Official statement regarding VIDIYO

Not mentioned in their statement but just in case they haven't realized yet, how about reasonable prices and getting rid of blind boxes?

That didn't take long.

That is perhaps one of the least reassuring answers they could have given.

It’s all good - they consulted me on this for my AFOL opinion before making these decisions.

I'm really glad it's not the end of VIDIYO, I saw/see a lot of potential there, and would still like to collect a couple of fully themed bands with matching stages. Let's hope the RRP is addressed moving forward...

The official statement is a slightly odd one, with lots of upbeat elements and positive plans, but then it ends with "we hope for your understanding behind this decision", as though they've just announced it's been shelved, but without actually saying it's been shelved.

Was there an official statement for hidden side cancellation or was it a similar promise as this?

I highly doubt it'll come back in 2023....

Sounds like licensed musicians to me.

@emartinez said:
"Was there an official statement for hidden side cancellation or was it a similar promise as this?"

I didn't ever read any statement about Hidden Side ending. I suppose the big difference here is that Hidden Side is an entirely LEGO owned product, so they can end/continue it at will, but VIDIYO has deeeep tie-ins with Universal Music, who have probably been having some very awkward meetings about how badly (presumably) VIDIYO's been selling and how few users (presumably) are staying on the app to rack up plays for Universal artists.

Hmm, I want to be exuberant that they are ending it fro a while but it is coming back in 2023... we will see how this plays out.

"You say it best, when you say nothing at all."

so does this mean series 2 of bandmates will still be happening?

Really positive statement... the experience isn't where it needs to be, we're not afraid to pause and take it back to the drawing board.

Obviously no guarantees how it comes back or even if.. but nothing wrong in my book saying.. it's ok but could be better, not where we wanted to be, we'll be back.

Not a surprise. Now to wait for the actual sets to get on deep discount.

Wonder if they will release the Bandmates series 2 at all or are they cancelled.

Now I'm really curious to see how this'll turn out.

I feel like I get many of my thoughts out on the previous article, so I'll keep it brief.
-Make the app more of a video editing software. Teach kids how to trim videos and rearrange their orders, add in new audio (like music and sound effects) and special effects. Maybe even show them how different camera angles and such could work to help them make music videos. You won't have to worry about uploading videos either. Just let people save the videos to their phones so they can be either posted onto pre-existing social media platformers or just shared around with family and friends. Do NOT make a cheap imitation social media platform. You are LEGO, not Tik Tok.

-Make everything more affordable, and prioritize the building experience over the app. The app should be a nice bonus, but not the focus for a building toy. Have the Bandmates be in bags you can feel to hopefully get the one you want. Have some smaller sets with different themes, and maybe one or two larger ones to give people plenty of entry points.

"The product tested extremely well during development and has received really positive feedback from those children and families who have played with it."

...but probably looked too weird and incomprehensible to a lot of folks to get them interested in the first place.

@PixelTheDragon said:
"I feel like I get many of my thoughts out on the previous article, so I'll keep it brief.
-Make the app more of a video editing software. Teach kids how to trim videos and rearrange their orders, add in new audio (like music and sound effects) and special effects. Maybe even show them how different camera angles and such could work to help them make music videos. You won't have to worry about uploading videos either. Just let people save the videos to their phones so they can be either posted onto pre-existing social media platformers or just shared around with family and friends. Do NOT make a cheap imitation social media platform. You are LEGO, not Tik Tok.

-Make everything more affordable, and prioritize the building experience over the app. The app should be a nice bonus, but not the focus for a building toy. Have the Bandmates be in bags you can feel to hopefully get the one you want. Have some smaller sets with different themes, and maybe one or two larger ones to give people plenty of entry points.

"

Yep, I agree with all of this. While we enjoy the app, I was definitely disappointed with how limited the post-performance editing options are. It's currently not possible to trim a video to start and end on beat, and even if you get lucky and capture a funny/cool moment precisely, by the time you upload it and have it vetted the start and end points have been moved, often ruining the feel.

Uh, everything is under control. Situation normal. Uh, had a slight Vidiyo product line malfunction. But, uh, everything's perfectly all right now. We're fine. We're all fine here, now, thank you. How are you?

I just feel like Lego is flogging a dead horse every time they try make an app based theme. The sets Lego produces for these themes are cool, but it always seems tacked on and gimmicky. And they just never seem to have any sort of longevity.
Pandering to an unrelated market is kind of how Lego lost its way during the 90's. So, it just seems weird that keep trying to make themes that will supposedly only appeal to kids if there is a screen involved. Do kids only play with Lego nowadays if there is an app attached to it?

@DavidBrick said:
" @emartinez said:
"Was there an official statement for hidden side cancellation or was it a similar promise as this?"

Hidden Side lasted its normal three cycles like most LEGO themes have. "

I thought Hidden side had its third cycle reduced/rushed out?

30% discounted on Amazon solidly for weeks now.

Deader than sideways flairs with pockets in the knees.

Vidiyo big issue is high price for not many bits just a few nice tiles. Hidden Side I was late arrival to and once noticed how good the sets are (packaging was terrible and did not show sets of) for say theme parks Haunted areas I picked a few up and am very pleased I did. Hidden Side could be used by AFOLs .

Sounds like U2 after their Lovetown tour, 'we need to go away and dream it all up again'.

As others mentioned above - what does this mean for series 2 of Bandmates? With the release being two months out still it is likely they are already in production with stock ready to ship out, but given the demand and factory down times in the last year or so, it's just as likely two months out that they are not quite in production. I guess time will tell as that statement certainly didn't!! Isn't it still a week away from the US launch of the second wave? Must be bad if they didn't even wait to see how their biggest marker received the new products.

Translation:

"LEGO Vidiyo is a massive failure and has been very poorly received by consumers who simply aren't buying the products. We've even anticipated the release of the 2022 wave to try to salvage it to no avail.
However, because this line is being done in partnership with Universal Music, we can't just cancel it altogether without consulting them. So we're not releasing anything in 2022 and will let Universal Music decide if they want to pay for the production of sets in 2023 or just give up."

It's over.
There won't be any new sets in 2023 or beyond. Because Universal has nothing to gain from it so there'll be no point whatsoever in continuing the partnership. LEGO is probably simply waiting for a decision from Universal as to what to do with the existing platform.
Because even though LEGO can easily stop making sets, the app situation is legally more complicated as there are licenses involved. And Universal might not want to keep the app alive with the music once the line is cancelled.

Can’t kids just have a “fantastic play experience“ with normal, traditional Lego sets and leave the video stuff for Tik Tok or what ever it is called?

@bananaworld said:
"
"You say it best, when you say nothing at all.""

Thanks for reminding me that Ronan Keating exists.

@DavidBrick said:
"So it's canceled and LEGO will try again with something not as expensive or sucky in 2023."

There is no mention of the cost being a factor, but I suspect that those play testers, that provided positive feedback, did not have to pay for their sets.

Amazon US? I have several of those sets in the cart for months and prices hardly moved.

So now that their production line has cleared up, how about producing more of those Bricklink sets, ESPECIALLY Castle in the Forest?

- app runs terribly and needs high end phones, which are rare for kids
- boxes look confusing and un-appealing
- no building in first wave, hard sell for previous lego fans
- price is insane (driven up by music licenses?)
- they are trying to make TikTok for very young kids which is a terrible idea

Long time lego kid and adult kid that enjoys building complex models. The Vidiyo thing seemed completely foreign to me. Even DOTS I understood very well. I understand it's hard to keep attracting more and more digital aged kids to Lego "toys". Lego's current assortment is the best it's ever been. And nothing is beyond the human imagination to find the right product.

I also really hope that the Bandmates series 2 will hit the shelves anyways. Especially if their plan is to revise the series, then they'd want to keep it alive a bit in the meantime. Plus there's a ton of super cool figures that will complete some existing bands, like the second Dragon Metal, the Discowgirl, and the pink Gummy Bear...

Over here Amazon is 50-60% off (matching Big W). Judging by the piles of stock in stores I’m confident they’ll be giving it away Unikitty style by the end of the year.

I feel there were a few factors that LEGO and Universal should address:
1. The high prices
2. Very little building was involved (although the stages rectified this)
3. The app’s functionality.
4. Lack of appeal to the AFOL and TFOL community
5. Using of blind boxes instead of packets
6. Collectable sets of Universal artists in addition to the Vidiyo line
7. Probably most important, was the story and playability. Outside the app, there really wasn’t much you could do, unlike Nexo Knights and Hidden Side. A story based theme with the app as an optional extra would have probably negated all the other criticisms.

You know, I could probably write an entire essay on this!

I don't read this as it's been a complete failure necessarily but the statement:
"from those children and families who have played with it"
is telling. For those who did get the app working, they like it. But too many haven't been able to, or wanted too. I've seen positive feedback online, and a lot of negative about the app only supporting a very limited range of devices and requiring online connection to LEGO.
Some of the other big issues have been raised before: heavy-handed approach to moderation, no ability to save to your own device, limited music availability. And of course, price.

So what they need: lower prices for the play value, better non-app play, very wide device support (that means a whole re-think on the technology platform used for the app), offline mode.

From the initial launch, I thought this was also going to support creating your own music to go with the video to really expand the creative potential. It's something I've seen being encouraged for kids into music - creating music & videos and sharing them which then turns a phone or tablet into a creative device rather than a passive screen.

So, I bought about a dozen or so bandmates and loaded them into the app, and this is exactly the kind of feedback I would give. It's not simple enough, my kids get confused using the app, also the app is HUGE. Once the kids get going though, it's fantastic, they love collecting the minifigures, they love making the music videos and collecting the beat bits and taking pictures of the band and naming the band! My son frequently will drain the battery on my phone making video after video. And some of the music on there is fun. Jonas Brothers were favourites for sure. As far as play experiences go, this one is super interesting, and just happens to tie into Lego, but they have something else going on here... Anyways I hope the app gets better, and hope there will be more music, and less frustration trying to navigate the menus and load up the bandmates into the app.

Don’t worry LEGO fans… I’m absolutely sure LEGO will purposely let a few thousand boxes of Series 2 Bandmate figures out into the wild knowing full-well they’ll become immensely collectable.

OH NO! Are they going to cancel LEGO® VIDIYO™ Music Fest World Tour featuring DJ L.L.A.M.A.?

It's not cancelled, but it's cancelled. That's the way I understood it. Code for "We screwed up; it didn't work, and was poorly received. But hey, we're doing to wait two years and reattempt this dumpster fire of a theme We're just trying to save face here and not admit we shouldn't have bothered and spent our money where people want it to--you know, like on actual sets and motorized sets that don't need a smartphone".

“It’s not cancelled... it we're going to pause it for a bit so we can bring it back in a form that’s not this at all.”

I just want the stupid cubes to go on sale already.

Please just make a new original story theme I'm begging.

One of the largest toy chains in Sweden was recently GIVING AWAY Vidiyo Beat Boxes with each Lego purchase over 499 SEK (around $60 USD). Now take this with a grain of salt since it's second hand information, but according to the teller they were getting paid by Lego for each Beat Box they off-loaded.

Yeah, that doesn't really say anything at all.

I was out shopping yesterday, and it surprised me how low all the Vidiyo sets were being offered for. All the shops are just trying to get rid of them.

I absolutely loved the actual Lego part of the line. The figures were fantastic. I've collected as many of those as I could, and hopefully, with the line being clearanced out? More wil pop up on Bricklink soon enough.

I do wonder about the disconnect. They're a million-dollar company who knows what they're doing. They wouldn't have invested so much time, effort and money into a line if they suspected it was going to bomb, like this. So there was clearly a misread or some kind of disconnect between the market studies and focus group testing ... and when the sets were released in the wild.

I'd say it probably was the price, because they were hideously expensive, and the blind box thing was a terrible, terrible idea.

In theory, Vidiyo is ideal for my children
In practise, despite being on a recent model phone, the app did not run ...smoothly
Couple that with the high prices & it's a recipe for poor sales

It's not dead, it's restin'
Remarkable theme, Vidiyo.... Beautiful plumage.

@bricks4everyone said:
"Not mentioned in their statement but just in case they haven't realized yet, how about reasonable prices and getting rid of blind boxes?"

Seriously. As an AFOL, I would buy way more CMFs if they were not blind packages. Currently I buy 1 or 2 from each series because I don't want to spend a lot of time in stores trying to find the ones I want. I would buy 4 or 5 from each series if I could choose.

For me it's the continuing utter lack of device support that keeps burying these things more than anything. Kids are quite often using outdated 'hand-me-down' phones and tablets from their parents, and these designers and programmers need to recognise that. Otherwise you're just targeting a really specific upper-class market. We tried one on my daughters iPad - which was top-of-the-line about 4 years ago - and it was a janky stuttery mess. Not good enough, when a 3DS could do much better AR 10 years ago on lesser tech.

And they really, really should have led with the stage playsets right from the start - a couple of those were really well designed and had good playability.

PR speak is so terrible. I mean, I get why it is done. It's just so.... tiring to read. I'm so sick of it.

And good Riddance to you too, vidiyo. I had no interest at all in this theme. I don't think there was any easter eggs to older Lego themes, to hold my attention (Like specifically, Blacktron...) I didn't look that closely at any of the prints.

Think of the money flushed away on the music licenses and app development. If they had spent some of that on moulds of train windows and cypress trees they would’ve at least made some sales.

It seems strange that Lego would need to tie this theme to actual music and an app. Why couldn’t kids just create Lego bands and then perform their own music, whether they make it up or sing a song they know.

Not only is forcing kids to use an app a real turn off for most parents, but releasing this during a pandemic when kids were already getting way too much screen time is just really unfortunate.

I understand a product can perform well in a research group that is only looking at that product. However, people who are being instructed to use it and as a result have fun with it, is very different from these same people walking down an aisle in a toy store and choosing these sets over any other theme. As someone who participates in market research all the time, I find that the biggest flaw is they ask you if you like a certain product. They would be much wiser to present you with 10 products, not tell you which one is theirs, and see if you are drawn to it.

As a kid I once got to test out video games and I loved them all. However, I never bought a single one of them when they were actually released as there were plenty of other games that were more appealing.

@PurpleDave said:
" @ToyTownBreakDown:
The cypress tree is a retired element. It was too likely too prone to breaking, but they announced they were going to run the mold until it died, and then stop making them. It’s not coming back. Besides, that style of tree looks really bad, and people have made much better looking brickbuilt cypress trees."

They can create a new mould of any element - old or new. I like the way those trees look.

For me, this them had alot of problems from the get go. One of the main problems is that the company should really take note that product testing with kids always gives possitive responses as they're getting to play with free toys, and they've been specificially chosen for whatever reason, rather then them being an average kid off the street who is getting the toy bought for them/buying it themselves.

I think that LEGO needs to remember that even though LEGO is a 'kids toy', that the vast majority of buyers for it are Adults buying for kids, or AFOLS. If you can't get across to them easily what a product is, they're just not going to buy it. And from just looking at the boxes, the interactive elements are not very clear or well presented which is rather off putting.

Also with that, they need to remember 'perceived value'. If a customer does not see value for money in a set, they're just not going to buy it. And a single minifigure with what looks like a tiny, not very interesting build, is never going to be seen as value for money at £20, and thats part of what made this theme DOA.

Also into the Adult buyers thing, parents and relative buy their kids LEGO as they want to get them off their screens and computers, not add to the time they're infront of them.

One thing for me was the release order they chose for this product. Choosing blind boxes and single figure pods when this wasn't a CMF series was a massive mistake. People like to see builds with the proper themes, so having zero builds in the first waves was a major screw up. If we'd had the stage sets from the get go with this, i do believe it'd have gotten more interest, but still would have probably died out.

Then as many people have pointed out, its the tech. Yes kids these days have smart phones, but most of them are bricks (brick as in the slag for outdated technology). So only building for the latest model, rather then a wide range of compatability is another huge mistake that leads to limited uptake.

I have been selling the Beatboxes for £5 and minifig boxes for £2 in my shops and they STILL don't sell.
No matter what our personal opinion of the range, this is quite easily my worst ever selling Lego line, beating a long-standing record held by DC Superhero girls (remember them?), and that is saying something.

It’s such a painful theme isn’t it. Even the colours combinations hurt. Everything just repels you. Try reaching for a box on the shelves, I bet you can’t even bring yourself to touch one. Duplo looks far more exciting! It’s like, Wow! Duplo Sheep! …and then you make sheep sounds… and Vidyo is all forgotten.

Try yourself.

I don't understand why AFOLs smugly, actively want to hate a specific brand and see it fail.

It's not for you. Go back to buying Star Wars. The end.

When a theme gets discounted up to 70% within a few months of its launch, it doesn't appear to have been a hit with anybody.

I bought a few of the 20 Euro RRP boxes for about 7 to 8 Euro each, and even downloaded the app and managed to get it to work on my phone. But my kids were not impressed. Then when I made some orders a few weeks ago for other stuff I got several of the blind box figures thrown in for free. Seems stores are desperate to get rid of them.

To be fair, the figures are creative and some look really cool, plus those beat bits tiles are great too, but the totally ridiculous pricing just kills it. Even at half price, what you are getting for the money is just laughable.

@sjr60 said:
"It's not dead, it's restin'
Remarkable theme, Vidiyo.... Beautiful plumage."
ROFL

I can just imagine a modern version of this sketch, with John Cleese banging his phone on the counter instead of the dead parrot.

"Wakey Wakey. Wake up DJ Llama!"

"Now that's what I call a dead theme."

Ok, cool

Now bring back Hidden Side. I collected all year one and two and was looking forward to year three sets but they never materialized in stores.

I have never downloaded the app. The sets contained some of the best sets Lego have made, in my opinion

@ResIpsaLoquitur:
A lot of the responses are from people who don’t hate the theme, but also don’t love it enough to mortgage their homes to keep up with it at those prices. When people cry about sets being too expensive, I’m the first to point out that the price per piece has remained unnaturally stable since the late 70’s, with any increases due to over four decades of inflation being offset by eliminating waste in the process.

Some of the hate is also directed straight at the app. The LEGO Company is not a video game developer. I managed to get my hands on a copy of an unreleased Bionicle game that I couldn’t even get to load on my computer. Turns out I didn’t have one of a handful of hardware configurations that it was compatible with. Eventually, they faced facts and started farming game development out to a game developer, and they ended up with an award-winning video game franchise on their hands.

They keep producing apps that only run on a limited range of devices, they have no track record of feeding updates to these apps to keep them viable after the theme is retired, and they haven’t faced facts yet and decided they’re not an app developer either. New kids are being born every day, and new parents may not have any experience with LEGO apps, but those who have been around the block are probably more wary of LEGO apps than the usual things that keep their kids glued to phone screens, which means that rather than increasing the appeal, tacking an app onto a theme is an automatic two strikes before you even hear what the theme is about.

I don't see a neccesity to mesh Lego with technology beyond sets like Mindstorms and Boost which manage to successfully pull it off. With how phones and tablets are becoming more and more widespread and sucking more people in I think Lego remains a great opportunity to step away from the screens and put some time into something more "oldschool" rather than having yet another reason to spend more time on the phone.
I'm interested to see what they're going to try but I personally think any theme that relies so heavily on phones to be entertaining is probably going to suck one way or another, Hidden Side already succeeded at not being reliant on the app but rather provide some additional playability so I think the best course of action they could take is to maintain that sort of balance rather than make the theme have little to offer without a specific app.

@ResIpsaLoquitur said: "It's not for you. Go back to buying Star Wars."

Yes, we get it.

Vidiyo was for the kids.

Maybe someone should've told them that?

Ultra agents, hidden side, nexo knights, life of George, and now vidiyo failed because they all have apps.