Blondie-Wan

Hasan from the LEGO Ideas team posted yesterday:

The Second 2020 LEGO Ideas Review batch has now closed, but not before setting a new record of 35 supported p̶r̶o̶j̶e̶c̶t̶s̶ product ideas. Remember those ancient times of several months ago, when we thought a batch of thirteen submissions was amazingly huge? Ah, we were so young... I’ve been making wrong predictions for years. I was so sure the Gingerbread House from a few years ago would be approved, and so sure The Big Bang Theory wouldn’t. And even all these years later, I’m astounded Seinfeld was approved as well. I’m not nearly as surprised by Home Alone, though, as I think it’s now considered sort of a perennial holiday favorite.

34!

Edited the OP to add Universal Monsters, in accordance with the recent reveal. “U” is now taken care of; just three more letters to go! As soon as the LEGO Ideas team approves projects for Quigley Down Under, Xevious, and Zardoz, we’ll be all set. Time for DK to start working on the LEGO Licensed Themes Encyclopedia, with exclusive Jocasta Nu minifigure...

Assuming they represent Muppet characters (other than Big Bird) with minifigures in the first place. If they include human characters like Gordon and Maria, the LEGO Games-style microfigures would be a better fit for Ernie, Bert, Grover, the Count, etc. scale-wise.

28!

We’re now at 27 product ideas, a new record!

I ordered a few Star Wars sets earlier this year during the annual May the 4th promo, and set 75214 (Anakin’s Jedi Starfighter) was backordered and arrived much later than the other sets I’d ordered. When it arrived, it turned out to have one of these non-US boxes with the white stickers applied to add the additional info required here. I guessed it had to do with the usual supply chain here being disrupted by the pandemic, though I didn’t know specific details such as the info about the Mexican factory. It’s not the first time I’ve had this happen, though it certainly doesn’t happen often. A bit more than a decade ago I placed a Shop at Home order that included 7235 Police Motorcycle, and it arrived the same way, in what I assumed was a European-style box with less info printed on it, but with the additional info added via a couple white stickers on the box. I kind of wish I’d kept that box as a minor curiosity; maybe I’ll keep the Jedi Starfighter box.

I played the game quite a bit for a while after getting my PS4 late last year, playing up to the fourth level or so, and also opening a few fun packs (Benny, Buttercup, Cyberman) plus the Supergirl promo, and spent a hefty chunk of time with the Adventure Worlds for DC, Doctor Who, The LEGO Movie, The Lord of the Rings, and The Powerpuff Girls. Then put it aside for several months while my attention was diverted by other things, but finally picked it up again recently, and finished the story mode. It’s so fun! The game is a joy, and deserves to have done better. I’m looking forward to doing so much more with the game, with all the expansion packs I have - I still have every other pack to open (plus dupes of every one I’ve already opened, except for Supergirl - the ones I opened before were just those I’d managed to get multiples of). I know there’s more to do even in all the Adventure Worlds I’ve already explored, plus twenty-five worlds I’ve yet to experience at all, plus all the additional levels from Level and Story Packs, plus all the Battle Arenas (the only one accessible from any pack I’ve opened yet is Buttercup’s, and I haven’t tried even that yet). There’s still so much to do! Had the game continued adding material beyond its second year, there’s no telling how huge it would have become, given that Year Two added not just a bunch of new packs and franchises, but whole new pack types, and entirely different ways to play, and we know more such things were planned for Year 3. We’re now nearing the end of the fifth actual year since the game was released. Just imagine what could have been if it had kept going - a means to scan one’s own brick creations into the game, and possibly other game-editing creative features; the “Connectables”, whatever they were; dozens of additional entertainment properties and LEGO themes added, likely including any number of Disney-owned things including stuff from Pixar, Lucasfilm, and Marvel, plus additional packs for extant themes. Ah, if only. Perhaps it’s just as well; there’s a heck of a lot in the game already, and I for one struggled to get all of it, even with the numerous sales and clearances. All the material for this game exacerbated my already-considerable LEGO storage challenges, and my completion drives would be sorely tested if there had been tons of additional packs representing further franchises like Despicable Me / Minions and Angry Birds (though having recently finally begun watching Avatar: The Last Airbender and already being in love with it, I dearly wish that could have been represented here, or at least that I could have gotten the two sets LEGO released for it back in the day).

Make that 26! This batch has now tied the previous one for the record, and with weeks to go before it closes. I think it’s safe to predict it’ll reach 30. Could it reach 40?!

There are now 25 product ideas in the Second 2020 LEGO Review batch, with about four weeks left before the batch closes. ?

I think it’s amazing. I get wanting it to produce the sound entirely on its own and do so with individual keys all corresponding to the actual notes, but that would entail a crazy expensive set, when I already see people complaining about price, as always. Aside from its own worth as a set of a piano, it’s another big step forward for the Ideas program - not only the largest (by piece count), most expensive Ideas set to date, but also the first one to use Power Functions. I long wondered whether that would happen, and if so, when. Still wondering about the first primarily Technic set, the first primarily Duplo set (or first set to use Duplo), the first set with minidolls... Meanwhile, this is a gorgeous set, and I’d love to get it. We’ll see, though. I have very very few other sets in this price range...

Technically, that would be the Mickey Mouse Steamboat Willie set, which introduced new hat molds for Mickey-as-Willie and Minnie. The molds were created for the second series of Disney Minifigures, but the Ideas set was released first. The first set to introduce any new part shape was the one before that, The Flintstones - the diecut textile element for the roof of the Flintstones’ car - but that doesn’t use a mold (new or otherwise), of course. I haven’t looked at outside info yet, but just following this discussion I can’t help but notice 21233 and 21323 are different numbers. You could both be right, with 21233 being the Piano and 21323 being Sesame Street.

There are now 20 projects - er, product ideas - in the Second 2020 LEGO Ideas Review batch, and it still has about six weeks to go before it closes. At this rate it should have no problem surpassing the record set by the previous batch.

I guess what I’m thinking is “what kind of change”? I suspect the big jump in the number of things hitting the 10k goal (and doing so quickly) lately is principally a side effect of the current pandemic, so they might want to effect changes that can be reversed once the situation is over. Also, I’d hope it would be something along the lines of just approving more projects each time around and allocating more production time to Ideas sets, as opposed to simply declining a larger percentage.

How so?

Yep - the Southwest airliner. I was just coming to note that myself (that the batch is now 16 projects).

The Second Review batch will close a bit earlier than that; the cutoffs for the batches are on specific dates, rather than whenever the previous batches finish their reviews (since the reviews typically take a little longer than the four months that the batches take to fill up, this means that immediately after a batch closes there’s typically an overlap period of a few weeks or so when two batches are in review at the same time - the one that just entered review and the one that’s nearly done). I don’t know the exact date and time (though it should be on the Ideas site somewhere), but the Second 2020 Review batch should close sometime around the beginning of September, not the end. Even so, it’ll still be huge - heck, at fifteen it’s already larger than any batch ever except for the last one, and there are still about two months left for it to gather more projects.

But surely selling one or two sets to such people is better than selling them no sets. _____________________________________ There are now 14 projects in the Second 2020 Review batch already, and it’s still June! How many will there be by the time the batch closes at the end of August / beginning of September?

Yep. With how the whole Ideas program has grown, as well as the general state of affairs in the world, they might have to either allot more production capacity to Ideas sets, or start applying even tougher selection criteria to which ideas they approve. Otherwise, they could find the queue of Approved Ideas stretching out longer and longer.

I think the burden of proof ought to lie on whoever suggested the Typewriter took the place of some other project in the first place. And sure, there may not be ironclad, incontestable proof, but our whole understanding of how Ideas works lends credence to the statement to which you were responding. Prior to the first time TLG selected two projects from a single review, there was a common (mis)perception that each review was essentially a contest with one “winner”, even though the Ideas team had always held out the possibility multiple things could be approved from a single review, and that if they were they’d be queued for production. Since then we’ve had several reviews in which two (or more!) things were approved at once, as well as multiple reviews in which nothing was approved. They’ve also had multiple projects held beyond their original reviews for further consideration. All this strongly indicates - doesn’t prove, no, but strongly supports the idea - that they’re not trying to hit some specific target number of approvals each time, but are instead simply evaluating each idea on its own and whether it’s something they’re able to do and can make a business case for. Whether one particular project meets their criteria doesn’t affect whether another one does, and if they’d declined the typewriter it doesn’t mean that some other project would have been instead. There have been multiple occasions where they haven’t approved anything. As MAB notes, approving this many projects at once (three) is pretty unusual anyway; it’s actually only the second time it’s happened. I find it extremely unlikely that if one of these three projects hadn’t existed, they’d have approved a different one in its place.

Update: added Home Alone (!) and Seinfeld (!!!), per today’s LEGO Ideas Review results announcement.

Sure, but even if it’s popular “only” in the US, given the size of the US that can still mean a lot. Look again at the figures in the article I linked and quoted - Netflix paid over half a billion dollars for the rights to stream the show for five years. There’s a reason for that. They don’t shell out that kind of money for the streaming rights for just any old show... Of course, that still doesn’t mean it’s a particularly natural brand fit for LEGO... but in a world in which there have been official LEGO products for The Big Bang Theory, The Simpsons, Gremlins, James Bond, Friends, and Stranger Things, a Seinfeld set doesn’t seem as bizarre as it once would have.

Wow, a lot of folks here are really clueless about just what a huge show Seinfeld was. I’m not a fan myself, but it was a massive hit, and is still a big deal even today - enough that Netflix recently paid “far more than” $500 million for the streaming rights. I can understand being perplexed by the selection on a brand-fit basis, as Seinfeld isn’t really a kids’ show, but in terms of pure popularity it’s one of the biggest American TV shows in history.

Overlapping or similar subject matter might prevent an entire theme, but for a single set I don’t think it’d be much of an issue.