This morning The LEGO Group announced the next sets that their LEGO Ideas division will be producing. LEGO Ideas (formerly LEGO CUUSOO) is a crowdsourcing platform that has LEGO fans pitch ideas via their website. If a proposal gets 10,000 votes, it goes into a lengthy review process to see if LEGO actually wants to make it. Things have gotten the boot over licensing issues, over safety concerns, over pricing estimates–things like that.
Previous LEGO Ideas proposals are where we’ve gotten some of the geek-favorite LEGO sets of the last few years, including the first LEGO Minecraft sets, Ghostbusters’ ECTO-1, The DeLorean Time Machine from “Back to the Future,” the NASA Mars Science Laboratory Curiosity Rover, Exo Suit, and Research Institute. These are insanely beautiful sets for the discriminating LEGO fan. I can’t believe I just typed that.
The latest review period just ended, and instead of just choosing one LEGO set to be produced, they chose two. The one that will get all the buzz (hell, I’m putting it into the title of this article) is “The Big Bang Theory.” Details like exactly how the model will be designed, the characters included and the pricing are all still to be determined, but they’re moving forward with it. These are the images that the designers submitted to LEGO Ideas to get the votes…so you can expect something along these lines to be released in 2015.
Personally, I’m lukewarm on it. I like the show okay, although I don’t watch it on a regular basis. It’s the number one sitcom in the country right now, and has been for a few years, so economically it makes sense to be made. It just doesn’t seem to have much value or play value as a LEGO set. Not a whole lot to swoosh. Still, having minifigure versions of favorite characters and their apartment is kinda cool. Would they have made this for “Seinfeld” or “Friends”? Probably not. There’s enough crossover in the “Big Bang Theory” and LEGO and geek demographics, this should sell well.
The other project is the one that I think is more interesting–LEGO Birds. These are beautifully designed lifelike birds. The designer has over twenty birds built in different series — British Birds, Tropical Birds and North American Birds. I’m not ordinarily into birds (I mean, who is?), but as a LEGO fan these are really extraordinary. I kind of like that they’re more like sculptures than Minifigure-scaled sets, and although we don’t know yet how many birds will be produced in a set or what the price point will be, I can see them including three birds in a set for $20.00, and if that sells, producing more down the road. They’ve done that with Minecraft, they may do it with others.
There are some other LEGO Ideas sets from this same review period still under consideration–there are two competing Doctor Who sets that have been under review for nearly a year now. I’m really hoping they get approved. There are some terrible Doctor Who minifigure-style toys out there, but having legit LEGO Doctors and companions and Daleks and Cybermen and Weeping Angels and Ood and…well, it’d be nice.
