LEGO Ideas team encourages designers of rejected projects to ‘try again’

The LEGO Ideas team has shared a rare insight into how and why certain 10K projects are given the green light – and encouraged designers to ‘try again’ if they fall at the final hurdle.

Speaking to Brick Fanatics and other LEGO Fan Media in a recent roundtable session, the LEGO Group’s Senior Marketing Manager Monica Pedersen revealed that timing makes a huge difference to any given project’s chances during the review stage – as was the case for the Motorized Lighthouse, which was approved as part of the third 2020 review.

“To be completely fair, often it is the luck of timing,” she explained. “We do different checks in the review process, and one of them is that we are checking whether there are other similar products in development within the LEGO Group at the same time. If something similar is cooking, we cannot approve it as part of the review.”

Monica pointed to the Motorized Lighthouse as an example, particularly given the number of other lighthouses the LEGO Group frequently churns out across its CITY and Creator lines.

But anyone familiar with the basics of LEGO Ideas likely knows that the wider portfolio impacts a product’s chances during the review stage – more intriguing was Engagement Manager Hasan Jensen’s advice for the designers behind those rejected projects.

“We can encourage fan designers who do reach 10,000 to give it a shot again,” he said. “It doesn’t hurt their chances to try again, and we’ve seen that a couple of times.”

Perhaps the most obvious recent example of a designer taking two very similar projects to 10K is Thomas Carlier’s Ratatouille-inspired designs, though both of those ended up stumbling at the review stage. Based on Hasan’s advice, it would clearly serve Thomas well to give it another go. You know what they say – third time lucky…

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