Blondie-Wan

I think a Hubble project might be more successful at another time. The project under consideration was for a pretty large model; they might have declined it just for that. Other scientific research craft have been mainstays of the whole CUUSOO / Ideas line.

I'm really excited for both. This will actually be the fourth Pixar property / franchise to be represented in an official LEGO set (or the seventh, if we go by individual movies and not overall series), after Toy Story (three movies), Cars (two movies - plus the non-Pixar Planes spinoffs), and Brave. Given that this project was submitted by an actual Pixar animator who worked on the movie (as well as having created the famous Cube Dudes that LEGO has previously released in limited-edition sets), I expect this set will entail close collaboration between the creator and LEGO's in-house team, and be really accurate to the source material.

A "CMF" series for this particular license seems a no-brainer; it'd be an ideal way to get all the incarnations of the title character, and a bunch of other characters besides. The fact this particular Doctor Who project was chosen even though the other one under review hit 10,000 votes first must mean the set will be closer to this project's description than the other one, so let's take a look at that: So... One or two Doctors, K-9, two non-K-9 companions, a Dalek, and perhaps a Cyberman or Weeping Angel. My guess: at a minimum, I think that'll be one Doctor, K-9, another companion and a Dalek. I could see them eschewing a second human companion to cut down on costs, but K-9 would of course be built using common and inexpensive elements, so I think he'll make it in. K-9's inclusion would in turn probably help determine which Doctor(s) we'd get, since he hasn't been seen in adventures with all thirteen incarnations, and they'd probably want Doctors and companions that "go together" better. Daleks are of course the classic adversaries from this series, and like K-9 would be built using "regular" parts rather than the more costly minifigure elements, so I think it's all but given there'll be at least one. That's my guess, as I said. But of course, I'd love to see more. :)

And WALL*E, too! Huzzah!

For something that size/price, they would do well to include both. Kinda like the DeLorean had all the parts to make any of the 3 variants from the 3 BTTF films. I've long thought that they could give us a truly "ultimate" Millennium Falcon by doing a set that not only was large and had a highly detailed exterior a la 10179, but also had a detailed interior, lots of functionality, and "extra" parts for building it in different configurations (three landing gear vs. five, or now dish antenna vs. rectangular), and a full complement of minifigures, including all characters seen aboard the ship in all their outfits and looks they had while aboard - multiple Hans, Chewie, multiple Landos, multiple Leias, Luke, Artoo, Threepio, Ben, Nien Nunb, rebel gunners, stormtroopers, scanning crew, etc.

A fine question. According to the video posted when they announced Birds and The Big Bang Theory had passed review (and the two projects based on Doctor Who were still being considered), they were supposed to announce the results of the next review before the end of January, but it didn't happen. I'd like to think it's because they really want to do Doctor Who, and had anticipated being able to announce it by then, but have encountered difficulties in coming to terms with the BBC, and it's taking longer than expected, but will ultimately still happen. I'm not an insider or anything; this is just what I hope is the case, and think might be.

A nice mod, though I don't get why it's in Licensed.

The Simpsons series offers me a bit of a respite from the frantic scrambling I usually undergo in trying to get all the figures I want. I do like the show (at least from an older era), and do get the minifigures, but unlike with the "regular CMFs" I don't feel compelled to get multiples, which makes things much easier. The regular series can be a trial for me, trying to find time and money to cherry-pick not just one of each, but multiples of specific ones I want multiples of.

There are plenty of other options here - the various members of the various Tannen gangs, different versions of Strickland, different versions of Marty's siblings, different versions of Goldie...

They aren't meant to be used together (though of course LEGO is really for using however one likes). The minifigures are part of a little display that accompanies the Helicarrier, while the microfigures are actually part of the model.

Aaaaand... they're late! There's no telling now when the next announcement will be, although I'd expect it sooner rather than later. It could come at any time now...

I'd love to, but they give the passports only to kids at our nearest store. Oh, well.

Wow, multiple red apples in this theme. It's like whatever apple tree blight killed off everything but Granny Smiths in the LEGO Universe has either finally been eradicated, or never made it to the land of Elves.

If the set were still available for you in stores there, rather than just offering outright to pay you to buy one and ship it to me, I'd offer instead to pick up something here that's either much more expensive for you, or just unavailable - the Birds set, say - and trade the one for the other, so that you'd get Birds for less than it'd cost you there, and I'd get Curiosity for less than it'd cost on eBay. Oh, well... ______________________________ Meanwhile, it's now the very end of January. If the Ideas team doesn't intend to miss the late-January deadline they gave in their last announcement video, they should post their next review results announcement sometime today. While missed deadlines do happen from time to time for lots of us, I do expect the review results very soon now.

While an Ideas project does get changed if it becomes a real set, LEGO does in fact try to retain general parameters, like keeping it around the same size, keeping features, etc., since those parameters are what people voted for. The Helicarrier on Ideas is immense - so much so that reducing it to anything remotely manageable would entail trimming the size not just slightly but severely, which would effectively mean the final set would be significantly different from the set people voted for. As far as exploiting that person's work as free R&D, that's just preposterous. First of all, the Helicarrier, as a prominent vehicle seen in multiple movies in the Marvel Cinematic Universe (which is the central subject of one of LEGO's popular licensed themes they've been doing since 2012), it was always already a natural candidate for a set; indeed, it's probably the most natural, obvious candidate for a large, LEGO Direct exclusive from the entire Marvel line, and they were due for a large, LEGO Direct exclusive from the Marvel line since they've already had a couple from DC. I'd bet dollars to donuts the possibility of doing a set like this has been at least floated around since the license was first acquired years ago. And while this specific set of course wouldn't have taken all that time, it would have to have been in development for quite a while - probably a year or close to it, given its size. The Ideas project was posted less than a year ago, so this set was almost certainly in the works before the Ideas project was even submitted, to say nothing of whenever it got any significant number of votes. If the person who submitted the project was seriously expecting that a Helicarrier set would be based on his / her project, and put in all that work seriously expecting it to happen, then I imagine it doesn't feel good for them, but it's not LEGO's fault. It's simply an inherent risk, both of proposing such a colossal model (with more than four times the piece count of the most expensive LEGO set ever released to date), and of proposing an obvious set candidate from a current and ongoing popular licensed theme.

I was using Peeron for a few years, but in the last several years it's become less useful, since it doesn't seem to get updated very often and also has a few errors.

What? You saw them in a shop?! A while ago, when i realized the US Shop at Home might well not be getting any more, I started calling brick and mortar stores all over the country, and not only did none of them have it (of course), but several of them told me they'd never had it, and that as far as they knew it was a Shop at Home exclusive. You're telling me that Australian stores actually had it on shelves?! Argh. I don't suppose any of them still have it, do they?

We also know they won't take projects based on properties owned by other toy companies (e.g., Transformers, G. I. Joe, and My Little Pony).

Sure, but... we don't actually know for sure (and they no longer get specific about the reasons things get declined). They do just automatically decline certain submissions right up front, when they know they won't be able to produce them - and yet, they keep on accepting Star Wars, Marvel and DC submissions (among many others from franchises LEGO has already licensed). Since they do accept those proposals while rejecting others right off the bat, it could well be that there are some possible circumstances under which they might approve a project from one of those franchises. It's simply up to us to discover what those circumstances are.

Oh, I know, I know. :( I dearly want Curiosity myself. I really wish they'd do another run of it, but right now it doesn't appear to be in the cards. I don't understand why - it seems to not use any specialized, set-specific parts (colors / prints / decals), unlike every other CUUSOO / Ideas set except Birds, and one would think there'd be enough of a market just in science museum gift shops and the like, but I guess not. Of course no set remains in production forever, but I really wish it had had more than a few days or a week or whatever it was of availability. If I'd had the remotest idea it would go that quickly, I'd have ordered it as soon as it was released, but at the time there were only four previous sets in the theme, and aside from the very first (which was released exclusively in Japan), they'd all been available for substantial periods of time. The Minecraft would always sell out in a matter of hours or days for the first several months or so of availability, but they'd always do more runs; it and Hayabusa were each around at least a couple years by the time Curiosity came out, and the DeLorean time machine had only come out few months before but had always been available. From all the previous experience with CUUSOO sets I had no reason to guess Curiosity would go so quickly and stay sold out. :/ Oh, well. I've managed to get five of the CUUSOO / Ideas sets - the Hayabusa probe, the DeLorean time machine, the Ectomobile, the Exo-Suit and the Research Institute (by pure coincidence, all of the sets with minifigures, none of the ones without; it just worked out that way), and I know I'm luckier than a lot of people to have all of those. I quite like the new Birds set, and will try to get it if I can before it's gone, but I won't be quite so torn up over it if I miss it as I am over Curiosity.

I don't want my choices of what I can or can't support limited by other voters who want stuff gone because they're lazier than the creators of the projects they don't want to see, thankyouverymuch. There are already limits and guidelines and rules in place that address some of the things being complained about, while other concerns here are really non-issues, at least to most reasonable people. TLG already moderates things when they're submitted, and projects with inappropriate subject matter don't go up. Nor do ones from licensed IPs they know at the outset they can't do (when Star Wars projects get allowed, it's apparently because even though the license precludes many or even most projects, it obviously doesn't preclude all of them, and they have to be looked at on a case-by-case basis). Nor do projects with images that fail to meet minimum quality standards. Heck, the Ideas team even disallows posting projects from phones because they've found that phone submissions tend to have poorer grammar, spelling, etc. than projects posted from desktops, laptops and tablets. And of course, the whole entire site is in and of itself already one big, huge moderation system. Note that most of those projects being cited as examples of things that "don't belong" on the site don't have many votes (though at the same time, note that they do at least have a few, indicating they were of interest to someone). LEGO Ideas is a communal enterprise in which the better and/or more popular ideas will naturally gain prominence. There's no need to gate the community and prevent less-skilled participants from participating; the system already provides natural encouragement to present one's ideas as best as one is able. And while the kinds of restrictions being proposed here will surely prevent the posting of many not-very-good projects, they will also surely prevent at least a few good ideas from being posted as well, and I for one don't want to see that happen.

I think there are already sufficient controls in place, and we as users already have the option of not voting for those projects we don't like. LEGO itself already handles such considerations as the business case; it's a fundamental part of the process. And we as users can't all agree on what "should" be there, nor can we always know what LEGO itself thinks it should look at. For example, I never thought The Big Bang Theory was likely to pass review, but LEGO itself obviously thought it was fine. With regard to some of your specific examples, LEGO itself does automatically weed out certain license-dependent projects that are known not to be viable, such as all the Jurassic Park things that got shut down during the period when Hasbro had the license. We do know that Star Wars projects in general aren't likely to get through, but obviously there must be some circumstance under which one could; otherwise they'd take them all out, too, rather than allow multiple such projects there, to say nothing of going through multiple review periods with such projects having made it to the review phase, and each getting their due consideration. The fact that we don't know exactly what sort of Star Wars project might make it through doesn't mean fans shouldn't keep trying. As far as things they've done in the past go, why should there never be another wind turbine even considered, just because LEGO already made one six or seven years ago? Beyond all that, posting even the simplest, laziest project requires more effort than simply sifting through such projects to find ones to vote on. Oh, dear. No. Just... just no. Andy D, I hope you don't take this personally, as I'm sure you're a smart and well-meaning fellow, and like all of us I'm sure you have great ideas sometimes and bad ones other times, as all humans do, but with all due respect IMHO that is an incredibly terrible, terrible idea. It would run counter to the very fundamental idea behind the whole program, and transform it from the egalitarian meritocracy it now is to a closed-door, elitist thing I'd be ashamed of for LEGO on their behalf. Frankly, I think it would turn off a lot of people - even many of those who merely vote without submitting might be so put off by such a policy that they'd refrain from even voting on the site, so that whatever ideas remain might have trouble getting to 10,000 votes even if they're really good. And it would just plain close the site off to any number of fans who might have really good ideas but not much money. Far, far better that a few (or even a few hundred, or thousand!) lousy ideas be allowed to be posted than just one really great idea not be, I think.

Hopefully they'll do more of the first one, since it's clear people really want that and the existing supply isn't really enough for demand. I think if all the time it were available on Shop at Home were grouped and added together it'd total less than a week. I certainly wouldn't mind another set along the same lines.

Jaws already is over 40 if you go by the book the movie is based on! That's a really sweet MOC. Nicely done!

One might think, but LEGO previously declined a CUUSOO Firefly / Serenity project because of the content of the show, even though the actual model wouldn't have reflected anything they found objectionable.