What makes for a successful and small LEGO BrickLink set?

There's a trend of smaller, successful sets in the BrickLink Designer Program, but what's the secret ingredient to their consistent success?

By small, we mean under 1,000 pieces, but at around 650, on average. Believe it or not, that's small for the BrickLink  Designer Program. There are nine of these smaller sets so far, five of which have been crowdfunded and three which are yet to receive that treatment.

They include the Snack Shack from Series 1, Camping Adventure from Series 3, Popcorn Wagon from Series 5, Off-road Adventure from Series 6, W.A.L.T. from Series 7, Hot Air Balloon from Series 8, Pumpkin Patch from Series 9, and Kiosk from Series 10.

The announcement for the Series 11 finalists also confirmed an eighth entry into this series. Le Petit Bouquet has joined the range at 607 elements. While it's too early to tell how successful it will be, it has been successful enough to become a finalist.

We can at least examine the sales numbers for most of the rest of these models to see which small sets have performed particularly well at crowdfunding. Camping Adventure leads the pack with 34,000 sales, and Snack Shack is close behind at 31,500. Popcorn Wagon comes in third with 28,159, but then there is a large gap.

Hot Air Balloon sold 21,180 copies, W.A.L.T. only 16,800 and Off-road adventure just 13,890. From this, we can immediately identify that sets with minifigures generally perform better, and models that can be used as an add-on to something more rather than being wholly individual, are good picks. W.A.L.T. and the Hot Air Balloon certainly fall under the latter, but Off-road adventure is the odd one out.

Despite being an add-on to the popular Camping Adventure, Off-road Adventure just didn't have that same spark. However, that might not be due to anything in the build itself. Series 6 had some varied sales numbers, including 910057 Outlaw Forest Den at a staggering 45,036 copies.

The rest of the round falls somewhere around the sales numbers of Off-road Adventure. It suggests that the forest den was just that popular, drawing all the attention away from the rest of the series.

Setting Off-road Adventure aside because of this, the key ingredients to success to small sets in the BrickLink Designer Program appear to be something involving minifigures, but also something that can be easily added into a larger scene.

The upcoming Kiosk from Series 10 and Le Petit Bouquet from Series 11 should be hits, based on our findings, while Pumpkin Patch from Series 9 seems likely to struggle at the crowdfunding phase.

Crowdfunding for these series has yet to come, starting with Series 9 on October 7. You can see what else was recently picked for a finalist spot in the program by clicking here.