Blondie-Wan

It does now seem very unlikely big ideas will pass review, but we don't quite know that for sure. Of the ones that have already made it that far but not passed, all the ones for which we do know the reasons they were declined (Western Town, UCS Sandcrawler, The Winchester, Serenity) were declined for some other reason. I do agree large projects are unlikely to pass; I just don't think they're completely out of the question. One thing I do notice about the things that pass, though (from looking at the eight projects that have made it to date, and it's something I've commented on before), is that they all fall into at least one of three categories - frequently more than one, and occasionally all three: A. vehicles B. pop culture licenses C. scientific exploration and research It bears repeating: every single CUUSOO / Ideas set yet released to date falls into at least one of those three. Shinkai 6500 is A and C, as is Hayabusa; Minecraft is B, while Back to the Future's Time machine is A, B and C. The Curiosity rover is A and C again, the Ghostbusters Ectomobile is A and B, the Exo-Suit is A and perhaps, arguably, C, while the Research Institute is definitely C. Now, I'm not saying a project absolutely has to fall into one of those three to be approved - I'm personally planning on submitting a couple of city buildings that don't fall into any of those, and of course I wouldn't bother if I thought it was a complete waste of time - but I do find it an interesting pattern, one for us to make of it what we will. (I will just further note that Doctor Who's TARDIS itself arguably falls into all three categories, and not only does the current review batch have not one but two different projects based on it, but both projects also achieved their 10,000 vote marks faster in fact than any of the approved projects to date except for Minecraft, and the CUUSOO / Ideas team has indicated in the past that the time it takes a project to accrue its votes is a factor. There are no guarantees of anything until it happens, of course, and I believe Faefrost has pointed out here that the BBC can be a bit flaky for licensors to deal with, but assuming that particular obstacle doesn't prove too much, I find it extremely likely the next LEGO Ideas set will feature a certain enigmatic alien adventurer and his amazing blue box. But I guess we'll know for sure soon enough...)

It's tough, but it can be done. The Shinkai, Hayabusa and Curiosity are all specific exploratory vehicles (and ones with undeniable nerd appeal), but not really IP licenses the way the various entertainment properties are, and while the Exo-Suit certainly draws upon Classic Space for some of its appeal, I don't think it's truly reliant upon it, especially since it got boosted a bit in the product design phase, and of course it's not from an external IP, either. And the Research Institute wasn't attached to anything specific at all, even though it still has the nerd appeal factor. And that's just the projects that actually became products. A few others have gotten the required votes and made it all the way to the review phase without specific IPs attached, or with non-narrative, brand-only IPs (Western Town, Japanese Architecture, birds sculpture, ATLAS experiment, Apple Store, Landrover, Perdue Pete, Andy the Android). I actually think that rather lovely birds project in the current review batch is the likeliest candidate after either of the Doctor Who ones.

(Accidental post)

Perhaps, although usually when they do a new theme based on some existing franchise that's getting a new movie, they first have a launch wave made up of sets from the earlier movies, and then a wave made up of sets from the new movie. Most of these themes have followed this pattern, with the exception of Pirates of the Caribbean, which launched with one big wave containing mostly stuff from the newest movie, but also had a few sets from the previous ones.

Thanks for this excellent review of this lovely set. I do have one question: what are the dimensions of the fabric picnic blanket (in millimeters, inches or studs)? I have a good idea of its size from the photos, but a more precise one would be helpful.

Not just those, but most other themes based upon established franchises that had multiple installments long before LEGO made themes of them - Toy Story, Pirates of the Caribbean, and for that matter Star Wars all fit this mold. That said, there's no telling whether they'll reuse molds or not. In the past decade and a half or so, they've done numerous themes and subthemes concerning dinosaurs and other prehistoric creatures - Dinosaurs, Dino Attack / Dino 2010, Dino, Adventurers: Dino Island, and of course the earlier Jurassic Park sets done as part of LEGO Studios - and they nearly always go with mostly or entirely different dinosaur designs. On the other hand, Dino is pretty recent, and does have nice designs, and they've got to get tired of reinventing the wheel at some point...

Thanks! Much appreciated. :)

Hi. I have a technical question to which I've been unable to find an answer. I've been browsing on a mobile and switched to the full version of the site, and now would like to switch back. How can I do this?

One thing I haven't seen discussed much yet is the dramatic acceleration of CUUSOO / Ideas releases. It started out small and slow, launching in 2008, some six years ago (!), and in that time has produced eight sets to date - half of which were released just this year (!!), and it's still only August. (That's not counting the subsequent Minecraft sets released in the wake of the success of the original CUUSOO set, either, of course.) While I doubt there's going to be yet another set this year, and of course I'm well aware there were unique circumstances that led to the Ghostbusters Ectomobile, the Exo-Suit and the Research Institute all coming out within a two-month period (!!!), it still seems clear we've come a long way since the kind of wait we saw between, say, the Hayabusa asteroid probe and the Minecraft Micro world, or between that and the Back to the Future DeLorean time machine. Just how regularly do you all think we might expect to see new Ideas sets released in the future?

Getting to go to the event is already its own reward. Why should people get rewarded for being rewarded? "Oh, you won a million dollars? That's awesome! Here, take another million for being so awesome!" Even I, as someone who looks upon these with some dismay, freely concede there are legitimate promotional reasons for having the convention exclusives. Rewarding people for already being lucky isn't a good one. Now, rewarding people for making the effort, scrounging up the money, making sacrifices, etc. to be able to go might be a good reason, but just rewarding people for getting to go certainly isn't.

Wow, gosh, whole MONTHS? Honestly, a few months of availability doesn't sound like a problem to me - quite the opposite, actually. I'm far more vexed by sets that last only a few months, if anything, since it makes it harder to get them. I'd be terribly frustrated if sets were available only a few weeks, and I certainly have a hard time understanding why anyone would complain that a few months (!) of availability were somehow too long (!!), rather than too short.

And the Sankara Stones are just Bionicle Barraki Eyes, used in tons of sets as warning lights and so on. Don't forget the Peacock's Eye (the diamond Indy was trying to get from Lao Che). It's just a standard LEGO faceted gem element in clear.

I always have a backlog of sets to build, without trying at all. For years I've simply had other things get in the way of building, both in terms of time and in terms of physical space. I now have dozens of unopened sets - over a hundred, actually, and possibly in the low hundreds if we count everything (polybags, etc.) - and I've been looking forward to having time and space to build them all (and MOCs). As it happens, though, my fiancée and I just moved for her new job, and we have a much larger house now while I don't have a job of my own yet, so hopefully I'll finally be able to do something about all those sets...

I thought it might be something like that. Well, I for one do think that sexual equality, minority representation and so on are fine and desirable things for which to strive. Moreover, I don't think they really apply in the case of the Curiosity Rover, so I didn't get the mention of the two together, but I get now that you were just discussing various CUUSOO / Ideas sets together.

$30, actually ($29.99 if you want to split hairs - that's the US price, of course). I actually like 7140 quite a bit, myself. I do think the later editions are larger than they really need to be, and I also vastly prefer having Artoo be able to sit "properly" rather than "sideways," though of course the detailing is much better on later models.

Feminists don't want that at all. So many people have no idea what feminism actually is or what it's about.

I'm not sure what "PC values" are, but I for one really like the look of the Mars Science Laboratory Curiosity Rover, and I'd desperately like to have one myself. Some of us just really like scientific exploration, discovery and research, and thus models of real-world craft (or institutions, tools, etc.) for such things are appealing. Moreover, this particular one has a lot of play value, what with rolling around and having the rocker bogies and the robot arm and all. It's a nifty model, and a nice parts pack at a good price (in the US, anyway), and I'm really disappointed that it's no longer available, as I wanted one myself (and another for my fiancee, actually). If it becomes available again I'll order at least a couple. I like to think there's still at least a slight chance it's not gone for good, but it doesn't look promising. That said, I assume it's no longer available not because it's not profitable - obviously it sells well - but because TLG has done some number crunching and decided its production capacity can be put to better use on other sets. While the MSL Curiosity Rover might be a strong seller by the extremely modest standards of CUUSOO / Ideas sets, it's just not going to sell in the kinds of numbers as lots of sets from LEGO's "main" lines like City, Star Wars, Friends, etc., and they'd probably just rather allocate more of their production capacity towards the more mainline products that sell in huge numbers and so on.

Yes, I noticed that, but I still think it can be written off as animation license, or something comparable, since at least the face isn't "fixed" (unlike the torso print, which is, and which is the same between the two). I now like to think of the face on the old figure as just sort of an "extreme" expression, and that the "true" face is more like the one in the movie (even if my actual, real-life minifigure never changes from that weird old face). Of course, if a new one were produced for a set in this theme it would (and should, I agree, for multiple reasons) reflect the movie aesthetic and not that bizarre design experiment from a decade-plus ago. But there's no reason to change the torso. (Tangentially, like you I'm not a fan of noses on minifigures, but given that I do have some from that era anyway, I plan to try to use them in MOCs and such - partly just to get maximum use out of my parts assortment, but also to help bring a bit of differentiation and variety to the populations of my LEGO worlds.)

I think the SDCC Green Lantern was an appropriate choice for the movie, as it probably reflected a figure The Man Upstairs kept on his wall display (and thus would be a "special" minifigure). Moreover, at the time of the movie's production, it was the only GL figure design. It's funny to me that you mention Shaq, as in an earlier draft of my post I also mentioned him as another character that might be worth including in a set, while also noting the difference between the actual Shaq figure and the one in the movie. It's different from the other examples of redesign, though, in that there's not really a difference in the print (at least for the torso, while the face difference can be written off as just being part of the animation). The major difference between TLM Shaq and the actual Shaq minifigure produced a little over a decade ago is that the latter, as part of the larger LEGO Sports basketball subtheme, has the modified arms and legs common to all that theme's basketball player minifigures, allowing them to pick up and throw basketballs. But that's something that can be addressed by arm and leg swaps, without resorting to new element decoration. However, I'm guessing they would in fact do at least a new face print if they were to actually include a Shaq figure in a TLM set, and give it more traditional arms and legs as well. I wouldn't count the inability of the horse's light to change colors as a "flaw," per se, just an unavoidable difference arising from translating an animated character to a toy. The movie horse's light changing is just a natural animation effect, like ones used in any of countless brickfilms of the sort the movie specifically emulates in style, and probably best addressed in an actual toy by just including both trans-red and trans-blue 1x1 round plates for the builder to choose between. At worst, it's still no more of a problem than the fact it and various other light sources (such as the printed "glowing" red eyes of the innumerable robot minifigures) don't actually glow from within. For me, it'd be enough to just have the horse and its adornment with the "light" and the POLICE deco and all that.

For the few able to get the rare exclusives, perhaps. However, I haven't yet encountered anyone who wasn't able to get a figure they really wanted and was happy about it, saying, "Wheeeeee! I'm so glad my favorite character has been designated as something to be made available only as an SDCC exclusive, forever locking me out of getting one! Imagine how dreadful it would be if I'd actually been able to get it!" But I don't know; perhaps this is something you hear every day, six times before breakfast...

I'd like more Unikitty expressions. I know it's wishful thing, but it would really take the sting out of the SDCC exclusive Kitty if they offered those faces on two new figures in next year's sets, with the SDCC remaining a unique exclusive in having both faces on a single figure. And it would be fantastic if Green Lantern were released in a set, as well. Ah, well. Perhaps there'll be a more movie-accurate Metalbeard, which would be great. I concur with all the call for more new character expressions as well, especially Business, and I also hope for Robo Disguise Wyldstyle. I know Emmet's car has already been done as a rather generous TRU building event freebie, but it would also make a great small, inexpensive set - more affordable than anything else in the line, aside from the Minifigures and the promotional freebies. Of various things in the movie not yet done as sets at all, the Copper Chopper and Wyldstyle's western wagon strike me as good set candidates. I really want Bad Cop's City-Western Police horse. :D

Not quite, but close - Peter Finch won a posthumous Oscar for the 1976 classic Network. Each is unique in winning his particular posthumous Oscar, though - Finch's is for Best Actor, while Ledger's is for Best Supporting Actor. Other actors who received posthumous Oscar nominations include: Spencer Tracy, for Best Actor for Guess Who's Coming to Dinner (1967); Massimo Troisi, for Best Actor for Il Postino (1995); Jeanne Eagels, for Best Actress for The Letter (1929); Ralph Richardson, for Best Supporting Actor for Greystoke: The Legend of Tarzan, Lord of the Apes (1984); and perhaps most notably, James Dean, the only actor to receive not one but two posthumous Oscar nominations (both for Best Actor), for East of Eden (1955) and Giant (1956). However, Finch and Ledger are the only ones who've actually won posthumous Oscars for acting, so far. (Apologies for the tangent. We now return you to your regularly scheduled LEGO discussion.)

But it is an iconic set which not everyone has, and doing another UCS Millennium Falcon wouldn't change that. A new one wouldn't be a straight-up rerelease of 10179 - it would be a totally new build, model, just of the same ship.

From the wording of the information I've seen so far, that appears to be a whole small set (angry Unikitty, Batman w/ grapple gun, Skeletron, Micro-Manager). But don't worry - I'm sure it won't be the only one in the theme to be released next year.

Quite so. I also wouldn't say it was dropped all that quickly, actually. While it was certainly around less time than I'd like, it did actually get two full years with four waves, which may not sound like much but is actually more than most other licensed themes. The only ones that got more material are ones that have had new source material released at regular intervals, at the same time the theme is/was running - Star Wars, Harry Potter, The Hobbit & The Lord of the Rings, Super Heroes (and Batman and Spider-Man themes before the latter), etc. For other licensed themes, when there might be a fair amount of older material but there's only a single new movie out within the timeframe of the theme (that is, only one in several years, and no new ones on the immediate horizon), they almost always limit the theme to one wave, or two at most, such as Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time, Speed Racer, The Lone Ranger, Toy Story, Pirates of the Caribbean, etc. - even though the last two of those were established franchises with multiple older movies as well as the brand new ones that got the themes to happen, neither of them lasted more than two waves, and most of those themes had just one. Indiana Jones, however, got a full four waves. That's quite a bit better than most other licensed themes, and better than any other licensed theme that didn't have multiple new screen productions released within the timeframe of the theme (counting The Hobbit & The Lord of the Rings together as one supertheme, and Cars & Planes together as another). That said, I also would dearly love to see more official LEGO Indiana Jones sets, myself. I'd also like to see more "classic" Space, like so many others, and like alois I'd also like to see the "homemaker" line return.