Blondie-Wan

The full article at the link makes it clear they are indeed those two sets. It certainly would seem to answer concerns over whether the The Big Bang Theory set would be able to include all seven main characters. Expanding to larger sets does also seem like a logical next step for Ideas sets in general, after all the other ways in which it's grown since it began (doing licensed projects, launching new themes, ramping up release schedules from one every couple years to four a year, etc.).

I just posted this in the Ideas thread in The Embassy, and I see someone else already mentioned it in the The Big Bang Theory thread in this forum, but it's also relevant here, so: The Brick Fan has an interesting rumor report on the next two Ideas sets: Intriguing... if true, of course, which it may well not be. But I can see the next logical expansion of Ideas being a move into larger sets, after already accelerating releases from one every couple years to four in one year, as they did last year and are continuing this year.

The Brick Fan has an interesting rumor report on the next two Ideas sets: Intriguing... if true, of course, which it may well not be. But I can see the next logical expansion of Ideas being a move into larger sets, after already accelerating releases from one every couple years to four in one year, as they did last year and are continuing this year.

Could the initial post be updated to include an image for each set for which we have a usable (decent quality and legit - not confidential, etc.) picture now? I see that there's a good picture that's apparently okay to post of the Death Star Final Duel; are there any more?

I think the staffers do all have some idea; they seem to be a small group that have all been with it a while, and they must have some idea by now of what is or is not likely to fly (though it's possible they didn't realize Masters of the Universe is first and foremost a toy line rather than a TV property that became a toy line). Individual LEGO Ideas team members have even given vote support for things that proved to be unworkable. I guess they just choose the stuff they personally like to support and to highlight as Staff Picks, the way any of us might, and try to keep those decisions separate from the ones about whether a project is a good or appropriate one to turn into a set.

Today's Staff Pick is a project based on Masters of the Universe, which really surprises me. They've archived projects in the past based on toys and their tie-in shows from competing toy makers before, notably My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, though there may have been others (haven't there been projects posted and then archived based on G.I. Joe and Transformers?). Huh.

I got mine from Target.com - they have it for just 24.99 (five bucks below MSRP), and they also offer free shipping on orders of $25 or more, so you could add something cheap - they have some of DK's LEGO books for kids for just a few dollars, so you could add one and still pay below MSRP for just the set, and get free shipping on top of that. Hope this helps!

Since they like to try to stick to the core concepts of the proposal projects that people vote for, even if they change the construction details, I imagine they'll do two, since that's what Andrew Clarke suggested - one 'Classic' (probably Tom Baker), and one 'NuWho' (probably either Tennant or Capaldi). The BBC's teaser image certainly strongly suggests Capaldi's Doctor will be in the set, of course, but nothing's official until it's official.

It really is an excellent way of getting them, so long as you're fine with getting the Star Wars: Rebels versions. As long as that's the case, I'd say it's well worth stocking up. If I had money for Star Wars: Rebels sets I'd probably try to get two of the AT-DP and one apiece of Ezra's Speeder Bike and The Ghost, thus giving me four, plus as many Imperial Troop Transports as possible, giving me a slew of additional ones, and in nice multiples of four to boot (I like getting Imperial troops in even numbers, for all those troops-massed-at-attention scenes - it seems more orderly and Imperial, somehow). I'm actually thinking of doing just that, actually, since it seems ridiculously difficult to get a substantial number of consistent movie versions, though they're the ones I really want.

Speaking of lacking knees...

$10, as of this writing - have a look and see. (I don't know if it's the same in brick-and-mortar TRU stores, but I'd imagine so, though if one can order online it doesn't matter anyway, right?) And I just received it yesterday. It was the last set I needed from the original wave - huzzah! Now I need only Emmet's Construct-o-Mech, MetalBeard's Sea Cow and the 2015 sets, and I'll have a more-or-less complete collection. Yay!

"Yellow Brick Edition"? What's this?

I'm loving all these storage schemes I'm seeing. For those of you using the various drawer-based systems, how good are they at keeping dust out? Are any of them essentially dustproof?

Any chance you could post comparison images of the two?

I'm just tired of continually starting to acquire uniformed soldiers of a given type (be they stormtroopers, rebel pilots, whatever), getting x dozen or so of them, and then suddenly having to start over from scratch when all the new sets switch over to some new design that isn't even necessarily better, just different, and finally getting up to the same number of the new type that I already had of the old type and being ready to finally start actually increasing my troops count, only to have to start over again. It's deeply frustrating.

Well, it's a bit of a mess at the moment... I've been collecting for years, during most of which I lived in a tiny studio apartment where I just didn't always have room to enjoy my bricks, so I didn't always get around to even opening sets, but I still tried to get as many of the ones I wanted as I could, figuring someday I'd be better able to enjoy them. Someday is now. After a few years of living with my girlfriend in a small house that was nevertheless larger than my old apartment, we recently a) moved to a much larger house in a new area, and b) got married. We've now been here a few months, but I still don't have quite the LEGO area I'd like. The issue is no longer one of space, though - while the room you see here is pretty cluttered with extraneous stuff that we haven't yet gotten around to properly storing, it's still a large room, and my main problem now is having desk / table area to build, play and display stuff on, along with appropriate hardware for storing and organizing bricks and opened sets. Right now, I mostly have a mix of unopened sets on wire rack shelves, and opened and assembled sets plus loose bricks jumbled together in Rubbermaid and Sterilite containers (largely hidden behind other things in this photo, but you can make some out here and there). Consider this the beginnings of my own LEGO room - well, area, anyway (the room is large enough that we also use it for other hobbies, plus watching TV; it'll never be LEGO-only, but LEGO will always dominate the space). On the left you'll notice a long, narrow table put together from components from IKEA; this is the beginnings of the build space I hope to have eventually, but I want / need a lot more. I also want to eventually have some large tables in the middle for building / displaying large layouts.

They initially sold out of both the Exo Suit and the Research Institute on the first day of availability (they were released on the same day), and did additional runs of each. I suspect the Exo Suit got more and/or larger subsequent runs because it's the kind of set many builders would like to acquire in multiples (I have two copies myself, and I'd like to get more, though my finances will likely prevent it), whereas the Research Institute is probably more the sort of thing for which most people who want it will be satisfied with one.

I would rather they hadn't changed the stormtrooper at all, at least for several years. It's tough to army-build when you can't get uniformed troops that look uniform. Honestly, I think the 2008 version was perfect as it was, and that none of the variations since then have really been improvements, just different. While I'm not crazy about the Rebels variant, I do at least understand the reason for its existence, but the constant revisions in the OT sets is just getting frustrating.

The Rebels stormtroopers actually do use the same helmet mold, as far as I can tell, but they're printed differently, in accord with the show's cartoon aesthetics. Right now, it's actually easy to amass a large number of Rebels-style stormtroopers just buying sets, as there are four in a small, inexpensive battle pack, plus additional ones in other sets throughout the line. The only issue is that they don't match the other stormtroopers that some of us have been trying to army-build for the last fifteen years or so (and for those of us focused on the OT, the cartoony style with the more exaggerated "mouth" droop and all may not look as good to some of us). But they don't look bad, and it's so easy to get them right now. I'm not sure what to do, myself...

I suspect it may be thousands - everything submitted anytime from when LEGO CUUSOO began, in 2008, to May 1st of 2014, that hasn't already either hit the vote target and entered a review batch or been archived. There are, I guess, at most several dozen projects that fall into one of those two categories (that either have already gotten 10k votes - this includes the ones that have actually been approved and become sets, as well as those that haven't - plus a handful of others that have been frozen and archived), but I think for at least the last couple years the submission rate has probably averaged more than one a day. I know there have been days recently when several new projects appear (though the rate does vary wildly from day to day). Even with it having started small, initially only in Japan, I think in those first six years or so they must have gotten thousands of submissions. That said, I don't think they're going to be deleted, per se; I think they'll just expire (the term used in the official Rules and Guidelines), and won't accept new votes or comments, and also won't show up in search results on the site, but will still be visible on the site by looking under the "Projects" tab on their creators' pages (just as all the previous projects that got archived, or got their votes but didn't pass review, are still visible there the same way). If so, I wonder what happens to an old project's posting if the creator decides to repost it and start fresh - will one be able to see the two instances of the same project under a person's projects, just with one active and one not?

That's exactly right. The batch that got reviewed in the 2014 Winter Review (Macross VF-1 Valkyrie, Legend of Zelda: Iron Knuckle Encounter, Japanese Old Style Architecture, The Adventure Time Project, BTTF UCS DeLorean Time Machine, Sherlock) had none of its six projects pass, while the batch after that (LEGO Bird Project, The Big Bang Theory, Doctor Who and Companions, Doctor Who, BTTF - Jules Verne Train, Modular Apple Store) had three out of six get through. Note also, though, that sometimes they aren't able to finish an entire review batch at once - occasionally they need extra time to reach a final decision on a project, so it might be "held over" until they announce the results of a later batch, and they announce the held-over project's results with the others. This has happened with four different projects - the Female Minifigure Set (which became the Research Institute), the Landrover Defender, Doctor Who, and Doctor Who and Companions. This can have a side benefit - the Female Minifigure Set results were announced along with the results from the 2014 Winter Review I mentioned earlier (the one for which none of the projects in that batch got approved). The Female Minifigure Set getting held for additional consideration meant it could be treated as a seventh project in the 2014 Winter Review, and when it was approved it meant they didn't have a whole review results announcement with no new sets announced. I don't think they either held its results back or approved the set just for that reason; I sincerely think they took more time with that one because they really wanted to consider it further, and then ultimately approved it because they decided it independently made good sense as a LEGO set, without consideration for whether any of those other six projects were approved or not. However, I do think they would like to always have some good news to announce, and were probably happy that they could say "yes" to that one at the same time they were saying "no" to everything else in the later batch. They surely wouldn't like waiting a good few months for an announcement only to have to say "we rejected everything!", any more than we would. Anyway, looking not only at what projects are in what initial review batches, but instead at their final announcement groupings, they've had multiple projects approved at the same time more than once - we just had WALL*E and Doctor Who and Companions approved together, and the review right before that we had The LEGO Bird Project and The Big Bang Theory approved together (while the two Doctor Who projects were held for additional consideration at that time). Having said all that, I think there is still some competition for resources between projects, since all the approved Ideas sets still have to share LEGO's extensive-but-still-finite production capacity with each other and all LEGO's other regular products. But no, it's not like there's a hard, fast "one set per review batch / period" rule. It is clearly possible for more than one to be approved at once. They can sometimes even produce and release more than one at once - the Research Institute and the Exo Suit were released simultaneously (and both of them just two months after the Ghostbusters Ectomobile).

Oh, I knew something about the YouTube partner program; I just didn't know if you were referring simply to that, or if JangBricks had some other means of making money from his hobby.

"his LEGO work" - you mean the content of the videos, or something else (i.e., actually working for LEGO, a Bricklink store or whatever)? That much just from YT's partner program?

It was more a joke than a serious comment (hence the ":p" and ";)" appended to it).

That's one I think of using, along with "Blondiopolis" after an old nickname of mine (that provides part of the basis for my screen handle here and a few other places), and the ever-popular "Tabletown".