LEGO Ideas Discussion

[MSY-MSP]

21 hours ago, MAB said:

Everything for ordering was done on lego.com not bricklink.

The order was completed at lego.com.  You couldn't order the sets directly on lego.com, you had to come through the link on bricklink to get to add it to your cart at lego.com.  This tells me that inventory control was held at bricklink, but processing was done by lego.com.  To the normal consumer they would think that it was all handled at lego.com, but it wasn't.  

18 hours ago, Friscorays said:

...they allowed people to order no more than 5 of each set.  Even so, 75% of folks only ordered one castle set.  I ordered two castles: one for myself and one as a future gift as well as one each of the others; except for the fishing boat.  I am reconsidering the fishing boat and may pick one up on August 3.

Castle set sold out at 08:36 Pacific time, 36 minutes after it went on sale.  I was watching because I was curious how long it would take to sell out. At 08:36 Bricklink was showing very limited inventory so I refreshed the page, still at 08:36, and saw the sold out message pop up.  I placed two separate orders for individual castle sets, both after 8:10 am, and each went through successfully.

Interesting as it was showing sold out in the midwest at 10:11 CDT.  When I ordered at 10:08 the bar was showing that it was already almost to 5K orders, and when I came back to order the fishing boat at 10:11 it was then showing sold out.  I did each as its own transaction as I figured it was so dynamic that it wasn't worth the risk of trying to put all that I wanted in the basket at once.  This might be the actual glitch that they are talking about. 

[MAB]

32 minutes ago, MSY-MSP said:

The order was completed at lego.com.  You couldn't order the sets directly on lego.com, you had to come through the link on bricklink to get to add it to your cart at lego.com.  This tells me that inventory control was held at bricklink, but processing was done by lego.com.  To the normal consumer they would think that it was all handled at lego.com, but it wasn't.  

 

The bricklink link took you to a lego.com page where the orders were placed. LEGO controlled the stock. There was a type of tracker on bricklink that monitored how many sets were left, presumably to panic users into going quick.

 

[Toastie]

2 hours ago, MAB said:

presumably to panic users into going quick.

Well. If that really is the case (as the entire approach of TLG announcing new (AFOL) sets - through the board - appears (to me) to be), I'd like to hear from the so-caring-about-the-ground-folks at TLG, how they see this. There will be no answer, never, I know.

You know, occasionally, and recently more frequently with noticing that sort of behavior really showing, I am losing ground with TLG. But then: Entirely my problem. And: I am one in a countless number; so who cares. Good to know that there are some alternatives. 

All the best
Thorsten

 

[Robert8]

This just achieved 10k and I'm speechless

[icm]

10k ain't what it used to be.

[Robert8]

A Game Shop store hovering on the Moon's surface with a random monkey just being there

[jonwil]

This has no chance of being approved IMO. If nothing else, its not a brand that's known worldwide (here in Australia GameStop doesn't even exist with their Australian arm being known as EB Games). Not to mention that the chain isn't exactly known for having the best reputation these days. And when was the last time LEGO did a set based on a store of a real world brand?

 

Edited July 10, 2021 by jonwil

[Nokturn]

I am so unbelievably disillusioned with IDEAS right now. Somehow the Gamestop project gets approved despite being quite clearly low-effort, and it almost immediately gets 10,000 supporters from a cult-like subreddit.

And, as if that wasn't enough, I now have a personal issue with the IDEAS moderation team. I just submitted a project I've been working on for months and it was almost immediately rejected (twice) because they think it "requests the re-release of a discontinued LEGO product or theme." My project does nothing of the sort, and yet there are many many examples of projects on IDEAS that are direct remakes of official sets. Why do the rules only apply to some people? Gosh, this is so frustrating.

Edited July 10, 2021 by Nokturn

[Greshi210]

13 hours ago, Robert8 said:

This just achieved 10k and I'm speechless

Must be one hell of an interior to be found worthy by so many people so fast...

This looks terrible and will never be made into an official set!

[TeriXeri]

Popular people on platforms like Twitch and such getting 10-100k+ live viewers nowadays, and if they would do some advertising on something like LEGO ideas could skyrocket submissions in hours, that's how stuff like Goose Game got to 10k within a day.

Often also is why licensed IDEAS are generally popular right now as they draw in a lot of non regular LEGO buyers but fans of X movie, game  or show.

Votes by themselves mean very little, as it's an open platform non-LEGO buyers/fans can vote just by making an account.

And that's not to discredit people's submissions here, just the current way social media goes, social media keeps growing, but the 10k vote number has remained the same for years, and that's how we ended up with 50+ projects in next voting phase.

 

And crowdfunding like Castle in the Forest selling out 10000 sets under an hour (now that we know there was a glitch), should also mean LEGO is getting somewhat more attention now, and the 18+ marketing seems to spread the brand.

 

50+ submissions and then only picking one or a few projects, and moving some toward Bricklink program might work for a while ,but long term if the average amount of 10000 projects stays like this, or even grows, I can see either more submissions restrictions or voting changes at some point.

Edited July 10, 2021 by TeriXeri

[Toastie]

A heartfully welcome to reality.

Once upon a time, 10k votes - cast in the "public domain" - which at that time was not really the public domain, but rather a club of folks having access to, toying with, or having heard of IDEAS - was recognized as sort of huge or even unreal.

Next stop: Reality (you need to push the exit button). 10k votes ... with how many humans having access to the internet? Wanting to engage?

10k votes sounds to me as the equivalent of 16 kBytes of memory. In 1980, that was a number only accessible to the Justified Ancient. With the means and mechanisms of today's public domain - 10k - when knowing how to play the strings, are well within the noise level.

BTW I find this submission absolutely not terrible. Maybe the stakes for submissions to IDEAS have gone a bit out of control - because the whole idea of IDEAS has become "uncontrollable".

Oh well, things move fast these days ... very fast.

Best
Thorsten

Edit: @TeriXeri Just saw your post after I posted ... I believe you are saying the same as I do. Did not want to copy your assessment!

 

 

 

18 hours ago, Robert8 said:

with a random monkey just being there

Well, I believe that monkey is not that random:

https://www.gamestop.com/clothing/mens/t-shirts/products/monkey-business-t-shirt/11106290.html

Best
Thorsten

Edited July 10, 2021 by Toastie

[icm]

6 hours ago, Nokturn said:

I am so unbelievably disillusioned with IDEAS right now. Somehow the Gamestop project gets approved despite being quite clearly low-effort, and it almost immediately gets 10,000 supporters from a cult-like subreddit.

And, as if that wasn't enough, I now have a personal issue with the IDEAS moderation team. I just submitted a project I've been working on for months and it was almost immediately rejected (twice) because they think it "requests the re-release of a discontinued LEGO product or theme." My project does nothing of the sort, and yet there are many many examples of projects on IDEAS that are direct remakes of official sets. Why do the rules only apply to some people? Gosh, this is so frustrating.

I had the same problem with the last Ideas Space GWP contest. I sent the moderation team a big long, respectful, detailed email about how their reasons for rejecting my submission were mistaken, and pointing out that there were at least a dozen approved submissions that were explicitly direct remakes of older sets and others that were explicit callbacks to older themes. Their response, of course, was crickets. Nothing.

[Nokturn]

3 hours ago, icm said:

I had the same problem with the last Ideas Space GWP contest. I sent the moderation team a big long, respectful, detailed email about how their reasons for rejecting my submission were mistaken, and pointing out that there were at least a dozen approved submissions that were explicitly direct remakes of older sets and others that were explicit callbacks to older themes. Their response, of course, was crickets. Nothing.

Sorry that happened to you too, man. Glad to know I'm not totally alone with this experience, though. I also wrote them an email explaining the situation but I doubt I'll ever hear anything back. Seems to me like the IDEAS moderators are inconsistent at best when it comes to enforcing submission guidelines, unfortunately.

[Merlo]

I'm jealous of the folks who aren't aware of wallstreetbets calling them selves Apes and exclaiming To The Moon every 5 seconds.

[jonwil]

How many of these licensed Ideas projects get to 10k because of people out there who like whatever the license is but where those same people wouldn't buy the set if it was actually made.

 

[smazmats]

22 hours ago, Greshi210 said:

Must be one hell of an interior to be found worthy by so many people so fast...

The thing is that the interior doesn't even look like a Game Stop...

Thankfully this has 0 chance of becoming a real set given how selective the IDEAS reviews have become. I'm pretty sure it got through the IDEAS mods because they weren't aware of the r/Wallstreatbets connections, but as someone who has loosely followed the whole WSB saga, its not exactly what I would call a Lego friendly brand. Its quite funny that they had to lock the comments of the submission because they couldn't keep a civilized tone with all their dumb emoji spam.

[NickLafreniere]

21 hours ago, Nokturn said:

Sorry that happened to you too, man. Glad to know I'm not totally alone with this experience, though. I also wrote them an email explaining the situation but I doubt I'll ever hear anything back. Seems to me like the IDEAS moderators are inconsistent at best when it comes to enforcing submission guidelines, unfortunately.

The same thing happened with me for the Space GWP contest. I also wrote a long detailed email about how they were wrong about my set being just a copy of an old set, and got no response. I was able to submit it after attempting 3 times and changing the name.

[Technicallism]

Hi all Lego Ideas fans,

Do check out our latest speed build review video at our channel about the recent launch lego ideas 21327 Typewriter. What a nice vintage replica typewriter with movement function… thanks you 

 

[RichardGoring]

I keep seeing the same Facebook Marketplace listing for the Bricklink Castle in the Forest. A mere $520. That alone annoys me. But in this case, the seller says 'Lucky got 5 sets. Would like to share to those who also want a set of this'. Frustrating the way they've framed it as trying to share and be helpful, for only a small service fee of $350!

[Lord Insanity]

Sorry for the delay in responding, I was offline for a few days.

On 7/9/2021 at 7:35 AM, Roebuck said:

If they were to delay other normal Lego sets so they could make more of these it would mean that they loose a lot of sales from the fact that the normal sets are not on shelf's. 5 or 10 000 is peanuts for them compared to other normal sets.

This makes no sense.  They wouldn't be losing sales because the hypothetical production they are diverting is already sold.  This isn't something that would be sitting on a shelf when another set would obviously sell many more units.  They would literally only be producing the number they sold.  If it is accurate that a "police station" sells hundreds or even thousands of times more units, then LEGO would only be delaying production of the "police station" by a week or two.  The average consumer wouldn't even notice that kind of a delay.

If on the opposite end of the hypothetical, they somehow managed to crowdfund a million units, then that sort of destroys the idea that the "police station" would obviously out sell it.  I wouldn't expect that scenario to be very likely but LEGO didn't even give it a chance.

Most businesses would kill to have a product and consumer base that is compatible with crowdfunding.  Guaranteed sales, no leftover stock.  LEGO has people that want to "put their money where their mouth is" and they are being completely oblivious and not letting them. 

 

On 7/9/2021 at 12:26 PM, MAB said:

That is only for Kickstarter style crowdfunding. LEGO/BL used a different style of crowd funding with fixed numbers of sets but crowd funders choose what models will get made. This is what they did in the original program. The main difference is that they increased numbers by 2x (now 4x) and lego is doing the picking/packing rather than BL staff doing it manually.

So you agree that LEGO has completely missed the point of crowdfunding then. 

[jonwil]

The fact is that LEGO has limits on its production capacity. If It simply let people order as many Castles as they want  and then sold 50k of them, what other set(s) do they make less of to make room for all of those castles? And what do they tell retailers who now can't get as much of whatever set(s) LEGO is making less of as they would have?

 

[Tube Map Central]

They tell retailers what they always tell them, out of stock, available on backorder.

I sense trying to have it both ways. (1) The numbers of Bricklink sets desired are so small they are an irrelevance to TLG and that demand is not worth catering for. Versus (2) The numbers of Bricklink sets desired are so large that catering for them will cause massive shortages in other product ranges.

Lego produces lots of short run sets, no one complains that the staff and visitor presents are uneconomic causing global shortages.

[RichardGoring]

Is it worth noting that the production capacity for the Bricklink sets is likely down to how they are being produced? I'm sure I read, but can't find it now, that although the elements are coming from LEGO, it's Bricklink who are packaging it all up. So it won't be the large scale automated production you get with regular LEGO sets. Although you could make the argument why not crowdfund without a limit and then determine the most appropriate way to produce the sets based on the volume of orders. But it seems pretty clear that they weren't expecting this level of demand, but the plans have already been made, so they are somewhat constrained.

[MAB]

12 hours ago, Lord Insanity said:

So you agree that LEGO has completely missed the point of crowdfunding then. 

No, I don't. I just understand that there is more than one way of crowd funding. LEGO have already done the kickstarter style crowd funding through indigogo for FORMA and for whatever reason they were left with quite a lot of sets that did not sell. 

[Darkdragon]

Not sure where you're getting your info from MAB but those Forma sets sold much better than planned, here's a quote from the review thread but I'm sure you could look up the actual data yourself if you'd like to use facts instead of conjecture that you are not even backing up with anything. 

On 2/3/2019 at 1:07 PM, deraven said:

Maybe you're not aware of how Forma was sold (past-tense), or do you have more information than we do about future plans for the line?  They put these out for sale only on Indiegogo looking to sell just 500 of them, and they sold 6,674.  And now they're fulfilling the orders for those buyers, and not stated intention of selling more of this type of product, at least not at the moment.  I would imagine that Lego will use the data they've gathered here to produce an appropriate number of similar products for sale if they choose to go that route, but so far there doesn't seem to be any indication that this was anything more than a data gathering experiment.