Ideas Maze press release
Posted by Huw,
The LEGO Ideas team has posted images and this press release on the Ideas blog:
LEGO Ideas Maze – The reinvention of a classic!
The latest LEGO Ideas product reinvents the classic ball and labyrinth game, but adds a twist of creative LEGO building to the fun.
Built entirely from LEGO elements, the LEGO Maze consists of a base frame and a simple tip and tilt mechanism made up of LEGO beams and axles. You turn the wheels to move the maze up and down or from side to side guiding the ball away from the traps.
The interchangeable maze system means you can easily swap maze plates without having to rebuild the entire game. Once you’ve mastered the two maze designs included with the set, you will find lots of inspiration to start creating your own mazes using the bricks included or any of your own LEGO elements.
The set also includes a removable container to store the balls and a travel lock that keeps everything in place when you are carrying or storing the game.
This is the 13th product in the LEGO Ideas series, this time designed by LEGO fan Jason Allemann who has always been fascinated with this classic game.
“I originally tried to recreate the wooden version of the Labyrinth maze as faithfully as possible, with a larger rectangular maze and actual holes for the ball to fall through. It quickly became apparent that this it wasn't going to be practical though. The holes required the maze to be built using multiple layers of smaller plates, making it heavy, part intensive and relatively weak”.
“I decided to decrease the size of the maze and eliminate the holes. By having the ball fall into depressions, the maze could be built using a smaller number of larger plates. The smaller size and simplified construction also resulted in a much lighter maze, making the control system much more responsive”.
Once the project completed the LEGO Ideas review process and was approved, the professional LEGO model designer Steen Sig Andersen became involved to ensure the model and the building experience lived up to what is expected of a LEGO product.
“Steen did an amazing job of improving the robustness of the frame. He managed to address all of the weak spots in my original model without changing any of the basic design and behavior”.
Connie Solhiem Lykke, Marketing Manager at LEGO Ideas, is also delighted with the final result and especially by the fact that it encourages players to carry on and build new mazes for the game.
“While the original wooden version is always the same, this concept really embraces the customization that building with LEGO elements allow. You can modify the difficulty of the mazes, create ones that follow specific patterns or favorite LEGO themes. The possibilities seem endless”.
For Jason Allemann, seeing his model become an actual LEGO product is a dream come true.
“I'm incredibly excited that this project received the support of so many people and was then approved to become an official LEGO product. I've been building with LEGO bricks for most of my life, and since I really got back into building as an adult it has been a dream in the back of my mind to someday have one of my models turned into an official LEGO set”.
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21305 Maze contains 769 pieces and launches April 1 for $69.99.
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19 comments on this article
Any idea on the Uk price?
It looks really fun, but too expensive.
Castle maze looks awesome, I want a Classic Space-themed one. :P
It's a great looking set but if it's going to be €70 it's a bit steep...
I'm excited to see what kind of maze themes people come up with.
We'll be buying this one for sure.
Is the fact that this LEGO set is made entirely of LEGO pieces supposed to be a selling point?
Eh, I understand the concept, but at the same time it's not really for me. Ignoring the price every time you want to adjust the maze layout you will have to take off al the tiles and spend decent amounts of time re-building it. I don't think this set is bad, something like this is pretty cool!
@LE-GOlas: Well, as opposed to a Lego set containing bits of twine or dirt, yes!
The price isn't bad, it just isn't a great deal.
Should be £59.99 in the uk if you compare previous price calculations.. Not too bad considering the piece count.. This will be an ideas set that we can create our own mazes so should be interesting to see what people create.. Oh and Congrats Jk brickworks.. Love your creations..
I remembering playing with a wooden one of these when I was little. There's something to building this yourself that might be fun, but I really can't see myself enjoying the completed model beyond the 10 minutes I enjoyed the old wooden as well.
Interesting to hear what Brickset team thinks of this one. The review linked in the previous article say there are definite issues with the balls having tiny ridges which can hinder the play.
Gotta get it, just a cool piece, gonna be great to have on the table to play with and display.
It looks like the price of the 2x4 tile in tan on bricklink will seriously decrease... it is currently at £2.5 on average...
As a new recruit to the Brickset team, I am not sure whether I fulfil the request ^^^ above. Today, I have read the teaser reviews and here are my thoughts on this set...
I like the Ideas theme and supported and followed this set early on. I was pleased when it was selected by LEGO to go into production. I will be buying one set and having it on my work desk, available for anyone to attempt navigating a ball through the maze.
This represents a unique LEGO Ideas theme with no IP issues.
The one point that I am not so happy about is that the ball does not fall through a hole but rather rests in a recessed plate with studs to prevent it from travelling further though the maze.
“I originally tried to recreate the wooden version of the Labyrinth maze as faithfully as possible, with a larger rectangular maze and actual holes for the ball to fall through. It quickly became apparent that this it wasn't going to be practical though. The holes required the maze to be built using multiple layers of smaller plates, making it heavy, part intensive and relatively weak”.
One of the principle features of this type of maze is the sudden loss of your ball when you have been unsuccessful in navigating the ball around a danger. You are left with the frustrating discomfort to recover the ball from below and reattempt the maze again.
Having a ball 'sitting' there means that there is no sudden loss and you will be able to simply move the ball to the next challenge. I am not convinced that two plates with tiles above sandwiched together are not sufficiently strong enough and so I will probably make my own maze tray MOC.
I am not swayed by a 'ribbed' ball. I think that this complaint is a red herring.
I do like that the maze can be customised with micro features from a variety of LEGO themes. This could perhaps be a future Brickset competition category.
I like the Ideas concept but think that there needs to be some redesign of the concept to remove unsupported ideas early on to allow supported ideas a more uncluttered forum.
All of the above comments have been based on information received from some relatively limited reviews posted today from a variety of LEGO blogs. The actual maze is likely to be something quite unique in the LEGO range of toys.
I'm just happy that the 2x4 tiles are made in tan again! They also appear in some other 2016 sets it seems...
There is an official reveal of this set on the LEGO Ideas site as well.
Absolutely nice!It's a must-buy for me.
Looks great, the price is not so great.