Projects discarded from LEGO Ideas? Bricklink takes care of it!
Inside the announcement, published on the web pages of the LEGO Ideas blog, we read that some of the proposals not approved during the recent Review sessions of the LEOG Ideas platform will have a second chance and the possibility of becoming a set thanks to Briclink's own AFOL Designers Program.
A pilot edition of this program was already been activated between 2018 and 2019 by the management of Bricklink itself (which at the time was still NOT part of the LEGO Group as it is now), thanks to which 13 projects by as many AFOL Designers came to life in the form of "official" sets with the Bricklink brand.
According to the text of the announcement on the LEGO Ideas blog, a selection of AFOL Designers whose designs had been discarded in the their respective Review sessions will be contacted as part of the new edition of the AFOL Designers Program. Unfortunately, among those who will be contacted again, there will be no Authors of projects linked to models who may or should require the signing of a license agreement, in addition to those some projects rejected a priori. Starting from last January 2021, the LEGO Ideas Team has contacted the selected AFOL Designers, after which they will be taken over by the Bricklink AFOL Designers Program Team for all subsequent engagement phases.
Historically, from the three annual Review sessions, only 4-5 arrive on the shelves as official sets, leaving the fans who voted for the (many) projects that are rejected. Thanks to the collaboration between the two platforms, LEGO Ideas and Bricklink, many more projects (except for those that require a license agreement, as mentioned above) will have the opportunity to arrive in the hands of fans in the form of a real set. The success of the initiative seems certain, given the results of a survey promoted by Bricklink: in fact, a strong approval by users emerged in creating sets with the Bricklink brand starting from the projects published on LEGO Ideas and which were discarded by the latter. despite having reached the 10,000 votes required by the regulation to access the Review phases.
In the original (and pilot) version of the Bricklink Designer Program, AFOL Designers were invited to submit projects (exactly as is done with the platform LEGO Ideas) and a number of projects, based on the votes collected, moved on to the crowdfunding phase. In this new version of the program, the AFOL Designers who will be selected by the LEGO IDEAS Team will have the opportunity to see their respective projects being considered for production.
There are several questions that are waiting to be answered:
Will there be compensation for the designers whose models go into production? In what form will the remuneration be? Fee / royalties like for LEGO Ideas? A certain number of free copies for the author? Will the projects have actually been built or will the (still) 100% digital projects (Stud.io, LDD, MLCad files and related render) also be accepted (as long as they are made with pieces in the actual colors)? There are currently 177 “unapproved” LEGO Ideas projects during their respective Review sessions (Source: ramblingbrick.com). Not counting the projects related to any form of IP / third party license, or model projects NOT inspired / derived from real cars, real spacecraft or from the world of cinema / comics / animation and everything that derives from films, books, television or video games, the number quickly drops to 40.
