Blondie-Wan

Congrats on reaching this latest milestone, Oky, and best of luck! I'm supporting your project, and rooting for it to make it.

if you don't like Star Wars, you can take heart in the knowledge that if & when they ever approve a Star Wars project, they'll archive every other Star Wars project still gathering votes at that time, and not accept any more that are submitted. And in all fairness, lots of the ones that have made it to review are genuinely cool, and some would even make great sets; they just haven't approved any yet, for a variety of reasons. But it could still happen someday. Assuming the license allows it (which is a big "if", I know, but still), all that has to happen is for a project to be submitted and make it to review that a) isn't too big; b) isn't somethjng they're naturally already going to do already anyway; c) doesn't interfere with some other licensee's license for some other kind of Star Wars merchandise; and d) doesn't pose a safety issue. That's a lot, but I think it could happen - in fact, I've been planning several Star Wars projects that would actually meet all these conditions, I think, and I'll submit them if I ever get around to finishing them...

A new, improved, truly ultimate and definitive UCS Millennium Falcon is my #1 wish for the line, and one of the only things I think makes sense as being sufficiently special and iconic enough for a major anniversary year. And as fantastic as 10179 is, there are still huge opportunities for major improvement. For one thing, there's no interior to speak of; it's actually easily surpassed by every other minifigure-scale Falcon in this regard, even 7190. For another, there's still plenty of room for improvement in the notoriously difficult-to-LEGO-ize cockpit and cockpit tube. And there are any number of features they could add, especially if they want to make it representative of the overall saga and all the Falcon's moments throughout, the way the 10188 Death Star represented all Death Star scenes from both A New Hope and Return of the Jedi (even though those weren't even the same Death Star). Other than that, I do think a new UCS Tantive IV would be the next best candidate.

I think the 3 projects in the top row will make it. Women of NASA brought some attention to them For a while now, the Landspeeder has been trailing the Lamborghini by enough votes that there was a strong possibility the real car was going to make it into this batch while the fantasy one would go into the next, but the Landspeeder seems to have gotten a surge in support and has pulled ahead of the Lamborghini, and is now fewer than a hundred votes away from the finish (while the Lamborghini is fewer than two hundred). It does now seem quite likely both will make it into this batch, which would make it a total of ten projects.

Well, if you want to go that way, the Minecraft Micro-world was already the earliest set in this line with a modular-style construction (released even before the line changed from "LEGO CUUSOO" to "LEGO Ideas"). But of course I was referring to the modular buildings line, and by extension, sets in the size / price range of D2Cs in general.

They don't need as many in Year 2, since there are still all those Year 1 packs in the market as well. 60 packs is a lot to have out all at once.

Sweet! It looks great. And it's due in October, which lines up nicely with my prediction of, um, a few hours ago. Worthy of note: it's $79.99, the highest price yet of any Ideas set. I've often noted how as the program goes along, they seem to be increasingly (if slowly) willing to go larger and larger with Ideas sets, as they get more experience, more comfortable with this way of producing and releasing sets, etc. From the beginnings of LEGO CUUSOO in 2008 right up through 2014 and into early 2015, the most expensive CUUSOO & Ideas sets topped out at $49.99. Then, last year, they finally felt comfortable going a little larger and higher, and released three in a row at $59.99. Then, earlier this year, they released their first Ideas set at $69.99. And now the next one is $79.99. We've talked often in this thread about how unlikely it is that we'll get really huge, expensive, D2C-style sets such as modular buildings and UCS Star Wars vehicles and the like, and that is still true for the time being. But looking at the overall arc of releases, though, I can't help but think they really might eventually get to a point where they'll do such large sets. They finally have a piece count ceiling for submissions, and it's already quite a bit higher than many of us thought it would be if they ever instituted one. It's not at all hard to imagine them eventually approving and releasing an Ideas set with well over a thousand pieces (in fact, it seems quite possible the recently-approved Apollo 11 Saturn V could be the first). Maybe we'll even see the piece limit for submissions raised some day... Meanwhile, now that we know the Caterham Super 7 is due in October, my next question is whether or not they'll announce the latest review results before or after it comes out. I'm curious to see just how large their backlog of approved but unreleased sets can get.

Sweet! Though I must say I wish they'd kept green. It's still beautiful, though. Also, it's another increase in the size / price they're willing to go to with Ideas sets. We might someday get a Modular or something similar through Ideas yet...

When they announced it and the Adventure Time set, they indicated they'd come late this year and early next year, and we now know the Adventure Time set is due next year, so we can assume the Caterham Super 7 set will be out this year. They seem to usually release Ideas sets on the first day of their months. Given as far into August as we are now, I think we'd have already seen anything coming on the first of September, so my guess is that it'll come October 1st, November 1st, or December 1st. But I want to stress that's just a guess (er, three guesses).

Yup. Also nary a whiff of anything at odds with LEGO's brand, and it shouldn't even need any element decoration aside from the existing Gingerbread Man printing from Minifigures Series 11.

I'd think Stranger Things would be a bit darker and scarier than LEGO normally goes for... but then again, I thought the same about Gremlins at one time, and also once was sure they'd never touch properties like The Simpsons or The Big Bang Theory, so so much for what I know. That said, I still don't quite see Stranger Things making it in there. But I guess you never know...

I never found out how to get the Vitruvius one, and until these last two posts I wasn't sure it had actually been printed. I wanted one, though, and now am disappointed to learn I apparently could actually have gotten one somehow but didn't. The Emmet, Wyldstyle, Batman, and Business ones were each given away with purchases (from either the brick-&-mortar stores or from Shop at Home) over a four-week period, one per week; the Benny one was given away over that full four-week period in the stores, even without a purchase, to anyone who approached a store associate and said "Spaceship! Spaceship! Spaceship!"

Note that it's officially open to kids as young as 13. On the off chance someone that old (young) actually had a project get through, there'd be no problem. If a project were discovered after approval to have been created by someone younger than 13, I suspect they'd regretfully cancel it, citing the rules violation. That said, it's unlikely to happen - it's darn tough to even make it to review in the first place. After all, there've been well over 18,000 projects submitted to CUUSOO / Ideas over the years, and only about a hundred or so have gotten all the way to 10,000 votes. More importantly, only 17 have ever actually been approved, so far. That's an approval rate of fewer than 1 in a thousand.

AFOL discount?

I think it's the likeliest project in the batch.

Okay, here's one, freshly arrived. I agree the background does it no favors, and the project itself isn't exactly a knockout, perhaps, but I think it certainly qualifies as at least decent, or "remotely good", in both concept and execution. I freely admit I don't expect it to get all that far in the voting with those backgrounds, but it's not an inherently bad project by any means otherwise.

The latest word on Star Trek: Discovery is that it will be about ten years before the original series.

By intentional design, or just as a byproduct of a certain amount of "play" in the connection?

I just saw the announcement on FB, and lots of people are not happy. I hope a) Supergirl will indeed become more widely available in March, and that people can then get her without rebuying the whole Starter Pack, and b) they do an effective job of communicating this to people, or else they risk turning off a lot of people.

And now they've done one with Swan Dutchman, creator of the Gingerbread House currently in review.

Indeed, they actually did a set like that back in 2000. They're probably due for another.

Heck, I didn't know about it until I saw that post to which I was responding. I guess I'll have to learn more about it.

He had a long life and an amazing run, but I'm still terribly sorry he's gone. RIP, Kenny.

That's different from them having intentionally manufactured the controversy from the outset, though, which is more like what you said; it's also close to what I said. You're disagreeing more here with your own previous statement than with mine. Average at worst; the majority of the reviews skew better. I'm basing that not just on the reviews I've seen, but upon the overall aggregate scores compiled by aggregator sites. They are, but rarely like this; Ghostbusters is getting "special treatment", as it were. Also, just because people do it doesn't make it right. If this movie gets an unusually high number of "1" ratings from people who haven't even seen it, it stacks the deck against the movie. Well, this is one of those "opinion" things where we simply disagree, and that's all there is to it. I actually like Ghostbusters 2 myself, and I agree it gets a bum rap, but I just honestly don't think it's as good as the reboot. It simply doesn't have as much humor in it, or as much heart. I'd probably go more like this: Ghostbusters (1984): 10 Ghostbusters 2: 6.5 Ghostbusters (2016): 8 But different strokes, and all that. Sometime I might come back to this thread and do a long-form breakdown of the new movie and why I think it's good, but honestly, this discussion is wearing me out. I also just really don't want to trap myself into getting into heated Internet arguments over movies in general, especially if they lead to dumb things like getting yelling at people I otherwise like and want to be on good terms with, since we share a community and all. It's counterproductive. At least we can agree the '84 original is a classic, and LEGO is the best toy ever; perhaps we should just leave it at that.

Not everyone was born knowing Bluerender exists. And not everyone who doesn't know about doesn't care. Lots of people care about making good-looking renderings, but honestly just haven't the faintest idea of how to go about them.