We haven’t talked about LEGO CUUSOO for quite some time, so I thought I should give you an update. As you might know, CUUSOO is a platform where LEGO fans can submit their ideas for future LEGO sets and have others vote on them. Once a project reaches 10,000 votes LEGO will consider it for production (see link with further info at the bottom of this post). One of the reasons for the lack of news is the extremely long time the CUUSOO team has been taking to decide on projects that have been under the review process. Take a look at this helpful chart the LEGO CUUSOO team put together to remind us what’s under review:
Since this chart was posted the LEGO CUUSOO team did finally announce their decision for the Fall 2012 batch, which included the Mars Science Laboratory Curiosity Rover by Perijove, the UCS Star Wars Sandcrawler by mb_bricks, and the Thinking with Portals! project by Team Jigsaw. See the official announcement in the video below. You can also read more about each project on CUUSOO’s official blog: Fall 2012 LEGO Review
The LEGO CUUSOO team also posted some clarification on why the review process has been taking so long: “Since we began quarterly review batches last year, we’ve been learning that it’s difficult to give definite timeframes to expect results. Our posts on the review process present a nice framework for how we consider a project for production–but it is by no means an easy process. Ultimately, the products we release must fit our brand and strategy, have a strong business case, and a final model must fit our design, buildability, and playability standards. These factors are compounded when working with license partners, each of whom has their own terms and standards.” The LEGO review process goes through four distinct stages; Brand Fit Analysis, Business Case Development (including License Agreements if applicable), Model Design, and then a Final Review, where the findings of all prior stages are reviewed together. Also remember that CUUSOO is still in Beta, meaning the LEGO team is figuring out what’s the best way to manage the concept as they go along and gain more experience. You can read more on CUUSOO’s official blog: LEGO CUUSOO Review Process.
The bottom line is that the LEGO CUUSOO review process takes a long-long time – much longer than many fans anticipated, and even when a project is approved it seems that actual production takes even longer. The upside is that LEGO is doing their job to make sure the project will actually be successful as an official LEGO product. On the other hand taking so much time to release a project kind of knocks the steam out of it. There is still no official word on when the Back to the Future DeLorean Time Machine by m.togami will be released, although there are some rumors it might be before the end of this year. This is a CUUSOO project that was approved way back in December of last year. 😕
There is also a new batch of LEGO CUUSOO projects that just reached 10,000 votes under the 2013 Summer Review. These include the Mini Shop Series by Pekko we featured here before (see link at the end of this post), the Minifig Scale Batmobile Tumbler by Brent Waller, and the League of Legends of LEGO – The Raid on Baron Nashor by Addam. All three projects will now go through the same review steps as discussed above. I would expect we won’t hear about the result until the spring of 2014.
From all of these LEGO CUUSOO projects the one I like the most is the Mini Shop Series. It would fit really well into any LEGO City layout. Also, the Space Troopers would be great as the news LEGO Space theme. I know Legend of Zelda has many fans, and this is the second time a Zelda project made it to the top. The previous one was rejected, so likely it will be the fate of this one as well. I can’t really relate to any of the other projects, but they obviously have fans based on the votes they received. Also, here are some CUUSOO projects that are currently very close to achieving the required 10,000 supporters. You can find them at the LEGO CUUSOO Homepage.
And for currently available LEGO CUUSOO products you can check out the Online LEGO Shop. There are rumors that the LEGO Minecraft set might have two more sets added and make it a series.
What do you think? How do you like the Mars Rover that has been selected, and which of the other projects under review do you like? Is there a project you are currently supporting and hope will make it to the review stage? Feel free to share and discuss in the comment section below. 😉
If you would like to learn more about CUUSOO and see other featured projects, check out the following related posts:
- LEGO CUUSOO Summer Review Results
- CUUSOO – Where LEGO Dreams Come True…
- Navigating LEGO CUUSOO…
- Giving Feedback to LEGO CUUSOO
- How to Find What’s New with LEGO CUUSOO
- CUUSOO Changes & Featured LEGO Projects
- LEGO CUUSOO Project: LEGO Birds
- LEGO CUUSOO Project: LEGO Animals
- CUUSOO Project: Avatar Scorpion Gunship
- CUUSOO Project: LEGO Music Architecture
- LEGO CUUSOO Female Minifigure Mini-Sets
- LEGO CUUSOO Space Troopers & Exo-Suit
- CUUSOO Project: How to Make Beautiful LEGO Trees…
- LEGO City Mini Shop Series on CUUSOO
- CUUSOO: LEGO Train Turntable & Roundhouse
- LEGO CUUSOO Project: LEGO Steampunk
One thing to bear in mind is the additional costs coming with licenses, new molds and unofficial colors. I read that a new mold for a piece cost up to 50.000 euro to plan and press, so in the great turnaround in 2005, where Lego adopted a new business model, several thousands of barely used molds and hundreds of rare colors were dropped. Bear that in mind when planning on cost-efficiency. A common mold in an official, yet uncommon color shouldn’t be hard to press.
well that stinks…no UCS Sand crawler -_- ENOUGH WITH THE SPACE STUFF! That’s like the third space thing they have chosen!
Yeah, I also thought it was interesting that this is the third space/submarine project they have. I guess it just prooves that LEGO is very popular with geeks! 😀
I’m not saying anything………….I’m definitely NOT a ummmm geek or a um nerd obviously………….
Yeah, no geeks and nerd here… only LEGO fans. 🙄
Hey! What about me? You just offended the whole nerdy population of the world…just kidding… 😛
Naw, nerd rule the world already, so they don’t mind. 😀
Haha! 😛 Not the whole world…:P
But pretty close… 🙄
I like the CUUSOO projects that are on here! if the apple strore, McDonalds, Starbucks and 7 eleven, come out i’m going to get those! mainly the McDonalds!
For Back to the Future, I heard rumor that they are waiting for a release closer to the 30th anniversary of the film for a release (2015). While this is a much longer time to wait for it, it would be a good idea for LEGO to make it available when interest is highest. I’m afraid if they released it now, the set will be unavailable and out of production when people would want it most. Personally I’m not a big fan of the curiosity project. The peak time for it to be a set was when the project first hit Cuusoo. Although it matches the more science related first two projects, I would prefer more iconic and famous things like the moon lander/ rover.
I am very thankful that Thinking with Portals is still listed as a possibility. It feels much like Minecraft in that, while it is not targeted at kids, it has nothing inappropriate, and has a cult following. This would mean that the people buying it wouldn’t be just kids, but adults who might not even purchase Lego sets otherwise. If they were to make, while it might not be quite as popular as Minecraft, I see it doing significantly better than Curiosity.
Jacob, that’s very interesting info about the Back to the Future project. Thanks for sharing that! I was not awaare of it, but it makes sense! 🙂
Well, I couldn’t say I didn’t see it coming, but that’s still a big bummer. I love BTTF.
There’s a report that the Delorean will be released next month. There’s a pic of it on the July LEGO store calendar.
http://www.bricksandbloks.com/lego-back-to-the-future-delorean-set-photos-revealed-for-july-2013/
Yeah, I saw that just yesterday. It looks absolutely terrible in my opinion. I didn’t really like the original one either, but it was MUCH BETTER than the one LEGO designed. It looks like it was put together by a 5-year-old. 😕
I hope the mini shop series project gets reviewed 😀 And then made into sets 🙂
Sadly with all the licenses agreements s it probably will get rejected:(.I hope it makes it through though!
When they review sets do they have to chose one? Or can they just decide not to make any? Because I hope that Space troopers doesn’t make it. I like the theme and it looks cool and clearly looks better than the other option, but if they made it it would most likely mean an early end to Galaxy Squad. Galaxy Squad is probably my favorite theme yet.
Yeah, I love Galaxy Squad too! My current favorite theme! If you consider thought that even if they approve Space Troopers it would take like two years until production, I don’t think it would cut Galaxy Squad short. Besides Galaxy Squad is LEGO’s own theme. It is unlikely they would discontinue it just for a CUUSOO project.
Picking up on what admin DIDN’T answer: Yes, I don’t remember ever seeing LEGO picking more than one project for becoming an official product after a LEGO CUUSOO review – although that might happen with the Mars rover and Portals. They can basically do whatever they want, within reason. Usually they just pick one and that becomes the set because there’s always some good projects that reach 10,000 votes.
Well, no, LEGO would not discontinue Galaxy Squad because Space Troopers comes into production. It is only one set. It’s quite the opposite, actually; they might choose to reject Space Troopers BECAUSE of Galaxy Squad. This is the case of the Modular Western Town, which clashes with The Lone Ranger. However, Sadly, I think Galaxy Squad was aimed to be a one-year-thing, like Alien Conquest, Pharaoh’s quest, Dino or Monster Fighters. Personally, despite it being popular, I doubt it will continue to 2014. Not necessarily because there isn’t enough revenue from the theme, but because they don’t have anything planned for Galaxy Squad in 2014, since they didn’t anticipate it to do this well.
The CUUSOO staff can choose as many projects to pass as they are able to. There’s nothing about one project “winning” and all the others “losing.” It’s possible for all of them to be made into sets and it’s also possible for none of them to. If they had more then one, they would not release them at the same time. The projects go into a line-up, and the next set in the line-up is released 3 to 4 months after the previous one.
Just thought I’d say that the ATLAS project just got 10,000 supporters in like one day – see more here: http://www.thebrickfan.com/lego-cuusoo-atlas-mini-model-achieves-10000-supporters.
Amazing. Not sure if it would go through the review process, though. Limited appeal outside the science savvy, and the set looks mostly incomprehensible at a first glance.
(I first learned about the Higgs-Boson particle as a running gag from the Big Bang Theory series.)
Hmm….yes. I’m not much of a fan of what the real ATLAS was built for and the model does look at bit ugly if you ask me. When I told my brothers about this project reaching 10,000 votes, they basically all said that it probably wouldn’t pass the review and, if it did, it would probably be quite a different design to the one that just passed the 10k milestone. Picking up on what admin said though: yes, that’s true – with the Mars rover, that submarine and the satellite..:P
Seems like science-based projects do really well on CUUSOO.
Actually it was 19 days.
There was a huge version of the Atlas as well. I think it was to scale including minifig engineers. Quite impressive, but would cost a small fortune, and due to the work including in finding pieces and sorting, the builder would only sell sets to fellow Atlas engineers.
Do any of these projects get released for sale?
Yes, They do.
^^^^^^ My short comment EVER
Yes, but only as exclusives. Check out the link. The Shinkai seems t have been taken off, though.
Some of them do. The ones that reach 10,000 supporters, go into the review phase with some other projects and win do…and they usually can only be purchased from the official LEGO.com Shop or just some other online stores. 🙂
The Shinkai was discontinued because it was never really released to begin with. It was limited to a very limited number, and can only be purchased in Japan. The Hayabusa was initially only released in Japan, but when LEGO CUUSOO went global, they decided it’s too late to re-release Shinkai, but there’s still time to offer Hayabusa to the world, which came into sale at the LEGO Online Shop at around 2011. It’s exclusively found there, and of course in the official LEGO stores found in Japan.(Where I picked up my copy. Great set, although more of a display piece.) Minecraft was released worldwide, at places like the LEGO Online Shop and a website which sells Minecraft merchandise.
Raarhgh Enough SPACE. Just make PORTAL Lego sets, One of my favorite games.
REASON ONE: VALVE NUFF SAID.
Oh and sucks they couldnt make MLP FIM BUT It makes sense too. Because its HASBRO Property and they are making KREO So they could possibly make it into KREO but whatever.
ANYWAYS. these sets better not be expensive….
I HAVE AN IDEA Lego LittleBigPlanet Like my favorite games EVER!
So I should try making my own project, hmmm Should I? I dunno But I want that,
VIDEO GAME LEGO FTW
You like Little Big Planet? I love that game!!!!!
I only realized that MLP FIM should mean “My Little Money – Friendship is Magic” after seeing your avatar.
My first thought was that the series was too character-driven to produce any good builds, and something like Powerpuff Girls might be a better fit for Lego, but after checking out the MLP:FIM Wikia, the show seems to contain several good locations where the main characters reside. Although most of them looks too big and would need to be reduced and simplified to work as sets. Also, the ponies’ looks might need some simplifying to reduce the number of molds necessary, maybe only differing in mane pieces. For the Friends theme, it seems most of the difference between characters is based on the color printing, with only the hair molds differing between all of the main characters.
https://mlp.fandom.com/wiki/Characters
https://mlp.fandom.com/wiki/Category:Locations
(Dang, that was a long and uncalled critique. Hope it contains anything useful.)
“My Little Pony”, sorry. Sleepless typo…
Didn’t know about the MLP FIM Cuusoo projects when I wrote my last post (reviewed for moderation due to internal links or something). No sarcasm was intended.
Seems the authors behind the projects already had thought on my points of critique, (too big locations, the need to reduce the number of molds) and – not surprisingly – improved on them.
http://mlpfanart.wikia.com/wiki/Lego_CUUSOO_Projects
Well, hopefully it could still be a Kre-O project. There seems to be very little official merchandise with scenario, otherwise.
Hakan, sorry about the moderation. When two links are included in a comment it automatically goes under moderation for safety. I just had it approved. Your critique is well thought out and appreciated… at least by me. 😉
Aah. The main point was that I didn’t mean to criticize any fandom, or come off as arrogant. I just needed some sleep.
Unfortunately, Legend of Zelda Lego Sets will never happen because of all the licensing involved. I can’t even begin to imagine how long it would take for Lego and Nintendo to come to an agreement. Lego MLP would be the greatest thing ever, but it is also impossible because Hasbro owns MLP. Maybe if we’re lucky, they’ll make Kre-o MLP sets. 🙂
They did make Minecraft though, so it’s not impossible.
However I think mojang themselves actually posted the creation, taking care of licensing right off the bat, so Lego didn’t have to worry about that at all.