MAB

My feeling too. If only they had made those a bit more traditional I would have been in. Way too futuristic for me.

It was also mentioned that the bucket can take a handle in the Minifigures Encyclopedia from 2013.

I'm not sold on it either. It's definitely more action and sci-fi than history.

But then that rule could be applied in many ways. If it is not going to be made, then don't let people get their hopes up. Whether it is on size, or licensing, or parts usage, or product overlap, etc. Dr Who was unlikely to be made at one stage, since a rival had the license. Big Bang Theory was unlikely to be made due to the more adult nature. But lego did the diligence and decided it was financially worth doing both. The same is also true of large sets. If they are large, they are unlikely. However, if a business case can be made, then they will do whatever works for them.

It's not the cost though, it is the cost of using them. They are going to have to use new machines if they want to seal ziplock bags, not the old heat sealed ones. So they have to change machinery in their process line just to give you a change of bag, which many people will throw away anyway as their kids play with the set then mix it up with others. Plus if a bag doesn't quite seal or unseals on transportation, then they've got spillage and a possible refund for the entire set. Most heat sealed bags don't come undone. Unless you want to pay extra for a person to check each ziplock bag has been thoroughly sealed. Or, as 100 bags are just a couple of dollars, the onus could be on the buyer. If you want to use resealable bags, then you buy them and store the parts that way. The same is true for boxes. If a buyer wants to be able to store in watertight plastic boxes, they can buy stackable storage boxes. Not everyone should end up paying for them though, if they don't want them.

I don't think ideas is full of 10,000+ piece builds that are getting in the way of other projects though. They are easy to skip over if you don't like them. It's not like you cannot find anything due to the number of 10,000+ piece builds on there.

If you compare the LEGO games boxes to normal board games, you can see that lego can do good packaging when they want to. They are in regular games style boxes, with a lift off lid. Perfect for storing the game parts in. However, games are meant to be played and stored complete. As others have noted, for sets that is probably not such a big deal as most kids do mix them up. The other good thing about their game boxes was that they standardised the sizes of most of them, so they stacked well.

And that the mountain climber and welders would be. They know exactly what they are doing, making the popular ones rare. They just cannot say it.

Nice MOC, best I've seen at this scale. It's great the way detail is added by turning one row of binoculars around. It's not very lego set like though, and I imagine finding the right curvature is difficult. It's good to see what can be done at this scale that would never be done by lego.

They could also set limits such as no more than three active projects, no more than 10 submissions per year and the ability for a user to close their own project down. However, they'd also need to impose the limits properly - one account per person. Although they cannot manage to do that on their main selling site, so I doubt they'd do it for ideas. Ideas makes them money. Some ideas float to the top and they ultimately choose what makes it to market, and they make money off the sets. Why change it to make it better for users, the end result will be no different to now. Filtering by piece count may not be a good thing. It will encourage larger models to use larger parts rather than regular parts. If you are building a wall, why use 8 1x2 bricks when you can use a 1x16 and save 7 parts. So if building a 16x16 house for example, submissions will tend towards using 1x16 and 1x14 bricks to lower piece counts. As soon as rules are changed, players change their gameplay to get around the rule changes.

Imagine what will happen though. Let's say they reject a project if it has less than 20 votes after a month. What does the user do? They relist their project and it starts again. Same old crap but a new submission sitting there for another month until it gets rejected and then relisted again. You'll probably end up seeing the crap many times more than you do now, as it will be continually relisted and appearing as a new project. I also don't really see the point of being about to filter out projects with less than 100 votes. It is like saying nobody should buy from a zero feedback seller on ebay. Someone (in fact 100 people) has to vote for the project to get it moving. If everyone was able to filter out low vote projects, nobody's projects would get votes. And your votes are no more special than other people's. If they have to put some work in to find projects to vote for, then so should you. That said, I doubt any projects actually make it on ideas without external promotion. It is not regular voters that seal the fate of projects, it seems to be external advertising of projects that bring in the votes.

Interesting at about 3.00, she says that they try to make the ones they think are going to be popular more frequent. Which implies that they think that all the female characters in S14 are not going to be popular.

That's the problem isn't it. Keeping future series having enough wanted figs in them to sell the series, but ending up missing out on important characters as they might have left some characters until later then decided to just stop mid-way through. If they stop Simpsons S2 now, it looks like bad planning. LOTR looked like bad planning. When do the punters stop trusting them and not even bother start collecting a franchise as they won't let it run long enough to give you what you want.

It does if it is shown open in a shop window.

I'm not. LOTR missed out some important (but secondary) characters at the expense of third rate ones (eg No Witch King, Eowyn but got Mouth of Sauron). Simpsons will have missed out some important (but secondary) characters at the expense of third rate ones (eg. No Skinner but got Edna, No Lenny and Carl or Barney and Moe but got Moleman and Frink). It seems to be a little strange. I know they are never going to produce every character, but it is a bit like giving us a series with Peter Pan, Smee and Michael Darling but no Captain Hook or Wendy.

I always thought the point of Ideas was to come up with new ideas. What would the point of categories be? It seems to me that if a submission fits into a pre-set category, then it probably isn't really a new idea. Sure, you could have loads of blue space ships listed under Classic Space or just Space, but none of them will ever get made. So what is the point of having the category. You might have 1980s Movies as a category, but again is it really helpful? It would be pointing people towards submitting 1980s Movies sets (if there are any left that haven't been made into an idea yet.)

If you want the missile in but not be able to fire it, you could glue it then insert it.

Yes, exactly that.

I don't think it is necessarily a no-brainer. If they release a castle bucket, then it affects sales of other castle sets. They also have the excuse that if you want lots of a specific brick, you can buy the exact number you need on online PAB.

How about putting this on your list "LEGO IDEAS - Dr Who, set number TBA, price TBA." You can even find out the set number now (with added fun).

While there are not official ones, they are still using lego designs. If you have lego's permission to use it, that's fine. If not, you shouldn't be selling parts using those designs. Will Lego come after you? I doubt it. If they ever became successful, don't complain if a store called Royale Brick Customs starts doing the same thing.

So you want them to show you the details of the set, along with the statement that "but you cannot buy it for another six months". To me, that's worse than having to wait for the set details. Plus if they did that the the bootleg / knock-off makers get a headstart on making them in time for the official release.

I don't consider MegaBloks or Kreo knock-offs. They are clones. They use the same dimensions / system as lego (who did not come up with it themselves, either) but do not copy patented lego designs. If you are selling parts with lego graphics printed on them, then to me thy are knock-off. You are making them look like a genuine lego product. I have no problem with people making their own, but when you sell them it is a different matter. Especially on BL, as you are competing with sellers that are selling the genuine items.

They forgot to switch his hands.

It may be castle, but it is not historic. The builds don't look historic to me so no interest for me.