Blondie-Wan

It appears LEGO sped that one up a bit in order to release it in time for the movie's 30th anniversary, though. I don't think there's a similar consideration at work with The Big Bang Theory. The only other CUUSOO / Ideas set with so little time between announcement and release was Birds, and that's probably the one that needed the least design time, as it's so close to the concept model.

They're completely different things. Bricklink isn't even principally intend as a means to sell models, just parts, while Ideas is about pitching ideas to the LEGO Company itself as things they might produce as real, honest-to-goodness commercial sets. They serve different purposes.

That would be awesome, but they'd be huge additions, well beyond the scope of the original proposed project, and would increase the price significantly if they were in anything close to the same scale. However, I think WALL·E's cockroach pal is a given (it's actually part of the original project), and perhaps he could also have the plant, and/or smaller (minifigure-scale) versions of himself and EVE.

Fair enough. I was going by what was posted in the project's main description. I knew it had been resized, but somehow I thought the 22k+ figure was after resizing (from something even more outlandish).

In fairness, the Doctor Who project really is about more than just minifigures; if you check out the video on the project page, the TARDIS build is really nicely done in how it folds out and all, and the non-minifigure characters (K9 and the Dalek) are very good purist, legal builds of non-humanoid characters at minifigure scale. It's all particularly impressive when you consider that it was posted almost immediately after CUUSOO began even accepting Doctor Who projects at all. Both these projects were successful because the proposal models are so we-designed, I think. Based on the pics, I could almost see LEGO's team releasing both with little or no further modification. I'm really keen to see how functional WALL·E is.

Two reasons. First, this set had almost certainly already been under development for months before the Ideas project was even posted, and it was almost ready to release before the Ideas project even garnered all its votes and entered review. Second, the Ideas project is just waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaayyyyy too big for a set. With Ideas projects, although they tweak and change the designs from the proposal projects to get the actual sets, they try to keep the core ideas the same, so that the set they release is still basically the same idea people voted for, and among other things that means they don't change the size or piece count too much - they might tweak it a little, but they're not going to cut it down by half or more, because then it's no longer the same project people voted for. The Helicarrier that just entered the review phase on Ideas has 22, 694 pieces - that's more than four times as many parts as the UCS Millennium Falcon. They are just not going to offer a commercial set that would probably cost around $1500 to $2000; not even Star Wars gets sets anywhere close to that size or price. (EDIT: I now realize I'm referring to the wrong, earlier figure, although even the revision is still excessively large and my point remains.) Even if they hadn't already been working on a D2C Helicarrier for probably a year and a half that they were almost ready to release by the time the Ideas project even entered review, there is no way that project would ever have had a chance at that size. Maybe if it had both been posted a year earlier and was also a quarter or less of the size, it might have had a chance (and perhaps not even then, as the terms of the already-existing Marvel license might forbid something from the MCU from being done as an Ideas set anyway, for all we know), but as things are, it just was never going to happen.

Normally, yes, but if the change is a matter of simply adding features, playability, etc. without adding much to the piece count / size / price, then it shouldn't be a problem. Think about the additions to the Exo-Suit - a second classic Spaceperson, a robo-turtle, the canisters, etc., all of which added to the value of the set, but without detracting from what had originally been voted for, or substantially increasing the cost beyond what people thought it would or should be. The piano could probably easily be designed like a Creator set, with indtructions for multiple different versions of a piano to be built from the same set of parts. It would add more play / display value to the set without adding much to its cost, and without detracting from the original proposal.

Ooh, that's an excellent idea. I hope someone passes it on to the designer and the Ideas team before the review is over, or at least before the design phase is over if the Piano is approved.

Right. Of course, it was announced simultaneously with Birds, and that came first; perhaps they like having a big of breathing room between reveals... though on the other hand, the final versions of the Exo-Suit and the Research Institute came pretty close together, and the actual releases were simultaneous. Hm.

Martha Jones would be excellent.

Actually, it was revealed last year that an Incredibles sequel is indeed happening, and Brad Bird is writing it.

Both UCS X-Wing Fighters introduced new molds. The cockpit canopy from the second (current) one was later reused in Benny's Spaceship, Spaceship, SPACESHIP!, but it was exclusive to the X-Wing at the time it came out.

It's been very difficult for me to keep up lately, but I did just get 75034 Death Star Troopers and 75030 Millennium Falcon Microfighter, plus another copy of 5001621 Han Solo (Hoth).

Yes, that one has a chance too; I just forgot about it somehow.

Many enjoyed it, though; certainly Angelina Jolie is great in it, regardless of what the rest is like. It was also one of the top grossers of the year, for whatever that's worth. I think you're right. Practically all of the license projects under review are huge projects that would make extremely expensive sets, and most of them have other issues besides. I think either the marble labyrinth, the piano, or both will be approved out of that batch (deservedly so, IMHO), but no others.

I've been thinking the same thing. That's an official image from LEGO and/or the BBC, so first of all it does strongly suggest we'll see Peter Capaldi's incarnation, at least. Moreover, it does seem to suggest we'll get a hitherto-unseen hair element, which will be a first for Ideas; perhaps LEGO has already decided to do a whole theme even before revealing the initial Ideas set, and so has committed to new elements for it, or maybe they already had this hair in the works for something else and decided it'd be the right one to use for this Doctor. Or maybe it's just a "LEGO-y" rendering that uses a hairpiece that doesn't exist at all outside computers; it's not exactly unprecedented for digital LEGO material to incorporate "parts" that don't actually exist in plastic.

The thing with the time train and the Ghostbusters station, though, is that both those projects would have made large, expensive sets. It's possible that alone was enough to keep them from being approved. I don't think most of the other Doctor Who projects are close to the same size. Projects that stay under around $50 should have a better shot. But yes, it is also possible that once a single set gets through Ideas, the licensing agreement might preclude further Ideas sets from happening. It's a lot closer to Toy Story 3 (and the present) than it is to either Ghostbusters or Back to the Future, though. At any rate, it's not old enough for the age of the movie to be a problem, at least as an Ideas set. Nothing to be "sorry" about to WALL*E fans; those other movies did just come out this year (by "Sleeping Beauty" you're talking about Maleficent, right?). However, it's not just Disney's decision; LEGO itself simply can't make a whole new theme for every movie that comes out. They just don't have the production capacity. They have to pick and choose, and they already had existing licensed themes like Star Wars, Marvel, DC, The Hobbit, etc., not to mention their own themes like City, Friends, etc. If they do a theme around a new major motion picture it means they make multiple sets, and make all of them in enough quantity to fill shelves in every Target, Walmart, Toys 'R' Us, etc., and that can both cut into their production capacity for other lines while also cluttering up the market with too many products and cannibalizing their own sales in other lines. A single Ideas set doesn't do that, though. It also doesn't need either Disney or LEGO to even come up with the idea of doing it; it's something an individual artist who worked on WALL*E came up with, and a bunch of regular fans asked for it by voting for it. Indeed, someone could even post a Maleficent or Big Hero 6 project on Ideas, and it might have an excellent chance. I think you're right about the size / price point of Ideas projects and sets (not that a large set is completely impossible, but smaller ones definitely have better chances). However, there have been just as many non-licensed sets that got through as there have been licensed ones - six of each, including the three that have been announced but not released yet. Actually, in fact, if we look just at the ones that have actually come out so far, there have been three licensed ones and six non-licensed ones, so non-licensed sets make up two-thirds of all the ones so far.

Oh, no worries - the placement of Licensed stuff around the forums is kind of a mess anyway, with lots of arbitrary exceptions and whatnot. That said, LEGO Licensed is generally used for entertainment licenses - narrative, character-based stuff (movies, TV, comics, video games, etc.). Brand licenses - corporate names, products and services, etc. - are indeed licenses as well, but they're of a different nature from those others, and usually they're posted elsewhere - typically either LEGO Town or Special LEGO Themes, though they can also fit elsewhere (discussion of the Maersk Train going in the LEGO Train Tech forum, for example). :)

You say that like it's a bad thing.

Yeah, we still haven't waited anywhere nearly as long for anything on this set as we did for final imagery and other info about the Exo-suit, for example. I'm curious about The Big Bang Theory set as well, but it hasn't really been that long a wait yet.

I have to imagine it'll be Ten, Eleven and/or Twelve (and I'd be very happy with any of them), but I'd love it if they did Four. Tom Baker was my first Doctor and many other people's, and for lots of folks I'd bet he's still the most iconic (it probably helps that he's the one with the longest run).

I don't know about mini-figure versions, but it imagine it'll at least have a little brick-built version of WALL*E's cockroach buddy (if you look closely at the original project submission, you can see it included, sitting on top of WALL*E's "chest").

If I may be forgiven for quoting myself... With regards to my earlier statement, I'd just like to note that we've now had two review results announcements back-to-back in which they announced not one but two sets at the same time. And as far as the actual releases go, Birds came out earlier this year and the next three sets have all been announced - and it's only February. There could be still more sets released this year, and there'll almost surely be more announced. Even if today's announcements are the last ones they release this year (I'm assuming they all will come out in 2015, as it's only early February and I doubt they'll take eleven months or more to release these three sets they've already announced), it'll still be the second year in a row with four new sets, whereas CUUSOO originally started out releasing something like one set in two years. They're definitely moving a lot faster than they were when they started!

I think that for popular pop-culture licenses, they do have a pretty good idea of how popular they'll be, and they plan accordingly. Note how the Back to the Future DeLorean time machine was available more or less continuously for about, what, a year and a half? - and the Ghostbusters Ectomobile has been out since last June and is still readily available. Minecraft did routinely sell out quickly for the first several months of availability, but I think that was just the set's extreme popularity outstripping their production capacity, not some small fraction thereof that they committed to actually making; they kept making more and bringing it back to meet demand. I think the Doctor Who set (and the WALL*E set) will be a bit easier to get than the Research Institute and the Mars Science Laboratory Curiosity Rover... though I still plan to try to get them as soon as they're available, just in case.

Not lately, actually. LEGO has been inconsistent over the years in what they consider a "minifigure"; at one time they counted things like astromechs and battle droids, skeletons, etc., but lately they haven't been - recent DK books have treated such figures as related to minifigures but not true minifigures themselves, while LEGO's own product descriptions say things like (for example) "Includes R2-D2™ and 16 minifigures" (for 10236 Ewok Village). I'd therefore expect the official description for this set to read something like, say (depending on what's in it, of course), "Includes K-9™ and Dalek™ figures, plus 3 minifigures: the Doctor, Rose Tyler and a Cyberman!" I'd say it depends on whether Doctor Who blossoms into a whole theme, like Minecraft did. They're not going to produce one of those games based on a license with a single set, but I do think that out of all the pop-culture licenses to yield sets through CUUSOO / Ideas, this is the one with the strongest potential to become a full theme. I'd have thought it was even likelier than Minecraft, actually, were it not for the fact Minecraft has already become a full-blown theme.