Blondie-Wan

They've never said they flat-out won't do it. They have said that projects based on an existing license may face additional complications and are less likely to pass review than ones that aren't, but it's not flat-out impossible. They have specifically cited the possibility/ likelihood that they may be already developing a set of their own when a project with the same subject matter enters review as one reason things may not pass, and we know things like this have happened with the Ghostbusters Headquarters, for example. It's also quite possible the terms of some of their existing licenses preclude them from doing further sets based on Ideas projects (perhaps even if those licenses first began with Ideas projects). However, that possibility isn't necessarily the case for all their existing licenses; it may well be that, say, their Star Wars license won't let them do any sets based on Ideas projects, but their Marvel one will. Or vice versa. Or perhaps both will, while their DC one won't. Or vice versa. And so on. Every license agreement is different. The problem is that they can't say which (if any) of their existing licenses preclude them from doing sets based on Ideas projects, since license agreements are confidential, and even if they didn't directly say "we can't do Ideas sets based on X because our existing license prevents it", if they do accept projects based on existing license Y but not existing license X, it publicly suggests something about the difference between their licenses for X and Y. They therefore accept projects based on all properties for which they have current, active licenses, and it's still entirely possible (if less likely) that projects based on such properties could in fact get through; it's simply up to us to discover which licenses might allow it (and unfortunately, we can never be absolutely sure about which ones won't). The only licensed properties they'll preemptively disallow are ones they flat-out won't do at all at the moment, because the construction toy rights are known to be already held by a competing toy company (like Star Trek currently is, and like Jurassic Park was for a while), or because they flat-out won't ever do it - perhaps because a competing toy company not merely has the rights, but owns it outright (such as My Little Pony), or perhaps it's just a poor brand fit for LEGO, like any given R-rated horror movie (Alien, for example).

That's exactly what I ordered on April 30th, myself. Unfortunately I've been pretty constrained in my LEGO purchases lately, but I knew I had to get something this May the Fourth, and that was it! The package arrived today. (Only, wasn't it 20% off?)

I'm honestly not sure whether it's licensed from JAXA (Japan's space agency, like NASA or ESA). I do understand that for US government agencies such as NASA, they don't technically license products (or trademark or copyright things) in the way that private entities do, but perhaps things are different with Japan. Just to be safe, though, that's why I said "licensed ones based on entertainment properties", to cover myself. At any rate, I tend to distinguish between licenses based on narratives and characters - movies, TV, comics, video games, etc. - and licenses of things like real-world corporate products and brands, portrayals of real-world objects and locations that are authorized by some agency, etc.; I was under the impression most of us do.

Those are the submissions. I'm talking about the entire program / platform / theme. It's evolved and matured substantially since beginning in, what - 2008? It was originally limited solely to users in Japan; both the Ideas program site and the products it yields are now available globally. The program started slowly, producing single sets one or two years apart; it now brings us as many as four sets per year. The range of set sizes and prices has expanded from a narrow $35 to $50 (USD) to as much as $70, and as little as $20. The process and guidelines have been refined substantially - sure, you might laugh at that, but remember that when it began there was no time limit for a project to get its votes, much less guidance than we have now about what sorts of projects were likely to be approved, and not even a requirement that projects depict LEGO builds at all (a number of older projects would just have photos or drawings of real-world, non-LEGO objects, like a photo of an actual house, with a description saying "LEGO should offer a model of this house" or some such thing). Virtually every set released along the way represents some sort of first for the theme. Heck, even the very name is different from what it began with (from "LEGO CUUSOO" to "LEGO Ideas"). There's also Hayabusa, which has a minifigure as a display accompaniment, despite the actual main model being not minifigure-scaled, as well as depicting an unmanned probe.

Incidentally, given the apparent fervor for getting an official LEGO set based on The Legend of Zelda via Ideas, there's something I found interesting about this Ideas blog post from a couple months ago, but I forgot to mention it earlier: Do you see it? There, in the upper left, directly to the left of and behind the TIE Fighter: Okay, it could be nothing - maybe someone there is just a fan, but... well, still, why is it there? I do note it appears to be not a LEGO model but a conventional sculpture. Are those things sold commercially? Hmmm...

In the case of your example, it would be because the '66 Batmobile is just a part of a much larger set, to the point that there's a huge difference between the two sets. While I get why they wouldn't approve that project when the already have the '66 Batcave, I'm honestly surprised they preemptively archived the project before it even made it into a review batch. I do think they should have just let it end peacefully in review. Perhaps, but it's certainly a sufficient justification all by itself. Disallowing all those less-accomplished projects by the teeming unwashed masses right out of the gate surely would turn off a bunch of those submitters and turn them away from Ideas entirely, and the remaining projects would accrue votes that much more slowly. Fewer projects would even make it to review.

I've made this point before, but it might help if those Middle-Earth projects weren't all multi-thousand-piece behemoths that would cost multiple hundreds of dollars. As LEGO Ideas has grown and matured, they've started to do ever-larger, more expensive sets; after years of CUUSOO / Ideas sets maxing out at $50 USD, they had three in a row last year that were $60, and now they've just released one at $70. But there's still a huge jump from $70 to $150 or so, let alone the multiple hundreds of dollars that most (all?) of the Middle-Earth-based Ideas projects that have made it to review would command if turned into actual sets. If the rumors and reports of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings themes selling poorly are true, there might be no chance for any Ideas projects based on them anyway, but if there is to be any hope of one or more getting through, it surely would help if the projects were at realistic sizes. Unfortunately, there seems to be little interest practical, reasonably-sized submissions, only in colossally huge creations that admittedly look great but would never be practical as sets because hardly anyone could afford them. The same is true for non-licensed Castle stuff. There have been at least one or two medieval-themed projects that have made it to review like the Medieval Market Street, which is certainly a lovely project, but just far larger than anything they were willing to release as a set then. There are also some equally lovely Castle-type projects on Ideas that would make much smaller, more commercially viable sets, and thus surely have better chances if they made it to review, but Castle fans seem to just not support them as much as the impractically huge ones. Actually, the CUUSOO / Ideas sets that have been approved to date are almost evenly divided between licensed ones based on entertainment properties and ones that aren't (7 to 8, respectively). And seven of those sets, including three unlicensed ones, include minifigures.

Yeah, they've had a couple reviews lately that ran a good month or more longer than usual, but I was going for, well, the usual. Moreover, as noted, their post of a few days ago does say "in a few weeks". While they've occasionally missed deadlines or other announced, expected dates before, they don't usually miss them by all that much, so I'm assuming it will indeed be in a few weeks - say, mid-to-late June at the latest, and possibly (hopefully, though I wouldn't hold my breath) as early as later this month.

And we do know it's something that can be licensed. In the last few years it's even been a construction toy set from one of LEGO's competitors, as well as a Christmas ornament, etc.; it even has a Hot Wheels die cast version coming out soon, if it's not out already. The major consideration over whether LEGO can do it should hinge only upon whether K'Nex's license has expired, and judging from what I saw on their website the last time I looked at it, I suspect it has. Anytime from right now to mid-June. Their recent blog posting from earlier this week says it'll be "in a few weeks".

Oh, I don't think he's expecting them to do that at all. He's trying to make it happen, sure, but he knows full well it's profoundly unlikely.

I think the Yellow Submarine, Apollo XI and Concorde are all relatively likely, and that there's an excellent chance we'll get at least one of those three, and a fair chance we'll get two.

I have so many favorites in this series it was hard to pick; I decided to vote for Emmet simply because he needed more votes. But I could just as easily have picked Wyldstyle, Taco Tuesday Guy, Larry the Barista, Abraham Lincoln, or William Shakespeare. And I love a bunch of others as well.

Could it be like SpongeBob Squarepants, with waves a couple years apart?

I was out shopping for the Disney Minifigures earlier this week, and found not only abundant stock of Series 15, but also quite a few Series 13 - but no Series 14. Anecdotal, of course, but at least around here, I'd say the Monsters were at least as popular as other numbered, non-licensed series, if not more so.

Well, it's not often they photograph minifigures from directly overhead, after all.

Isn't the target audience pretty broad, though - and largely the same as that for The LEGO Movie, which got just such a set (Metal Beard's Sea Cow)?

No; the non-licensed themes essentially share the regular series, after all. The overall Minifigures line has lots of figures that fit into the perennial classic evergreen themes like City, Castle, and Space, plus various intermittent themes like Adventurers, Wild West, and Pirates, and even specific subthemes and side themes like Alien Conquest, Galaxy Squad, and Dino. But the licensed themes can't share series with unlicensed ones; they can't even share series with other licensed themes from different rightsholders - at most, they can share series with other themes from the same rightsholder (for example, the current Disney series, which is essentially nine different Disney franchises, linked simply in all being Disney-owned). But you couldn't have, say, an all-superheroes series combining characters from Marvel, DC, The Incredibles, and Teenage Mutant Ninja Tirtles, nor could there be an all-space series combining Star Wars, Marvel and DC's space stuff, LEGO's own Space themes and subthemes, and real-world astronauts. If licensed themes are to appear in the Minifigures line at all, they need their own dedicated series. Indeed. Actually, when they first began back in 2010, they were just $2 each (in the US, anyway - well, $1.99). They've actually gone up in price a couple times. I believe the price increases have been staggered around different countries, regions and territories, so that in one country they might have gone up with, say, Series 3, but in another country stayed at the same price until Series 5, but I think at this point they've had at least one or two price increases everywhere, and now cost substantially more than they did back in the days of Series 1. Here in the States, they started at $1.99, went to $2.99 with Series 3, and went to $3.99 with The Simpsons Series 1.

I went to my nearest LEGO Store yesterday, and when I arrived there were three people packet-feeling the remnants of a mostly-empty box; after they collected the bags in front of them and bought them, there were just four packets left, and all of them seemed to be Mr. Incredible, so that's the one minifigure I got - though I got two, one for my Disney-loving wife. She's out of town on a work trip, and called me from a LEGO Store near where she's working this week. She found plenty of the Disney minifigures, but alas, she had trouble packet-feeling them, so she just bought eighteen to bring back. She subsequently opened one in her hotel room and got Mickey, but she'll save the rest for when she gets home. I'm guessing we'll be doing some trading...

Wow, that's fantastic.

You have got to be kidding. Aw, darn it. I wanted to support that one myself, but I was still catching up on the past few weeks' projects, and hadn't gotten to it. Oh, well.

They're all lovely projects, and I supported all of them myself. I do agree they all still face long odds, but then so do all Ideas projects in general, and these have already come further than most. I fear the Particle Accelerator and rolling BB-8 will likely both be nixed on safety grounds (and tie for the honor of being the first LEGO Ideas projects ever declined for that particular reason, though of course we won't know the reason for certain), but I'd love to be proven wrong. The Jurassic Park Visitor Center and Jedi High Council Chamber may well run afoul of existing license terms (no project based on an existing license has ever been approved yet despite several having made it to review, including ones from both Star Wars and Jurassic Park), and of course once again, many of the projects that made it to review are just plain big. I do think that as Ideas goes on, they're testing boundaries with it, and becoming willing to do larger and larger sets with it - note how after years of CUUSOO / Ideas sets topping out at $50 USD, they had three in a row last year at $60, and now they've done one at $70 - but they've been pushing the sizes upwards cautiously, inching along, and I'm not sure they're ready to suddenly do really huge sets around $150 or more just yet. But I do think they'll get there eventually. I think the Gingerbread House and Johnny Five are the likeliest candidates of this batch. While the Gingerbread House is kind of large-ish, it's not really too large; it could be brought in around $70 or even $60, I think, and of course it's super family-friendly and requires no licensing. Johnny Five is from a movie series that's not currently as high-profile as most of their other licenses, but it does have a following, it's family-friendly, and the license should have no conflicts and should be easy to get; moreover, the robot design is sufficiently interesting that the set may well appeal to people purely for being a cool-looking robot, even if they've never seen or even heard of the Short Circuit movies. And though amazingly detailed, the model isn't actually all that big. I think the likeliest obstacle is that it's conceptually similar to an Ideas set they've already done - a detailed, posable figure of a friendly, lovable robot from a family-oriented science fiction film, just like WALL•E. But then, they've done sets conceptually similar to one another in this line before, several times.

Putting aside the question of whether the sets truly are lackluster, do you really think TLG views them that way - that they intentionally design sets to be lackluster? What purpose would that serve? I think it's safer to assume they produce things they think will sell, and those can be minifigures as well as larger models. I certainly don't see why there would be a hard and fast rule against so-called "CMFs" of superheroes; any such restrictions on place against them would likely instead be externally mandated by the licensors.

No.

Time to update the list! I'm assuming that new Supergirl pack is what we may just call a "Promo Pack", which I'll also assume will not be limited to E3 bug will hopefully also turn up eventually at TRU or something. Once again, then, here's the current list of all known packs, color-coded for easy distinction of Starter, Level, Team and Fun Packs, plus the new Connectables, with known characters (or assumed ones, like Sonic and Mr. T), and also now featuring Promo Packs: 71170 - Starter Pack: PS3 (Wyldstyle, Gandalf, & Batman) 71171 - Starter Pack: PS4 (Wyldstyle, Gandalf, & Batman) 71172 - Starter Pack: XBox One (Wyldstyle, Gandalf, & Batman) 71173 - Starter Pack: XBox 360 (Wyldstyle, Gandalf, & Batman) 71174 - Starter Pack: Wii U (Wyldstyle, Gandalf, & Batman) 71201 - Level Pack: Back to the Future (Marty McFly) 71202 - Level Pack: The Simpsons (Homer Simpson) 71203 - Level Pack: Portal 2 (Chell) 71204 - Level Pack: Doctor Who (the Doctor) 71205 - Team Pack: Jurassic World (Owen Grady & ACU Trooper) 71206 - Team Pack: Scooby-Doo! (Scooby-Doo & Shaggy) 71207 - Team Pack: NinjaGo (Cole & Kai) 71208 - ? 71209 - Fun Pack: DC Comics (Wonder Woman) 71210 - Fun Pack: DC Comics (Cyborg) 71211 - Fun Pack: The Simpsons (Bart Simpson) 71212 - Fun Pack: The LEGO Movie (Emmet Brickowski) 71213 - Fun Pack: The LEGO Movie (Bad Cop) 71214 - Fun Pack: The LEGO Movie (Benny) 71215 - Fun Pack: NinjaGo (Jay) 71216 - Fun Pack: NinjaGo (Nya) 71217 - Fun Pack: NinjaGo (Zane) 71218 - Fun Pack: The Lord of the Rings (Gollum) 71219 - Fun Pack: The Lord of the Rings (Legolas) 71220 - Fun Pack: The Lord of the Rings (Gimli) 71221 - Fun Pack: The Wizard of Oz (Wicked Witch) 71222 - Fun Pack: Legends of Chima (Laval) 71223 - Fun Pack: Legends of Chima (Cragger) 71224 - ? 71225 - ? 71226 - ? 71227 - Fun Pack: The Simpsons (Krusty the Clown) 71228 - Level Pack: Ghostbusters (Peter Venkman) 71229 - Team Pack: DC Comics (The Joker & Harley Quinn) 71230 - Fun Pack: Back to the Future (Doc Brown) 71231 - Fun Pack: The LEGO Movie (Unikitty) 71232 - Fun Pack: Legends of Chima (Eris) 71233 - Fun Pack: Ghostbusters (Mr. Stay Puft) 71234 - Fun Pack: NinjaGo (Sensei Wu) 71235 - Level Pack: Midway Arcade (gamer) 71236 - Fun Pack: DC Comics (Superman) 71237 - Fun Pack: DC Comics (Aquaman) 71238 - Fun Pack: Doctor Who (Cyberman) 71239 - Fun Pack: NinjaGo (Lloyd) 71240 - Fun Pack: DC Comics (Bane) 71241 - Fun Pack: Ghostbusters (Slimer) 71242 - ? Pack: Ghostbusters (?) 71243 - ? Pack: Harry Potter (?) 71244 - ? Pack: Sonic the Hedgehog (Sonic the Hedgehog) 71245 - ? Pack: Adventure Time (?) 71246 - ? Pack: Adventure Time (?) 71247 - ? Pack: Harry Potter (?) 71248 - ? Pack: "MI" 71249 - ? Pack: Adventure Time (?) 71250 - ? Pack: Ghostbusters (?) 71251 - ? Pack: Mr. T (Mr. T) 71252 - ? Pack: "KR" 71253 - ? Pack: Fantastic Beasts (and Where to Find Them) (?) 71254 - ? Pack: Teen Titans GO! (?) 71255 - ? Pack: Teen Titans GO! (?) 71256 - ? Pack: "GR" 71257 - ? Pack: Fantastic Beasts (and Where to Find Them) (?) 71258 - ? Pack: "ET" 71259 - Connectable 1 71260 - Connectable 2 71261 - Connectable 3 71262 - Connectable 4 71263 - Connectable 5 71340 - Promo Pack: DC Comics (Supergirl) Thanks (again!) to CM4Sci, we also know Jillian Holtzmann is in one of the new Ghostbusters packs, and I'm going out on a limb and assuming one of the Harry Potter packs does in fact contain Harry Potter. Since there are multiple packs listed for both, though, I'm not assigning those characters to specific packs just yet, though it seems to me Harry would likely be in the first pack for his franchise. Still plenty of gaps in the numbering!