Blondie-Wan

I wouldn't say no Star Wars set will ever be approved; every set that's ever gotten the votes has had some other, obvious strike against it. Remember, back when they still explained why the declined certain projects, they even gave us an explanation for a Star Wars one, and it wasn't that they simply won't do Star Wars sets through Ideas. The Dark Bucket project was declined because, as a project consisting entirely of minifigures, it was deemed too much of a "figure set" and not enough of a "building toy", so it conflicted with another Star Wars toy licensee's rights to make action figures. In the case of this BB-8, it was pretty certain to many of us that it was even less likely to be approved than any other Star Wars project to date, because it had a potential issue with the absolute #1, trumps-everything-else concern that the review team considers: safety. There's a reason that not only LEGO but practically every other toy maker stopped making magnets that small years ago. If not for the greater-than-usual risk that the set might kill a child, I think BB-8 would have easily clinched it because of the cleverness of the build, but safety concerns are paramount, and supersede everything else. Oh, I think Jason will be fine - he's already one of the small number people to have gotten a set made through Ideas, after all (and I think he has a good chance of having another made, as well). But I would have loved his Particle Accelerator.

Well, that just goes to show what we know. I thought the Gingerbread House was easily the likeliest project from the batch, and the Fossil Museum and Johnny 5 were the next likeliest, but not one of those three made it. Yet the Old Fishing Store, a project I found absolutely beautiful but probably just too big, was the one and only project chosen. I must say I'm a bit disappointed other (additional) projects didn't make it, but the Old Fishing Store making it is a delightful shock.

Our talented prognosticators this go-around are: Brickbuilder0937, Kaanere, leveldestroyer31, Leewan, Boromir, LegoManTroy, Nerd-with-a-Pencil, and 09JBlake!

I was just coming here to post this myself. Like you, just2good, I was not expecting this to be the chosen project; I thought the Gingerbread House, Fossil Museum, and Johnny Five were all likelier. But there's no disputing the merits of this highly deserving project, and I think it will make a beautiful set.

The Old Fishing Store was approved! I did not see that coming. But congratulations - that project certainly earned it!

Last call, folks! Get those votes in now!

Results coming later today!

"Well under the usual 1,000 piece mark"? I don't understand - there are numerous sets priced at $80 (well, $79.99) that have under 1,000 pieces; in fact I believe the overwhelming majority of sets at that price have fewer than a thousand. This set's pricing seems right in line with what's typical for a set of this size, piece count, and complexity.

Omigosh! I expected them to omit any character other than the lads themselves. I can't believe they're including Nowhere Man!

Nah, they're better this way. Their mandate is to please the people who supported this set because they wanted an authentic-looking Beatles Yellow Submarine set, with minifigures that look like the characters as portrayed in the film, not people with minimal interest in the movie and the group and who just want a handful of more ordinary-looking minifigures. People in the latter camp can get minifigures to suit their taste seventy-six ways to Sunday, whereas people in the former will likely only ever have this set (and maybe a LEGO Dimensions pack or three ). It's kind of unfair to ask them to give up a measly four minifigures just so you can have a 0.0000000000001% increase in minifigures of a sort you already have ninety-two trillion, three hundred forty-seven billion, eight hundred sixty-eight million, four hundred three thousand, five hundred twenty-two of. Besides, the cartoony outfits are really the biggest departure from the "norm" of minifigure design; their faces aren't actually a huge departure from how contemporary minifigures portraying either live-action characters or LEGO-original ones generally look. It is an unusual art style, but it is indeed true to the source material, and that's important. Sure, but so should the Ghostbusters in the Ectomobile. Them not having them was probably a limitation of the production time for this set (and Ideas sets in general) being allocated in a factory that doesn't have the capacity to do arm printing (and/or the machines that do arm printing being solidly tied up with more mass-market specialty minifigures like the blind-bagged ones). That's something I do wish were different (and I also wish the printing of the extension of Paul's coat down to the tops of the legs were carried around to the sides), but aside from presumably being beyond the scope of Ideas, it would probably have made those who dislike these minifigures like them even less anyway if it had happened (though I suppose if they're not getting the set anyway, that probably doesn't matter). New parts were never going to happen for this, and I think the hair molds chosen do work well.

Ooooh, the minifigures look great! Granted, they also look exactly like how I expected them to. It's a shame some people here don't appreciate them, but oh well. They certainly look how they ought to, anyway. Unfortunately, I wouldn't expect to see any other characters here, unlike with the K'Nex version, as pretty much anyone else would require new molds to look really right. I expect the actual sub to look a lot better than that one, though. I just wish I'd submitted this myself. If was one of many projects I was mulling over for a long time, until somebody else went and beat me to it. That they not only made it to 10k but actually got it approved really ought to teach me not to foot-drag on submitting my own stuff, but alas, so far I still have yet to submit any. Oh, well. It'll definitely happen, once I finally get my ideas built...

There was a big enough fan base for it for the project to reach 10k in just three weeks, when some other projects that have been approved have taken over a year. And LEGO does take into consideration a project's speed in reaching 10k as an indication of the level of interest in and commercial potential of a project, when deciding whether to approve it or not.

I guess the video was in the works before that reveal. It's also possible they tweaked it to emphasize that Supergirl is merely coming first to PS4, as opposed to only to it.

Can't you delete your vote and start again?

I see no reason to think those wouldn't be buildable in real life. There's nothing unusual about the structures.

Not on its own, no. But if enough of the site's users start browsing with the new IP filter - looking at either only licensed projects, or only unlicensed projects - it could dramatically reduce the number of people who ever see a given project to begin with. In fact, we can be sure it will reduce the number; the only question is how much. I'm not saying it's necessarily a bad thing. I think virtually every change implemented to CUUSOO / Ideas since it was launched back in 2008 has been a really good one, so I'm inclined to give them the benefit of doubt and hope for the best. But part of me is somewhat concerned that we're about to see the struggle made quite a bit harder for even quality projects, and that we might never see any more review batches again with as many projects as the batch that just closed. But I hope I'm wrong...

They've already approved an Apollo 11 Saturn V project; that will most likely give us minifigures of certain men of NASA before this project gives us anyone. Moreover, the point of this project isn't so much about excluding men; it's just about including women, who make up just as much of the population as men (actually slightly more, in fact), yet who are vastly underrepresented in LEGO sets compared to men. In fact, if we narrow it down from all minifigures ever (which of course includes fantasy beings, robots, aliens, etc.) and focus on just minifigures of real-life people, there are still literally dozens of minifigures of real-world, historical men, but only one of a woman. How would adding five more real-world women to that constitute some sort of unfair treatment of men, who'd still outnumber women in minifigures produced of real people by something like five or six or more to one?

The latest 10k Club interview is up, featuring LegoWolf of Modular Train Station fame.

Since this is the rumors thread, wouldn't it make more sense to keep it open for now, and close it only once evidence of (more) Oz sets shows up?

I don't think the 60-day rule will actually help anything, though; all the "crummy" stuff will still be there, showing up under the Recently Added sorting of the Discovery page that I suspect most of us browse the site by by default. OTOH, it should ensure that even fewer quality projects make it to the finish line. I think we're about to start seeing smaller review batches. I hope I'm wrong, though.

I'm sure they are in fact doing that. There really isn't a way to truly clear out all the submissions people here are complaining about; what people here are missing is that that's what the Ideas process (our voting) is for.

That would put people without large collections at a great disadvantage.

I'm sure, but it'll also make it tougher for even quality projects. I'm sure there are plenty of people who browse the site looking for particular sorts of projects, but who occasionally notice something extraordinary outside the scope of their search, and which they then support. With this new filter, plenty of people are likely to never see at all certain projects they might otherwise support. But oh, well; we'll see. Perhaps I'm wrong...

Hm. I fear this might diminish the number of projects that get anywhere, but we'll see.

I think it's extremely unlikely nothing will be approved. It has happened once, but that was an abberation, and they clearly were trying to approve something (as evidenced by the longer-than-usual wait we had for those results). While I don't profess to know which is likeliest, I think there's an excellent chance at least one of the three smallest STEM-based projects (Women of NASA, LHC, Lovelace & Babbage) will make it. STEM / discovery / exploration / research has been a mainstay of CUUSOO / Ideas since the beginning; of the seventeen projects approved to date, five have fallen into that category - that's almost a third. And that's without even counting some of the ones that could be argued to fit as well, like the Exo-Suit and some of the licensed ones. And now here this batch is, with science-related projects making up a third of the whole batch. I'll be very surprised if they don't approve at least one of them - more surprised than I will be if they approve two or even three, in fact.