LEGO BrickLink Designer Program launches, instantly breaks BrickLink

The LEGO Group’s familiar website woes are back with the launch of the BrickLink Designer Program, as BrickLink struggles to keep up with demand for its crowdfunded sets.

Pre-orders for seven rejected LEGO Ideas projects opened at 4pm UK time, and BrickLink almost instantly went offline, returning a 504 gateway time-out error. While several thousand orders appear to have successfully gone through – 910001 The Castle in the Forest is already sold out in some regions – many users are struggling to even access the site.

For its part, BrickLink has acknowledged the problem in a tweet, reassuring fans that it’s ‘working to resolve’ the problems created by ‘extremely high traffic volumes’.

Due to the launch of The BrickLink Designer Program, we are experiencing extremely high traffic volumes. We are working to resolve this.

— BrickLink (@BrickLink) July 1, 2021

With only 5,000 copies of each set available to pre-order, though – and only the first five to reach 3,000 backers going into production – it’s effectively a race against the clock at this stage. And if you can’t even join that race by accessing BrickLink in the first place, you’ve got no chance of winning.

Still, it’s worth persevering if you’re after any of the seven projects available in this crowdfunding round. Click through the links below to navigate to them via LEGO.com:

910001 The Castle in the Forest
910007 BIONICLE Legends
910010 The Great Fishing Boat
910016 Sheriff’s Safe
910017 Kakapo
910025 Particle Accelerator 
910028 Pursuit of Flight

Consider supporting the work that Brick Fanatics does by pre-ordering your BrickLink Designer Program sets (as and when the site allows!) by using our affiliate links above. Thank you!