I agree. I do think continuing the collective effort to keep getting Bionicle sets to review is a worthwhile endeavor.
If nothing else, it shows LEGO that we’re still here. Best case scenario would be one actually winning, and I don’t see any reason why we shouldn’t try anyways.
I wish fans of other themes that feel slighted would do the same, really. I’d love to see a really good, classic Castle set, or Space set, or Pirates. Ideas is really our only avenue, and besides voting with out wallets, one of the only ways to campaign against LEGO’s increasing emphasis on licensed themes over broader, wide-appeal, first-party themes.
Ideas distribution cost is also stripped down to the bare minimum, with the sets only available in Lego stores and online from Lego direct.
Full release sets are much more widely distributed and available than these Ideas sets. They are available in Target and Walmart, and that puts pressure on Lego to cater to a big audience and get them to sell…but even still, the mass amount for sales isn’t really that big. That 1 million you quoted is for the entire world.
Consider: There are 1,844 Targets and 4,756 Walmarts in the U.S. If each of these stores get 5 sets apiece, that’s 33,000. (I used a calculator this time. ) Now granted, they probably get more than 5 sets apiece, but yeah. More like 10-25 for some sets…but that still places us in the thousands, not millions. And Ideas doesn’t even get that distribution.
Someone in the back room said that they need 10,000 supporters to release a min production min distribution set. If they needed more, they would have asked for more support, and we’d be looking at 25K goals instead of 10K.
I don’t think that these sets are making huge profits for Lego, even the sitcom ones. The Ideas service replaced the unprofitable Design-by-Me service - that whole branch is supposedly about giving kids their dream set and ensuring brand loyalty, not about mass production and bottom line. The reason we don’t see that is that only adults can submit sets to Ideas for legal reasons and so the place has been co-opted by AFOLS.
Ideas Pirates of Barracuda Bay set exists.
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Which brings me to another point - if they make a Bionicle Ideas set, they may not produce enough for everyone. I can see angry fans petitioning Lego for a copy of the set after the site goes haywire with all of the fans flooding the lego.com with orders.
They make good enough profit to keep them around for years and pump out more and more Ideas sets every year. Plus there’s an insane amount of those TV and movie related Ideas sets for a reason.
My point is that they don’t expect only 10k sales from 10k supporters. Ideas users are just a fraction of the market and are used as an indicator of popularity.
10k supporters for a typewriter might mean 100k or 1m people out in the real world would buy it.
10k supporters for a commemorative BIONICLE thingy means you went online and found every single fan who would buy it and got them to make an Ideas account.
That would actually be a pretty good idea now that I think about it. The problem with Sokoda’s set was that it wasn’t recognizable enough… Only G1 fans that cared about the lore would understand it’s meaning. An average buyer walking into a LEGO store would know nothing about it, therefore severely limiting it’s sales potential.
On the other hand, having a Brickbuilt Kanohi Hau similar to the Star Wars helmets could be the solution to that problem. The Hau is arguably the most iconic Mask in Bionicle, and the one that comes to mind whenever you mention Bionicle to somebody. So, having a set like that could have the potential to sell to a general audience. Even people who know about Bionicle but aren’t fans will recognize and potentially buy such as set.
Out of all the Ideas for more projects, I think a project like this would probably have the biggest chance to appeal to a general audience. So, in my opinion, it’d definitely say it’s worth trying out a project like that.
If this works I want to see the looks on the approval team’s faces.
BIONICLE Fandom: Supports Sokoda’s anniversary set
LEGO: This is a cool anniversary set, but we think we should go with the Seinfeld anniversary set instead.
BIONICLE Fandom: Supports half a dozen sets
LEGO:
LEGO: Listen here you little-
I feel like it’s gonna be harder to get the other projects supported if we don’t have our focus set on a single one.
We should support all of them, but I feel like it was easier to promote it and get people behind it back when we were only targeting one.
That’s a really good point. Telling people to “Just go and support all the projects” isn’t gonna get us anywhere. A more effective strategy would be to focus all our support and promotions on a single project, like we did with Sokoda.
If everyone gives their support to each one, then they’re all that much further to their goal.
Focusing out one draws attention away from all the others. Once you support one, there isn’t much you can do afterwards, so you might as well just give your support to all you can.
Not to mention it’s also dramatically slower. By the time a single project’s campaign ends, the time limit for another will be over.
Eh, I guess. The shaping could use some work (again, look how accurate that Boba Fett mask is!), but conceptually speaking it’s definitely the sort of idea I had in mind.
) Now granted, they probably get more than 5 sets apiece, but yeah. More like 10-25 for some sets…but that still places us in the thousands, not millions. And Ideas doesn’t even get that distribution.