Lego and ... just Lego really

Onebadhawk
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Funkworks said:
This is so great.



It'd be interesting to find a real life exemple where each of those mechanisms are used. Not all are obvious.
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Sent the link to my son who is a robotics engineer. We then spent two hours on the phone lamenting the state of STEM education in this country.
 
The Logo set of The Office is coming out next week. My son and I share a love of that show so I'll be getting it for him.

It includes: Pam's teapot, Kevin's chili on the floor, Dwight's stapler in jello, various hidden weapons all over the set, Stanley's pretzel, Phyllis knitting, The Electric City video and the pyramid scheme on an easel in the conference room, Pam's drawing of the building, and a bunch of other really well thought out details.

Unfortunately it's only half of the set, and doesn't include the Accounting desks, the break room, or the annex.

21336.png


https://www.lego.com/en-us/product/the-office-21336
 
Funkworks said:
The JWST "achieved support"!

https://ideas.lego.com/projects/807...0ede2ae625/official_comments#content_nav_tabs
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Unfortunately, another JWST proposal on Ideas that collected 10,000 supporters was already turned down. Ideas results announcements are usually crushingly disappointing to me. There are usually a few great aerospace set proposals but they almost never get picked. The Saturn V was the notable exception. The ISS only happened because it was voted on during a special event.

mjennings said:
I got the big castle over black Friday and still haven't gotten a chance to start on it.☹️
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I got mine during double-points weekend in October. Still haven't started it either.
 
I get why a lot of the space ones don't get approved. It's a small niche. But maybe there is hope with the Bricklink Designer program becoming a more permanent thing. I honestly never really got into the whole ideas platform. So much of it is ideas based on someone else's IP, I had always hoped for more originality.
 
mjennings said:
I get why a lot of the space ones don't get approved. It's a small niche. But maybe there is hope with the Bricklink Designer program becoming a more permanent thing. I honestly never really got into the whole ideas platform. So much of it is ideas based on someone else's IP, I had always hoped for more originality.
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You suggest we don't need yet another LEGO homage to a daytime sitcom?! How dare you, sir!

I started writing a whole thing here about my beefs w/ IDEAS but ain't nobody got time for that.



Ok, fine, I can't completely stop myself. Summary of the biggest points:
  • Needs categories: Small, focused proposals can't compete with the mega-builds in voting, even though I theorize they probably could in actual interest as measured by sales. Separating IP from original concepts is worth exploring, but maybe tricky. I'd argue that the Hayabusa, Stratocaster, Caterham, and many others are in different categories from Central Perk and so on, despite being based on existing IP. Probably the distinction to be made isn't about IP, but more specifically media IP versus everything else, and mega-builds versus everything else.
  • Voting should require some skin in the game: This is one of the few places where I can get behind a major brand doing some kind of Kickstarter-type pre-order escrow thing. Y'all want to vote for yet another obscure license or extraordinarily expensive mega-build over some innovative new small set? Fine, but you need to commit to actually buying it.
  • No GWPs: LEGO needs to release as regular sales the small sets that do manage to make it through, not gifts-with-purchases. There's been several good sub-$50 IDEAS sets lately that I'd have purchased, but they were all released only as GWPs with high thresholds.
 
tjkopena said:
  • Needs categories: Small, focused proposals can't compete with the mega-builds in voting, even though I theorize they probably could in actual interest as measured by sales. Separating IP from original concepts is worth exploring, but maybe tricky. I'd argue that the Hayabusa, Stratocaster, Caterham, and many others are in different categories from Central Perk and so on, despite being based on existing IP. Probably the distinction to be made isn't about IP, but more specifically media IP versus everything else, and mega-builds versus everything else.
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Size categories sound like a good idea.

tjkopena said:
  • Voting should require some skin in the game: This is one of the few places where I can get behind a major brand doing some kind of Kickstarter-type pre-order escrow thing. Y'all want to vote for yet another obscure license or extraordinarily expensive mega-build over some innovative new small set? Fine, but you need to commit to actually buying it.
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I think commitments would decrease the number of votes tremendously. Lego still has 100% control over this and they probably want as many votes as they can have because it acts as a survey. Voting on "Lego Ideas" is like a filter system that gently weeds out most of the proposals, such that Lego can limit itself to seriously review 10 or so sets a year (guessing here, we could actually count this).

tjkopena said:
  • No GWPs: LEGO needs to release as regular sales the small sets that do manage to make it through, not gifts-with-purchases. There's been several good sub-$50 IDEAS sets lately that I'd have purchased, but they were all released only as GWPs with high thresholds.
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Maybe there is not enough profit margin on smaller sets. Profit = number of sales x profit on each sale. I doubt any IDEA set would ever reach a high enough sales number to match what Lego comes up with itself. Creating a set that reaches "everyone" must be Lego's main expertise and I doubt any one from the public can match Lego's own designs on that. Non-Lego people who submit IDEAS are for out-of-the-box niche ideas. Fewer sales for those IDEAS can be compensated by higher margins.

Morning thoughts.
 
Antares JS said:
Unfortunately, another JWST proposal on Ideas that collected 10,000 supporters was already turned down. Ideas results announcements are usually crushingly disappointing to me. There are usually a few great aerospace set proposals but they almost never get picked. The Saturn V was the notable exception. The ISS only happened because it was voted on during a special event.


I got mine during double-points weekend in October. Still haven't started it either.
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LEGO needs to remind itself about "Kidults".

https://www.cnbc.com/2022/12/19/kidults-biggest-sales-driver-toy-industry.html
A lot of the LEGO ideas that don't become sets show up on Rebrickable.

https://rebrickable.com/
 
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The voting does cut down how many sets they have to review. There's a ton of just absolute drek among the IDEAS proposals.

But the voting based on a 10k threshold no longer cuts the volume down enough. The number of proposals hitting the mark is seemingly beyond LEGOS' capacity to really review all of them, let alone produce the sets. Other than separating obvious wheat & chaff, I argue the voting to a simple threshold doesn't impart enough information. Thousands and thousands of people vote for every way-too-expensive megabuild, thousands and thousands of people vote for nostalgic IP, and potentially thousands of newcomers not really associated w/ LEGO crash the party if some IP proposal builds up a viral campaign in the IP's space rather than the LEGO space.

So the format has to change to stay meaningful & effective, and there's a couple mechanisms I could envision.

The one I mentioned above is to make voting a preorder commitment. That way people won't just vote for every ridiculous megabuild, etc., that they wouldn't actually buy, and the things people actually do want to buy, build, and play with will have a much better chance of getting through the voting.

Another would be to select the top X most popular proposals, rather than all of them that meet a static threshold. This way you can set the X based on capacity and the proposals are competing with each other to claim those spots.

Similar but more complex would be to have rounds of voting, either based on threshold or top X, so that again the proposals are competing to utilize given capacity.

Personally I prefer the preorder. Yes, it would absolutely slaughter the number of people voting and really change the dynamic. Some of that would be bad, e.g., a huge part of the current setup for LEGO is simple marketing. It's a plus for them to have tons of people coming in & voting. That would be vastly muted by this scheme. But then the voting would have real, tangible meaning.

That said, a major challenge to a preorder commitment is that the final sets are frequently very different from the proposals, and costing would be difficult & time-consuming. So maybe just a small amount escrowed that goes toward purchasing the set if created? Small amount based on a simple formula of proposed pieces and minifigs? I'm confident requiring any amount of deposit to vote would really improve the information quality of the voting.
 
Re. the GWPs, the sets I'm thinking of w/ that complaint are really generic, very orthodox sets that would largely fit right into the main lines. I.e.:
I did wind up getting Vintage Car. I would have loved to be able to just buy Cosmic Cardboard Adventures. Sailboat Adventure and Ray the Castaway also would have been easy purchases because they tie into particular collections of mine. But they were all GWPs and I didn't want enough other stuff while they were available to get them.
 
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Built two of my wife's Lego Christmas gifts (she likes them, but doesn't have time nor patience to build them) and one of mine the day after Christmas.

Goldfish set...very cute!
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Mickey Art set. This one was surprisingly good and you can build it as Mickey or Minnie. You can also get a second to build both versions and they connect up into a single long pic (I'll get another and build the Minnie for her birthday).
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Finally she got me the Star Wars Trench run set (was on my list) and I built it right after the Mickey art. Fun build!
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Went old school. Picked up a 8070 supercar set and a 8860 early Technic car chassis set, both from eBay. Both used but good condition. Oh, I did get the Lamborghini too… before Lego had double rewards points of course…
 
Funkworks said:
Just in case anyone missed these:

https://www.lego.com/en-ca/product/looney-tunes-6-pack-66667
Instead of going in blind, you can pick your favorite characters 1 by 1 on eBay. I know I did 🐰🦆🐺👾 😁. Perfect passengers for LPR/MPR. I just wish I had more time to make goofy projects.
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My family has gotten frighteningly good at molesting bags to find desired mini figs lol

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EDIT: To clarify, we use our fingers to feel and probe each bag searching for key identifying parts of the minifigs we're looking for. Have had 100% success for years now.
 
As long as you know what to feel for feeling the bags just takes some time. There are persistent rumors that they are going to all be in boxes like the vidyo figs were soon

I'm about 3/4s of the way through the big castle set. It's a fun build but doesn't crack my top most enjoyable build list.
 
dr wogz said:
we (wifer & I) just finished teh HAunted House. Fun build!

We made it interesting too, she did all the odd bags, and I did all the even bags. So, it was always a bit of a surprise to see what the other had built..

We are currently working on the big Ninjango City garden tower.
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I know it's none of my business, but I'd push to get many different modular sets that fit with each other, and make a nice street, instead of Ninjagos and haunted houses from different collections. Ninjago apparently saved LEGO from falling sales in the early 2000's but I like the modular collection (like the Jazz Club) so much more.
 

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