LEGO Ideas Pick-a-Brick models announced!
Posted by CapnRex101,
LEGO invited selected LEGO Ideas members to participate in the Test Lab Challenge in 2022, developing digital models from a fairly limited range of parts.
Nine successful designs have been chosen and seven will be available from LEGO.com over the coming weeks, while two seasonal creations will arrive later in the year.
I will be interested to see how the products are released. Presumably the necessary pieces will be available to purchase as packs from the Pick-a-Brick website, with digital instructions.
View the nine creations and commentary from their designers after the break...
Cyber Explorers by Beto_Builds
In this design, I tried to bring together some of what I enjoy the most in life: research, discovering new things and places, and... pets! The characters represent two cybernetic explorers who study and analyse an unknown planet. Both are very well articulated, so they can adopt different positions. They can also be improved with equipment or tools, and even transform into other figures. The pet robot can be easily rebuilt into another type of cyber companions, such as a flying one!
Plant your Garden by Mind The Brick
As our target group for this challenge was a younger audience and family time-oriented, I wanted to create something that children would have fun building and at the same time learn how plants sprout and blossom, and how vegetables grow and ripen. Finally, I wanted the outcome to be aesthetically pleasing to the rest of the adult family.
Market Stall - Fit For Any City by Boom Brickz
My design is of 3 small Market Stalls, that consist of tables to display the goods for sale at the Market and a couple of crates with more goodies. I wanted to make something that could be placed into anybody's LEGO City no matter how big or small, modern or medieval and that can even have additional items added to customise your own market, imagine a fish market or some nice bread for sale. I always love going to my local Market and thought this would be something nice to be able to have your minifigures set up in.
Double-sided Billboard or Frame by MiniBricks74279
A tall and proud canvas for creative expression. Can be personalised with a message, a vibrant mosaic, or a stunning photograph. While brainstorming ideas for this project I was drawn to the glamour and grandeur of Hollywood. I envisioned creating a set of towering letters, each one being decorated with eye-catching details. However, despite my best efforts, this concept was met with problems. I explored different possibilities and a new idea began to take shape in my mind, the double-sided billboard.
Wacky Fish by JBBrickFanatic
These wacky fish give kids and adults the ability to have their very own aquariums at home! Each fish can be divided into 3 unique segments: a head, a middle, and a tail. Swap these around to make new and exciting fish for maximum creativity. Also included are a wacky crab and a coral reef. I used to live on a tropical island and seeing brightly coloured fish always put a smile on my face. I hope these fish bring smiles to the faces of others!
Modular Motors by nasa105
As a kid, LEGO vehicles were one of my favourite building activities. The thrilling experience of creating a super cool race car is like no other, but many times I was so eager to build intricate details that I overlooked the chassis and it easily fell apart. What if a lightweight chassis existed, designed with both strength and modular compatibility in mind? This led to Modular Motors, vehicles with customizable chassis designed to turbocharge your creativity.
Greenhouse Vignette by ThatOneGuy_Steve
I knew I wanted to build a small structure, and a greenhouse seemed like a fun challenge of how to fit as many windows as possible. The colour variety of the plant pieces and masonry bricks made me think of the four seasons, so I went with a colour palette for each that seemed most appropriate. It was so fun to come up with differences for each season's greenhouse, such as the frozen pond for winter, or the pumpkin patch for autumn. I can't wait to see how others make the greenhouse their own!
Christmas Sock by BrickStability
Available later in 2023
This set recreates the classic Christmas sock to hang above the fireplace. I chose Santa Claus as the main decoration, but with a few more pieces everyone can customise their own stocking, inserting snowballs, an ice crystal, or an elk. The stocking is available in red or green. For this design, I was inspired by this when I was a child and I used to decorate the house for Christmas with my family. I thought it would be nice to recreate that atmosphere by building decorations altogether, with LEGO bricks!
Sugar Skull by yop1172
Available later in 2023
Sugar skulls are a typical sweet and an ornament in the Day of the Dead Altars, the most iconic festivity in my country, these sweets are characterised by their sweet taste and colourful appearance, and being this my favourite season of the year, I decided to build my own interpretation of them using LEGO bricks. This model is a perfect opportunity to live the experience of decorating your own little skull with so many possibilities taking into account all the LEGO pieces that exist.
Which of these models is your favourite and what do you think would be reasonable prices for them? Let us know in the comments.
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53 comments on this article
Thank you for sharing, it was such a great feeling being selected. I designed the Double Sided Billboard.
This is a fun concept! “Lego Ideas Light”
I like them all except for the cars. The sugar skull is my favorite.
@davidbeach said:
"Thank you for sharing, it was such a great feeling being selected. I designed the Double Sided Billboard."
Congratulations, I really like that one and will get it for sure. I can do rotating visual messages for my kids - and I may do a little dioarama for one of my fav movies (Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri)
@davidbeach said:
"Thank you for sharing, it was such a great feeling being selected. I designed the Double Sided Billboard."
and thanks to you, I'll be able to make great displays in my Lego City!
These all look great, but I'm a particular fan of the sugar skull!
I wish Lego would make cultural sets based around the Day of the Dead holiday just like they do with the Chinese New Years sets. I'd be crazy for those!
The market stalls and greenhouse will go quick quick.
Thank you for sharing!!! I hope you like my Garden!
I liked the add on for city builds
The farm stand
Billboard signs
And greenhouse
The skull is definitely unique though! Good Halloween decor
The Cyber Explorers are adorable. Great competition with some interesting builds!
I like the garden, greenhouse and marketplace the most as ones I would enjoy having
The Greenhouse would go great alongside the new up and coming Lego Ideas A-Frame Cabin!
LEGO is really getting weirder by the day. Looks like an all too obvious attempt at squeezing out even more money with a minimum of investment. The skull is nice, but I don't care much for the rest.
@captainpie said:
"I like the garden, greenhouse and marketplace the most as ones I would enjoy having"
Same here
At the least some of these give me ideas on what to do with some of my own spare parts.
I wish PAB contains bricks for such mini sets...some are realy nice!
There is something in all these builds that are interesting and I can see them all getting used in a lot of people's dioramas or cities or just on display.
I like Plant Your Garden, Market Stall, Modular Motors and The Greenhouse.
@davidbeach said:
"Thank you for sharing, it was such a great feeling being selected. I designed the Double Sided Billboard."
I didn't know my city was missing this until I saw it. Excellent design.
One of these should’ve been HuwBot!
@Wasthereonce said:
"These all look great, but I'm a particular fan of the sugar skull!
I wish Lego would make cultural sets based around the Day of the Dead holiday just like they do with the Chinese New Years sets. I'd be crazy for those!"
Have you gotten 40492 La Catrina? Granted that's just one set, but a pretty nice one at least.
My favorites are the garden and the market stalls.
It may seem silly but, that empty billboard has a lot of potential in a City setting.
My favorite is Cyber Explorers, but I like how the Market Stall was designed to fit in any era, and how the Wacky Fish can be rearranged. Also, am I the only one who immediately thought of DOTS when looking at the Double-Sided Billboard?
Ooh, I love that greenhouse, hopefully I can pick it up from my local lego store when it releases
All of these are far beyond my designing skill set, so kudos to the creators. My faves are the Greenhouse Vignette and Market Stall.
This is such a good idea and I enjoy the diversity of ideas selected. Congratulations to the creators who were selected.
The Sugar Skull os a must buy and I’ll likely get the cars for my kids.
Congratulations to the winners!
I wonder how these will be sold. I'm not sure any of them are big enough to warrant a purchase. Maybe as an add-on item. Or will I have to go and purchase the individual elements from the Pick-a-Brick website? I guess time will tell.
@Subix:
These sound like they’re all made with parts available through online PAB. In-store PAB gets trickier since they haven’t found a good way to sell models with a fixed list of parts in a cup that’s priced by volume, plus they always have problems keeping desirable parts in stock when they do this, and the part selection is downright tiny compared to even Bestseller PAB online.
@imemine98:
I guarantee you there was a rule banning licensed IP from this project.
@TheOtherMike:
I immediately thought about the fact that I already have two billboard designs of my own. One is formatted for the tile mosaics from the LEGO DS cases, and the other holds the kicker cards we use to advertise Brickworld Detroit.
@MudkipDoom:
These are going to be sold online, not in stores.
I love the concept behind these! I think customizable elements that builders can use to expand their cities or dioramas will sell well, as it’s something that I’ve been hoping for personally. Congratulations to all the designers, they all look great!
It’s hard to tell the piece count is in some of them, but I’d LOVE to see these at $10-15…. If it’s through PAB, I wonder if they will opt to sell these for the market value of the individual pieces?
Market Stall and Sugar Skull. Love em both.
@Lordmoral said:
"It may seem silly but, that empty billboard has a lot of potential in a City setting."
If you live (or model your city upon one) in a country that has such billboards in the first place.
I know in the US these are everywhere. Over here such billboards are a rare sight. Don't know of any city around here that has billboards of such a kind. I therefore wouldn't use them in my LEGO City either.
I'm not quite sure I understand the concept of this. Just about anyone who has a computer can go upload Stud I.O. and build whatever they want (they can just limit their parts choice to what is currently available at PaB and BnP).
Not to remove anything from them (because they are nicely done) but those are MOCs just like any other MOCs found on rebrickable. On rebrickable, many are free, you get the instructions, use your own spare parts, order a few new parts if needed and you got yourself a new model. Many instructions are based on a specific set - so you just buy one set and get multiple build options - brilliant.
Of those, I like the market. To be of any interest, these sets will have to sell for less than what it would cost to order all the parts separately (not too hard to achieve as PaB/BnP is quite expensive).
Congrats on the winners!
I wonder if there will be any modifications before the models hit the store, like othe Ideas sets.
e.g. (to pick the first possible issue I noted) The elbows on the explorer robot are made with hinges that are effectively frictionless. That would means the arms won't likely hold a pose or tools.
However, I do like this idea to be able to provide small ideas that can serve as small sets or add-on models that are unlikely to make it as regular sets.
I wanna see somebody buy a whole bunch of billboards and make a chain of Burma-Shave sayings, such as those seen on Route 66 in it's golden years! (example below with five billboards used). They're classic Americana!
Your shaving brush / Has had its day / So why not / Shave the modern way / With / Burma-Shave
Here is the wiki page for tons of more ideas: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burma-Shave
I don't have a LEGO city, but I really like all the builds that can go in a LEGO city. And the Day of the Dead Sugar Skull. Might try to pick all of them up once they become available.
There are some nice ones among these. I especially like Cyber Explorers, Lego obviously has done robots before but this is just that bit different. Very cool, and probably the only one I'd want to buy.
Modular Motors is kind of interesting too, even when these aren't the most spectacular builds, I like the idea and the style of both cars. Great set for kids!
As for the other ones, I'd love to like the skull, but somehow it just doesn't do it for me, something is missing. Market stall is not for me but I can see the appeal for many. The fish are nice but a bit simple. Greenhouse looks fine but it reminds me a bit too much of sets already available from Chinese brands. And while the billboard is a nice idea, as it is it looks rather boring, it could use a bit more Vegas... The Christmas sock....face is cool but otherwise a bit meh. And the garden looks okay but more like a part of a bigger set.
@Mind_the_Brick said:
"Thank you for sharing!!! I hope you like my Garden!"
It's very beautiful!
@Mylenium said:
"LEGO is really getting weirder by the day. Looks like an all too obvious attempt at squeezing out even more money with a minimum of investment. The skull is nice, but I don't care much for the rest."
It's almost like Lego Company is trying to get more revenue from their business. Very weird that a company tries to make more profit /s
Thanks so much for sharing these! I had a blast designing Modular Motors. Our parts palette was extremely limited for this challenge so I am really impressed with the other winning designs.
Our designs were limited to a maximum of 200 pieces, so I imagine these won't cost more than $20 a design. Very excited to see how they are sold! :)
@DoonsterBuildsLego:
The brick version is basically frictionless, but the plate version has a modest amount. I used them in pairs when I made Bleyface:
https://brickshelf.com/cgi-bin/gallery.cgi?i=2953506:
Now, I did have a problem when I tried to make a proper Clayface, which is that the first batch of reddish-brown ones I got were super loose and wouldn’t hold a pose. The second time they produced them, the joints were stiffer.
I only have one wish….let this be available in non shop @ home countries :) Great job to the designers
A nice Pick-a-Pack idea. The market stalls, garden and greenhouse look great. They need to be £10 or less to sell well.
@Spike730 said:
" @davidbeach said:
"Thank you for sharing, it was such a great feeling being selected. I designed the Double Sided Billboard."
I didn't know my city was missing this until I saw it. Excellent design."
Thank you :) its only a shame they showed 1 photo, the other images show how it can be customised and how the frames slide in and out easy.
@davidbeach said:
"Thank you for sharing, it was such a great feeling being selected. I designed the Double Sided Billboard."
That’s my favorite out of all of them! It looks really nice, and if I buy any of the sets, it’ll be that one. Thank you for designing it!
@Wasthereonce said:
"These all look great, but I'm a particular fan of the sugar skull!
I wish Lego would make cultural sets based around the Day of the Dead holiday just like they do with the Chinese New Years sets. I'd be crazy for those!"
40492
@MegaBlocks said:
" @Wasthereonce said:
"These all look great, but I'm a particular fan of the sugar skull!
I wish Lego would make cultural sets based around the Day of the Dead holiday just like they do with the Chinese New Years sets. I'd be crazy for those!"
40492"
Oh I'm aware of that one, and it looks good. But I was more referring to the minifigure scale sets.
@huw will you let us know when these go live?
@MorkMan said:
" @huw will you let us know when these go live?"
Of course
@onestopshop4u said:
"I liked the add on for city builds
The farm stand
Billboard signs
And greenhouse
The skull is definitely unique though! Good Halloween decor"
Thank you :)
@Murdoch17 said:
"I wanna see somebody buy a whole bunch of billboards and make a chain of Burma-Shave sayings, such as those seen on Route 66 in it's golden years! (example below with five billboards used). They're classic Americana!
Your shaving brush / Has had its day / So why not / Shave the modern way / With / Burma-Shave
Here is the wiki page for tons of more ideas: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burma-Shave"
Now that's fun.
I can imagine the scene. A road going towards a sharp turn next to a steep cliff.
If you can
read this
you should have
hit the brakes
200 yards ago
live long and prosper
;-)
Lego fans output is more pleasing than Lego designer’s.
After having this website as a reference for so many years, I am very excited to see someone talk about a humble idea designed by me. I designed Cyber Explorers. Thank you very much for looking! I hope if someone buys it they have as much fun putting it together as I had imagining it!
@HOBBES said:
"I'm not quite sure I understand the concept of this. Just about anyone who has a computer can go upload Stud I.O. and build whatever they want (they can just limit their parts choice to what is currently available at PaB and BnP).
Not to remove anything from them (because they are nicely done) but those are MOCs just like any other MOCs found on rebrickable. On rebrickable, many are free, you get the instructions, use your own spare parts, order a few new parts if needed and you got yourself a new model. Many instructions are based on a specific set - so you just buy one set and get multiple build options - brilliant.
Of those, I like the market. To be of any interest, these sets will have to sell for less than what it would cost to order all the parts separately (not too hard to achieve as PaB/BnP is quite expensive).
Congrats on the winners!"
From what I understand, these will be done through the pick-a-brick section of shop @ home, and will basically be an item that will add all the needed parts to your cart, with some probably digital instructions.
So basically Rebrickable, but with parts sourced through Lego directly.