LEGO Ideas Review Results

Really? Wow.

@Trigger, I'd totally buy either - Aqua Teen or just the food stands w/o a munchies comic reference. I thought they were great and were rooting for them, they'd be great in any city. The Chemical Plant was really cool, but probably just too large and expensive... although it could be used to explain the green slime in the water of Ninjago City. The Playable Piano is a wonderful concept, does it actually make music? Maybe they'll figure out a way to combine it w/Boost by the next round, and thus boost the price up to 200.00? Lol :) It would be very expensive and complicated though, as unfortunately would be FlagsNZ's cruise ship. You did make a beautiful and wonderfully accurate creation though FlagsNZ, maybe there will be more life left in your project! I'm looking forward to the dinosaur skeletons though, they'd be great to incorporate into a museum MOC... that I'll get around to building one of these days/years.

Ps. When will we get to see that awesome Swiss Family Robinson inspired tree house Ideas set?!

zzzz It's ok but it's not inspiring me to rush out and buy it, I'd have preferred the chemical plant, snack bars or piano.

I didn't even have to watch the video and I knew what set won... Ideas can be so predictable. That being said, the Dinosaur Skeletons set is very cool, and may even go on my wishlist once it comes out.

I look forward to seeing what the final version of the dinosaur skeletons set looks like and I really hope that the piano makes it through. The piano would be a day one purchase for me,

Quite unexpected, but I will definitely get the Dinosaurs Fossils Skeletons when it comes out. Looks super cool!

grats dinosaurs! too bad on the cruise ship, i was hoping for that one :(

Lego ideas has gone to shambles recently. First the Flintstones, then steamboat Willie, and now dinosaur fossils? The food stand diners were twice as good as all of them, and it lost the review. I have no hope for them

Whaaaaaa ????

Love those Dinos!

Yawn. Another miss for ideas.

I would have definitely bought the food stands and probably the plant as well.

The dinosaurs are probably the set I wanted the least. They are a great build from what I see, but all others would have been more fun to build and/or display I believe. Anyhow, I might be tempted once they appear.

The piano is the first Ideas in a while that's really caught my eye. I'd like to see that one happen someday, too.

Congrats to the designer! The dinosaurs look like a great concept for a set. I do imagine they will be modified quite a bit though.

Apparently i'll be saving money again, because the skeletons seem like a very boring build experience to me. I would have immediately bought the ship or chemical plant.

Wanted the Chemical Plant, but knew that wouldn't happen.

Fossils! That'll make an excellent build experience.

I wasn't looking at the piano previously, but wow... Haven't seen it in action untill this video. Now I hope it passes!

Condolences to @FlagsNZ, surprised it didn't make it. Thanks for promoting others' ideas!

:(. The fast food stands were by far my favorite.

This will all depend on the final models for me. Sometimes I like the edits and sometimes they hurt the models. Hopefully Lego nails these.

The dinosaur set was the only one I would purchase, so this is a pleasant surprise to me.
The other designs, albeit not my cup of tea, do look fantastically designed, so kudos to the other four designers.

I like the dinos. I wouldn't be surprised if LEGO scales it back to 3 skeletons, simplifies the bases, and makes them in 3 different colors (white; medium stone grey; and either medium nougat, brick yellow, or sand yellow).

Yes! Great stuff. Really pleased for the Dino skeletons, didn't think they'd pick that!

Why not the foodstands?

What's wrong with simple basic Ideas? The food stands is what Lego stands for me. I'm very disappointed :(

More dinosaurs, boring...

I am actually fairly excited by the Dinos. It will make a great start to a museum exhibit, and I have the paleontologist vignette from Research Institute.

Piano would be pretty cool if they can truly manage it.

Excited that the dinos won! I'll be interested to see what the final models look like. Hopefully there will be some interesting building techniques. I also agree with @DoubleJBricks . . . there is no way this set gets made without swapping out a T-Rex for one of the builds.

Eh. The foods stands would have been great for my city.

I hope they provide a display case with this set. It's going to be a major dust collector after being on "display" a few years down the road. Hate to be cleaning all the tiny nooks and crannies.

Great model and worthy winner.

I too wanted the chemicals plant but knew it would never happen

@FlagsNZ gutted for you mate, would have made an awesome set. So many back here in NZ were rooting for you.

Would have preferred the chemical plant, but my kid will probably like the dinosaurs a lot. And I'm glad the piano is still in the race. Now show us the production set for the Tree House please!

I would have bought the cruise ship in an instant. The piano perhaps. The dinosaurs though? I've got a Spinosauros skeleton made from wooden pieces. Neat but nothing awesome. The same out of LEGO? No thanks.
Money well saved I say.
Anyway, disappointed about another wasted Ideas set.

Very predictable decision!! Sadly these sort of sets don’t float my boat... the food stands or the chemical plant could have been oh so cool...

Eeehh. Not really satisfied with the results, but let's see what will this idea become... The food stands project was my favorite one, by the way.

Hmmm, those dinosaurs look very fiddly to build, would have preferred the Cruise Ship. The piano might be interesting though

@Alatariel It's a good point. And I think that Lego should compensate in some way for the author of the first project.

I look forward to the piano. This looks to me amazing and I would definitely get.

I'm definitely hoping that piano makes it through. I think that would be a fantastic display set. Something very unique as well.

I feel for ya @FlagsNZ! It’s been exciting watching the journey of your cruise ship, which is an incredible and substantial model!

I would have been happy with the food stands, that would be something to add to a city scene. The piano looks amazing as well and I hope they can make that work. The chemical plant is of course incredible as are all of her other creations, be surprised to see Lego bit on one of those, love seeing it in the review phase definitely well deserved.

Very disappointing. I understand what they say by “educational value” but I seriously though the dinosaurs would be the least likely to win. Depending on how faithful they stay to the model, it’s going to be VERY Expensive. Any of the others would have been better.

Not what I expected

In my heart, I was rooting for the fascinating Chemical Plant, but as a keen builder of Creator dinosaurs & dragons, this decision is almost as exciting!

(As I've harped on about before though, hopefully they'll realise before release that the plesiosaur is not a dinosaur...)

Very sorry for you, @FlagsNZ.

@Alatariel, is it really you? The legendary creator of wonderful LEGO Ideas?! It's a privilege to meet you and share this blog!!! You’re fantastic!

Will be interesting to see with the project's updates which of the 9 proposed skeleton models TLG decides to go with. The four additional models are T-Rex, Spinosaurus, Dimorphidon and Parasaurolophus.

Hoping they find a way to produce the Playable Piano (preparing myself for the final version not to have all that chrome treatment tho) !

@Alatariel:
You now, it's entirely possible _you_ tanked the other dinosaur project. They have the Space Shuttle on the list of restricted subjects because a tiny version appears in the Women of NASA set, so maybe Research Institute's dino skeleton put a lock on any dinosaur projects for a few years, and maybe that restriction got retracted in time for this project to clear. I don't know when they started publishing the restricted subjects and IPs, but I'm pretty sure it was well after Research Institute had sold out. It also appears that stuff can fall off of the list, as evidenced by the fact that recent Dimensions stuff was on the list the first time I checked it out, but now the only Dimensions IPs that are on the list are there for other reasons...except maybe LotR/Hobbit (the last regular sets came out five years ago in 2014, while the Starter Sets and three Fun Packs for Dimensions released the year after that). But right now Beetlejuice is off the list, and that pack came out in 2017.

@bananaworld:
SHHHH!

Anyways, kinda bummed that the food vendors didn't make it, but I guess if I want them bad enough I can always build my own. The dinosaurs I'm possibly interested in, depending on what they include. If there's a Mosasaur or a Nessie, I'm in for sure.

Super excited for the dinosaur skeletons, just hoping they put in the effort to make them as accurate to current knowledge as possible. The original submission features some aspects no longer considered accurate (and indeed that havent been for decades) such as the droopy tail on the Trike. Although either way Im sure it wont be hard to modify some of the common mistakes, it will be frustrating if the set is marketed as educational and still perpetuates common misunderstandings which the design team could've easily fact-checked with a quick google search. But given Lego's history with dinosaurs, I dont have high hopes in that regard.

The piano is neat but not so much my thing, and I can kinda see the appeal of the food stands. Dont get all the people wanting the chemical plant though, its super ugly.

I feel like a lot of people kind of forgot the dinosaur skeletons were in the running, and I'm happy they won. I feel like they're really neat little models to be displayed almost anywhere.
Still want the space station and the piano though :)

I really wanted the food stands

Am I the only one who loved the dinosaur one?

I mean, I liked the dinosaur skeletons, but I was a little surprised. I thought it was the weakest entry of the bunch (only because the others were so nice). Not sure if I'll buy it or not.

I would've bought the food stalls in a heartbeat.

Wow, I certainly didn’t see that coming. TLG really surprised me with this one! IMO I do think they will have to update and change it a lot in order for it to be popular, but I still think it looks cool as it is. Can’t wait to see the end result. Although I must say, I would have LOVED for the cruise ship to become a set.

I suspect the piano set passed all the business hurdles ("will it sell" etc) and the only reason it isn't greenlit yet is the engineering hurdles required to turn it into something that can be sold at an acceptable price whilst being able to not just be built but tuned so when you play it actually makes music and not just random noise. (I know how hard it is to tune a real piano)

I will reserve judgement on the dinosaur skeletons until I see the final product and its Australian RRP (its clear there will need to be a fair bit of rework to make it an actual set)

I have an avid dinosaur fan in the family, so there will be a purchase when it comes out. With the piano, I am guessing they are trying to find some way to make it playable with actual sound. If the thing could actually play, that would be a game changer, but it will need specialized parts.

At least nothing licensed was up. Very glad to see that. If I were 6-10, when I loved Lego AND dinosaurs, I'd be all over that dinosaur set.

The food stands I have a feeling will just happen to show up in a future LEGO City set, LEGO will claim it has nothing to do with this Ideas set.

I hope they make the piano, it would be amazing.

I'm disappointed, but my credit card is relieved. TeamFoodStands

Those food sets seem like a perfect candidate for the bricklink builds. Hope that can happen.

Oh well. I was rooting for the piano. Would have bought that (one for me, one for my mom the piano teacher). If they somehow make it happen, I'm definitely up for that one.

Would probably have bought the food stands too.

I guess I'll have to wait for the next set of ideas projects; dinos are not for me. I'm just finishing up the Fishing Store now - wonderful set.

Eh. Disappointed, dinosaurs were my last choice. Chemical plant or piano would have quickly drained my wallet. Oh well, back to working on my huge backlog of things to build.

I don't get why they only choose one rather than a top 3 to produce. Clearly the demand is there for all five finalists. Pick three of them, they deserve it and it's practically printing money for Lego.

Not really sure where anyone is getting that the piano will actually 'play' sounds - the 'playable' part is that the mechanisms for the keys, hammers, pedals, etc actually function. Fabric strings can't resonate sound so well, which is a main reason why pianos use piano wire.

If you're expecting sound here it will need to come from a sound brick (which I'd prefer that TLG not bother with in case it will compromise the aesthetics and nearly perfect build of the submitted idea).

@FlagsNZ- Submit a Waka next time- you’ll win!

Nice, that decision saves me some money :)

I'm all four for dinosaurs, but these skeletons do not excite me.

I have to say I’m honestly surprised the food stand diners didn’t make it through, it seemed to have the traits associated with past winners: a manageable piece count, quirkiness, and a novel design, thus making it a good candidate as an official set. But I guess the review team noticed key issues that weren’t immediately apparent to us. Congratulations to the winner(s), and hopefully the piano gets approved! I’m looking forward to the Dino fossils, and the treehouse when it eventually gets released...(any word on that?)

I'm quite pleased by the result and will definitely be interested in getting the dinosaurs. But I did wonder about the scale - if the official set is similar in scale, it will be a very large (and expensive) set! So I wonder if they may downsize it a bit, or even release them all but as separate sets? You could then pick and choose which skeletons you wanted for your museum, and not break the bank (well, not quite as much).

All fantastic sets, but happy about the Dinosaurs! Congrats to all entries - amazing projects. Although since I collect ships, the cruise ship would have been very cool.
Commiserations FlagNZ on what was an awesome entry!

The skeletons are a definite pass for me. It wasn't approved a few years ago so what makes this one so special? The piano is more interesting though.

When is anatomini up for review?

Disappointed is an understatement. Chemical Plant and Food Stands were the two that stood out. Well, more money to save.

I'm nearing a bachelor's degree in Geology and Historical Geology has been my favorite class thus far. I especially loved learning about ancient life and evolution, so I'm quite happy with the dinosaur skeletons. All five were excellent though, and any of them would have made a great set.

First, the article doesn't actually mention the winners - there's a video but videos has long since stopped working in my browser and I rarely watch them anyway, had to go to the Ideas site to see the actual results.

The dino skeletons are kinda nice but too large to fit into even a modular-type building, the older project Alatariel mentions would worked much better that way. As I've already modded my TH into a university and put the Science Lab skeleton in there, I'm not sure if I'd bother with these - it depends on how the final product turns out.

The piano is definitely interesting but potentially large/expensive, and it seems to be great uncertainty regarding the crucial "actual sound" part - are there any videos showing it's operation? As Jonwil mentions, the need to tune it not only adds complexity to the mechanism but would also require some kinda tuning aid (a microphone/frequency counter device) - I'd guess "there's an app for that" but I don't have a smartphone, won't buy a smartphone and hence won't buy sets that requires one to operate.

Of the other submissions I liked the Chemical Plant one (even if it probably was a little large for an Ideas set), as others has mentioned we need far more industrial sets - the Modulars resembles a gentrified-to-death "old downtown" neighborhood while City resemble a cross between one of those crummy "business parks" and a war zone with it's rampant traffic, fires and crime (but I do think the recent Corner Garage has a potential to be converted into a small factory of some kind).

Didn't care too much about the fast food stands (but I don't have any of the amusement park sets either) or the ship (even if it's a nice model and seems to be more elegant than most of today's cruise ships).

Of the next round I think the Kakapo has a good chance of being at least one of the winners, given its size, subject and design. The Sesame Street one is very nice and detailed, but probably a bit large and I'm unsure how well known the show it outside US/UK - here in Norway we had a spin-off version "Sesam Stasjon" with a small railway station and mostly different characters. The Anatomini is certainly something different (but would fit nicely into the common "educational" theme of these sets), guess it boils down to part count and stability. The pirate bay looks a little large (but so did the treehouse), I'd love to re-theme it on the Pirate Bay website, with a tape-and-crossbones flag and the pirates distributing music and movies.

I'd suspect the museum and Machu Picchu may clash with the Architecture theme and Addams Family seems too large and too similar to the one rejected earlier. Not sure of the SpaceX one, given how people seems to tire of the space projects and this one feel too much like an ad for a yet-unbuilt rocket. Similar with the Office, it has to be cut drastically in size, many people dislike the "licensed minifig pack with small diorama" sets, we already has the Friends one coming up, and how popular was the US Office anyway?

Food stand diners would be an excelent complement set to current Roller Coaster, Ferris Wheel and the other amusement park sets.

The best ideas for me would be the Cruise Ship, also the Piano which seems very interesting.

I don't like the idea that Lego have chosen. Anyway, congratulations to its author.

@jonwil:
Not only are they hard to tune, but they are very easy to throw out of tune. I did theater in high school and college, and for one show in high school we had to move the baby grand from the stage to an open patch of floor in the front of house (we had just enough muscle to pick it up, so it came as a very unpleasant surprise to discover that the wheel base was _NOT_ attached to the legs, and that the foot pedals hang lower than the feet on the legs, so we basically had to just tough it out until we could get someone to come over and arrange the wheel base so we could set it back down). But the other thing that really stands out from that incident was finding out that simply rolling the piano across the stage would throw it out of tune. Not so bad that you couldn't practice on it, but enough that you should probably get it professionally tuned before any performance.

@darkstonegrey:
I know of precisely _two_ LEGO-built stringed instruments. One is Henry Lim's fullsize harpsichord (the strings need less tension than a piano so they don't require a cast iron frame), and the other is a mountain dulcimer that Peter Alway brought to a MichLUG meeting about 15 years ago. And Peter had to retune the dulcimer at least a couple times at that one meeting.

@Alatariel:
JW/JP sets are still on store shelves, and it's also on the banned list for being an Active IP, so that's not it. But there are lots of possible reasons for why one project could be rejected while a subsequent project that seems similar is not. At least one Legend of Zelda project was rejected for needing new molds, but now they have at least two options for Link's hat (the worst offender). I remember there being one project that was parked for most of a year before they announced it had been accepted (Doctor Who, I believe?). Everyone expected it to be rejected because there was a competing license, so maybe it was close enough to expiring that they were willing to wait it out (or the IP owner was able to find grounds to break the licensing deal). Probably the worst that I know of is when two different Doctor Who projects went up for review at the same time. One got accepted with fame, glory, free sets, and a cut of the sales, while the other got nothing. Maybe one project breaks one of the rules, or another project just has a better presentation.

They've now added dino skeletons to the restricted IP list, so they're off the table for everyone. The weird thing is, some non-IP Ideas projects are on the restricted list while others aren't. Exo-Suit, Research Institute, Birds, the Marble Maze, and the Old Fishing Store aren't mentioned anywhere on that page, but they did include the Ship in a Bottle, the Pop-Up Book, the Treehouse, and now the Dino Skeletons, with the cutoff coming between the first and third 2016 reviews (Women of NASA may not be considered a licensed IP by whoever filled in the Wikipedia chart, but they did have to work licensing out with NASA and the women depicted in the set, which is why Katherine Johnson got dropped from the final release). Even though they're not on the list, we did see Research Institute II and 3-4 projects in the same style as Old Fishing Store get kicked.

When it comes to the two Dr Who projects I believe the one we got won 'cause it was a way better and more creative build, the other one just promised a huge load of minifigs while only having a very basic Tardis (pretty similar to the Dimensions one but with added 1x1 corner pillars). Also I believe there was some foul play going on, as the losing project exploited a flaw in the tagging system (and subtly misleading wording) to make an impression that they were the *one and only* Lego Dr Who project (and many of the supporters came directly from other social media sites without knowing how Ideas works).

Basically they didn't include a basic "dr who" or "doctor who" tag, but instead had lots of longer tags like "the lego dr who project" and "lego doctor who is awesome". At that time the site had a layout where 5 or 6 "Related projects" showed up along the right edge of screen, this tagging meant that while their project showed up on other Dr Who projects' pages, none of the other projects showed up on theirs (just some other random Ideas projects). Only if one of the other projects had used one of these exact tags they would have a chance of showing up, but they frequently changed them to prevent this too - only at the very last minute before reaching 10k they added a proper "doctor who" tag.

I haven't actually checked the "restricted" list (I can't click the "how it works" link at the bottom of the page 'cause it just auto-loads more projects), but my guess would be that non-licensed sets only are restricted as long as they're on sale, while licensed ones are restricted more permanently.

First, thanks to Huw for linking the video without spoiling the result before we've had a chance to watch it!

It's a shame the earlier dinosaur skeletons didn't make it, but these ones are better, and I look forward to it as a set.

Personally I think the food stands looked a little too much like McDonalds products (the red fries packet in particular) to be considered, though they are a good idea.

As for the piano, I wondered about that but if it doesn't make a sound then it's not 'playable' as far as I'm concerned. Nice mechanism and nice looking, but it just seems unfinished and a bit pointless in the end.

I also collect dinosaur toys, so I'm glad to see this dinosaur set, although there were some really worthy sets, especially the chemical plant, which was such an original idea. My favorite thing about the dinosaur set is that there is no Tyrannosaurus, the dinosaur that's been made into toys so often that it's grown boring.

The ship is indeed marvellous but it could fall into the Creator Expert theme, just as the chemical plant and the food stand would find a great spot in Modular and Playground/City themes. The dinosaurs have a theme of their own as well, and the set is incredibly well thought and built, indeed worthy of mention.
But the piano is an IDEA. I'm really hoping it will make it next time.

@SmilingCyclops it potentially could include a T-Rex skeleton - see the Updates tab for the Ideas project.

@axeleng:
I ended up trimming about half of the volume away to make a minifig-scale TARDIS that I could put on club layouts, so the one they went with wasn't any more accurate in that regard than the one they rejected. Besides trimming it up to a 6x6 footprint, I think I chopped about 1" off the total height (the official version looks like it has a second floor). As for the restricted list, well:

https://legoideas.uservoice.com/knowledgebase/articles/356076-license-conflicts-and-resolutions

Have a direct link. I've actually bookmarked that page, so I don't have to keep digging it up.

The dino set beat out the piano? I'm calling shenanigans.

Frostbricks, that's Kale from the Lego Masters Australia show right? Don't know if anyone seen the show but I'm glad that guy didn't win the Lego Ideas contest either.

Is it sad the first thought I had about the submissions that didn't make it through was, "I bet that would've done well as one of the BrickLink Limited Edition Sets!"

Foodstands will be released later this year (August) by Sluban, as far as I know... but not all in every country. In Germany e.g. I am missing the noodle and sushi booth :(