LEGO has today announced a new initiative that may give hope to anybody who has felt the bitter disappointment of seeing their favourite Ideas submission rejected.
Going forward, a project that reaches 10k votes but is not made in to an official set might be moved over to the BrickLink Designer Program. This means the set will be produced and packaged up but will have a very limited release through BrickLink.
Not every rejected project will get the BrickLink Designer Program treatment and that is still at the discretion of LEGO (who own BrickLink now). One fairly obvious caveat is that any licenced projects won’t be eligible for the BrickLink Designer Program.
LEGO will be testing out the concept by going back through the archive of rejected 10k projects and selecting some for a pilot. LEGO hasn’t announced which previous projects will be the first to get the BrickLink treatment but expect announcements about this in 2021.
You can read more about the plan here on the LEGO Ideas blog.
As someone who has been disappointed when some of the Lego Ideas projects haven’t been chosen it does offer a ‘second chance’. (Although I’m still very ambivalent about Bricklink being owned by Lego.)
Exciting, im the proud owner of Lowenstein Castle from the original AFOL. This is amazing news!!