 hour ago, Friscorays said:

https://www.bricklink.com/v3/designer-program/introducing.page

Thank you :) Well... as someone who liked Bionicle, I would not have wanted that set anyway...

[adwind]

They only let 5 projects per batch because of  production capabilities. Otherwise we would wait the releases not till 2022 but till 2023... 

[MAB]

3 hours ago, karmajay said:

It feels they really underestimated the demand for Ideas sets. Even the 2 that did not make the cut only missed because the others hit the min limit first. Another week and they all would have made it most likely and definitely hit the max within 40 days.

It seems Lego could make extra money if they just created small batches of ALL the Ideas sets that make it through the 10k and had creators willing to go through this design type process. They could still pick Ideas sets to mass produce but allow pre-orders for the ones that don't make it, money up from just like a lot of figure companies do like Good Smile, AmiAmi etc etc. Even T-shirt companies have shirts where they'll throw up a design and they won't produce it unless a certain number purchase the shirt. 

There is a difference between printing a tee shirt and picking and packing boxes of a thousand or so lego parts. 

[gza]

On 7/1/2021 at 12:56 PM, Terrasher said:

Has anyone paid with PayPal? I'm wondering whether the payment authorization will expire before the order is completed, since no charge will be made until the item is shipped in six months.

 

23 hours ago, mvLego said:

That's how I paid and I have the same concern. Hopefully Lego has thought of that and has a system in place to prevent that.

I ordered with PayPal as well and hadn’t thought at all about that. I emailed this morning and here’s what they said:

“I've done some digging into this topic and changing the payment to a debit or credit card may be the best decision. just to stay on the safe side. Feel free to give us a call and we'd be happy to do it over the phone!”

So I called them and switched the payment method on the order to my debit card. Hopefully it works, gonna be devastated if my order gets screwed up and cancelled.

Edited July 2, 2021 by gza

[karmajay]

3 hours ago, MAB said:

There is a difference between printing a tee shirt and picking and packing boxes of a thousand or so lego parts. 

My point was to have a pre-order time period and create all the units that get ordered. The key concepts here are cost and time to manufacture the items. Lego can know both for a set number of pre-order. Overseas figure companies have had this figured out for awhile. Collectors are fine waiting 6 - 9 months for figures if the company reliably delivers.

So, not much difference in these examples. I highly doubt Lego are taking a loss on these designer series sets.

[Terrasher]

1 hour ago, gza said:

 

I ordered with PayPal as well and hadn’t thought at all about that. I emailed this morning and here’s what they said:

“I've done some digging into this topic and changing the payment to a debit or credit card may be the best decision. just to stay on the safe side. Feel free to give us a call and we'd be happy to do it over the phone!”

So I called them and switched the payment method on the order to my debit card. Hopefully it works, gonna be devastated if my order gets screwed up and cancelled.

Thanks, I'll probably give CS a call on Monday. Paypal is too popular a payment method for TLG to be unaware of this issue and start cancelling orders. I found this Tweet from someone with a similar problem:

 

[RichardGoring]

The Ideas GWP sailing boat is now on IG. Very blurry picture, but looks decent. Hope they make a few more of them compared with the Vintage car.

[Friscorays]

First four sets now sold out with only very limited availability of Kakapo remaining.

[Roebuck]

On 7/1/2021 at 9:46 PM, TeriXeri said:

So Creator Expert just got a classic Farm truck with vegetables and a milk can, and currently theres a minifig farm with such a truck in review, hmm.

https://ideas.lego.com/projects/299064a7-4585-425b-8ee2-73ab7730c498 - A NICE DAY AT THE FARM

Maybe I'm hoping too much, but I can wish. 

I have been hoping for that from the beginning, but with one set approved per review I think the chances are slim to none unfortunately

9 hours ago, RichardGoring said:

The Ideas GWP sailing boat is now on IG. Very blurry picture, but looks decent. Hope they make a few more of them compared with the Vintage car.

I looks like it has kept the dolphins , however not so sure about the seagull

I am no bonkles fan, but to be fair saying that that set is a bonkles set the fans have been waiting for is like saying castle fans got what they wanted with nexo knights

[RichardGoring]

Well, this is interesting. BrickLink has tweeted:

BrickLink Designer Program Round 1:

We've read your comments and frustrations shared, and we hear you! Please stay tuned for an update next week.

The BrickLink Team

Does this mean they'll be producing more of each set? I suspect it will be hard to cancel pre-orders to free up some sets. And I really hope that it's not just a vague attempt to improve things for the next funding round (but at least that would be something).

 

[Legochaek]

I hope they announce the round 2 sets too