Blondie-Wan

That's a nice one indeed, and I'm supporting it myself. I've been meaning to start a countdown for the Great Ideas Purge. A lot of projects are going to be archived in it, many of which really deserved to at least get the votes to get considered, even if many would have no chance of becoming sets.

Why not just wait until March to order it? It's not as though it'll be sold out when it's just a couple weeks old...

Ideas indeed isn't the place for political ideas, but simply wanting sets that reflect people isn't merely political. People in wheelchairs do in fact exist, as do women, wheelchair ramps, etc., and yet these things are seldom represented in sets. That's actually a perfect reason why there should be a set of something like that. We certainly hardly need any more sets of cars and planes, but there's no shortage of those on Ideas; why shouldn't there be sets that portray a range of people as they really are, but are seldom seen in other sets?

The shape of it has always challenged modelers of all sorts (including the makers of the actual effects models used to produce actual Star Trek itself), particularly with regard to the warp nacelles, which have a tendency to droop if not well-strengthened (and sometimes even then). The curvatures in the designs add additional challenges in recreating them with LEGO, of course.

Apparently not. There've been multiple articles and interviews in which the creation of the set is discussed - here's one, right in the official LEGO Ideas blog - in which they talk about this. Classic Spacefolk are traditionally all one color, (save for the heads, which of course are always yellow regardless of what color uniform they're "wearing", and of course the printing on the heads and torsos), and the articles I've seen (such as the blog entry I've linked) say that when it came time to pick colors for this set, there were three options available, thanks to the parts assemblies already being made for other sets - blue, because of Benny (of course); black, because of Darth Vader; and green (a color previously never used for CS), because of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and Peter Reid and Mark Stafford went with green since it would be a brand new color. Now, we all know they can mold all sorts of colors of torso, arm and hand, and put them together any way they want, but we also know they produce stuff in massive quantities, on production lines devoted to certain parts and sets for specific periods of time, so that a line will make a whole slew of parts in a certain color before being given over to doing a different color, or an entirely different part altogether. They also have machines that connect all the parts of the torso assemblies together, to make those assemblies that LEGO treats as single parts, and those lines are part of the same production process as everything else, meaning that at any given time they might have machines assigned to putting, say, blue arms and yellow hands on blue torsos, or black arms, hands and torsos together, but not green arms with red hands on white torsos (for example). From the articles, it sounds as though maybe it's feasible to simply swap out the pads that print on torsos for part of a run of Turtle torso prints so that they get CS logos instead, but doing things another way would mean reconfiguring the lines and machines that pick arms and hands and torsos of certain colors from certain bins and put them together for a run, and that's more disruptive to their "regular" (i.e., non-Ideas) production than swapping out a print pad. I mean, I don't know, but that's what it sounds like. It would also explain why the chemist in the Research Institute doesn't have "gloved" hands when it would make sense for her to have them (as her counterpart / predecessor in Minifigures Series 11 does), even though she does have a new torso print exclusive to the set. That's entirely possible (and deeply unfortunate if true), but FWIW there are other licensees that have held rights to both franchises at the same time. Funko currently makes figures from both, for example.

Since Ideas sets are limited-production items that get made only as long as there's not only sufficient demand but also adequate production capacity, and we know the green Classic Spacefolk happened because Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles made them viable (by making LEGO already produce torso assemblies - torso, arms and hands - that were all green, and thus needed just the Classic Space emblem print), it could be that the retirement of the TMNT theme means the torsos needed for this set are no longer being made, thus automatically retiring this set as well. That's too bad. Star Trek in particular deserves better (specifically, LEGO), though the nature of the franchise (with all the shows and movies dominated by crews of large vessels, as opposed to a greater mix of vehicle sizes as in Star Wars) might make LEGO less inclined to do it even when the rights are available. It's slightly interesting that Hasbro (KRE-O) hasn't retained the rights, though, especially after losing the Jurassic Park rights to LEGO. Of course that was a unique case, but I'd have thought it'd make Hasbro all that much more inclined to keep what other licenses it could. Perhaps they decided Trek wasn't worth it to them?

At last, a LEGO TIE Fighter with enough pieces to truly accurately recreate the number of debris particles one explodes into when shot by an X-Wing! It looks great. Alas, it'll be tough for me to get, and I'll probably have to pass, but we'll see...

I'll second this (or third it, or fourth, or whatever the count is up to now). I don't understand why it didn't happen as soon as it was known this would be a new licensed theme this year.

That one actually makes perfect sense to me. It's about people wanting representation, that's all. People like to see people like themselves in movies, TV shows, comics, books, etc., including toys, and there just haven't been a lot of representations of differently-abled individuals in official LEGO sets. I think that project I linked to is a good one, and voted for it myself. Possibly, but then LEGO does cap the votes at 10,000 per project, so it's not as though any of them can rack up truly ridiculous numbers anyway. They do look at other criteria, such as the speed at which votes are accrued; I think they certainly have some idea that something like Minecraft, which got all its votes in two days, is going to be a bigger seller than something like Birds, which took over a year. They do also put a few elements into the voting process that make it a little more involved than just following a link from elsewhere to an Ideas page and clicking a single button, so they do indicate a little more interest than just "liking" something on Facebook or whatever. I think they have a pretty good balance now.

Oh, they do also clarify that bricks have to be unmodified - they can't be cut or anything like that. I wonder whether that would mean something like the bent lever in this creation wouldn't be allowed now.

Innnnnnteresting! Interesting, indeed! That said... the design process for this one is likely just getting started. The main image for the original Ideas project does show all those characters; it could be that LEGO is simply using Andrew Clark's homemade image as sort of a placeholder for the official set, and now that they're an official licensee using it in an official capacity, they have to acknowledge all the different rights concerning all those different elements just to use the picture, and that it doesn't really reflect anything about the set other than the fact there will indeed be an official LEGO Doctor Who product. But I do hope it means all that will be there. :D

This sounds like an EB contest in the making - pick a set released since Mill Village Raid came out, and add goats; which set would benefit most from their inclusion?

There's a new update to the LEGO Ideas Guidelines and House Rules today. Most of the changes appear to be minor tweaks and revisions for clarification. The most substantial one (in theory, albeit not so much in practice), to me, appears to be the new stipulation that project images must show a construction of LEGO bricks (albeit either real, physical bricks, or virtual ones in LDD). Before now, it was acceptable to simply show any image of the thing you wanted a set of, be it a drawing, a photo of a real-world object, whatever; even though it would be a proposal for a LEGO model set, the proposal image wouldn't have to show any LEGO bricks at all. Now it does. Of course, the overwhelming majority of projects there do actually show LEGO constructions anyway, and the few that don't appear to have little success at gathering votes, but now actual LEGO construction is an official requirement, not just a de facto one.

Thank you! :D

My fiancée and I are actually getting married on Valentine's Day, and we'll have a built copy of this set on our cake table, along with some other items.

It'll be up to LEGO's Ideas team to make the final determination of whether this is a rule violation. Personally, I like the piano and would like to see it produced, but I do have to say this certainly seems questionable to me, at the very least, and I really can't fault LEGO if they decide it violates the Ideas terms. I honestly can see how someone might argue the other way, and I can even believe they mean it, but to me it's not nearly clear-cut enough to be able to definitively say it doesn't break the rules. Anyone who wants to put projects on Ideas would be well-advised to just steer entirely clear of getting anywhere close to a violation, so there's no question about it.

... Or the forum description?

Oh, that's unfortunate. I was pulling for that piano, myself, and I'd like to think he probably just honestly didn't realize this was violating the Ideas Terms of Service (was that rule even in place when the Piano was first posted? Even if not, it's been so long since it was first posted that it's entirely reasonable to think he just plain forgot), but I have to assume even an unintentional rules violation won't help his project get through review. I wonder whether it might be allowed to slide, though, since technically it's not the same model as he has on Ideas (the color is literally the exact opposite, for one thing), even though they're clearly drawn from the same core concept.

The Ideas site will be down for maintenance for approximately half an hour starting tomorrow at 20:30 GMT, it says.

Bessie would have crossover appeal, too - vintage car buffs who may not care or even know about Doctor Who could still appreciate a set of a really neat car.

Well, in fairness, do we even know with absolute certainty it was ever going to happen at all? It was never officially announced, as far as I'm aware... If it's true (both that they are / were doing a Kwik-E-Mart, and that it might now be cancelled), I'd guess it meant that the existing material (Simpsons Minifigures Series 1 and/or the Simpsons' House) haven't done as well as hoped. I do know the minifigures got clearance-priced before selling out, though I don't know for sure that they did poorly...

Most of them have. Hayabusa hit its vote target in just 57 days, although like Shinkai 6500 it needed only 1000 votes; everything that came after those two needed 10,000. Minecraft is the record holder, getting from 0 to 10,000 in just 48 hours (causing the then-CUUSOO site to have three server outages in the process). That one was directly supported by the game's publisher, who campaigned for it on social media to all its fans. No other project has done it so quickly. The two projects that came closest, as far as I can determine, were both of the two Doctor Who projects that got reviewed together. The one that got approved, Doctor Who and Companions, was posted first (on February 27 of last year) but hit its target second, about four weeks after being posted. The other one, just called Doctor Who, was posted a day after Doctor Who and Companions, but actually hit the target almost twice as quickly, in just two weeks, yet ultimately lost out to a version of the same concept that took about twice as long (though both were quite speedy, of course). (I find it interesting that, unlike with Ghostbusters, the chosen entry was not the one that hit 10,000 votes first. I think it has to do with the quality of presentation - both projects are well-done, but Doctor Who and Companions is particularly well thought-out, with great care and cleverness used in devising character likenesses that are detailed and accurate yet entirely "purist", made with existing elements in legal builds, and also a surprisingly sophisticated build with fold-out features for the TARDIS - it's really good, and remarkable considering it was posted almost immediately upon LEGO announcing they would now accept Doctor Who submissions.) The other approved projects all took several months, at least. I don't know about all the projects that got to 10,000 but weren't approved, though some can be looked up. There have also been various projects that started collecting votes at good rates and were clearly likely to get to 10,000 soon, but which were discovered by LEGO to be undoable at some point before they finished, and were archived before they could achieve their vote goals.

Ah. Yes, it took about a year and eight months. But then, the flip side of that is that if it were posted now, with Ideas likely drawing more users all the time, it's quite possible Birds would have done it faster if it were posted now, though there's no way to know for sure. Some of the other approved projects have taken over a year to accrue their votes - including Shinkai 6500, which took 420 days to reach just 1000 votes (the original required count for CUUSOO, albeit all from Japan). The Female Minifigure Set that became the Research Institute also took slightly over a year.

I'm not sure what you mean. It just got through three months ago, hardly enough time for conditions to have changed so much that it wouldn't get through now.

Those followup sets you mentioned aren't part of the CUUSOO / Ideas program, though, and don't generate royalties for the project creator. Only the original set does. It's explicitly specified in the Ideas terms: