If you don’t know, LEGO IDEAS (formerly known as LEGO Cuuso) is a fan submission website where people can upload their MOC (my own creations) for other people to see and vote on. Submissions that reach 10 thousand votes will be eligible for a chance to be made into an official LEGO set that the company will produce as a product.

This is obviously very cool, having your own creation be part of the official LEGO line up. So there are a lot of submissions on the website with a lot of them indeed reaching the 10 thousand votes mark. But the number of fan votes does not guarantee the submission becoming an official set. There are a lot of things to consider when trying to gauge how well a submission will translate into a real set.

Today I will be looking at some of the current submissions that have been tagged with the “staff pick” mark and reviewing them with the goal of determining whether they have a good chance of becoming a real LEGO set, or suggesting what changes would help make it a more viable contender. At the time of writing this, it is 4/27/2023.

Before I start, I want to remind everyone that I will be trying to review the submissions from the perspective of whether they will be made into actual LEGO sets and not comment on the quality of the builds themselves. All these MOCs are obviously amazing and beautiful, so I need not gush over that. I want to instead take an objective approach to see how likely they are to become real products.

Starting off we have “Venice” by LEGOverwatch. It is a very large build, containing 2993 bricks, just under the 3000 brick limit set by the LEGO Group for submissions. I think for this to be made into a set, it would have to be scaled down by a bit. Not to say that a 3000 piece IDEAS set isn’t possible, but looking at other of these building type sets, they have a height ratio that’s roughly 5-7 bricks high per floor (with exceptions). I can see the upper levels in this submission being truncated by the height of a brick or two. There’s also a matter of brick repetition for the buildings. To make builds more enjoyable, LEGO usually doesn’t just have entire segments of uniformed flat brick walls. While the front face of this MOC uses some very interesting SNOT techniques to fit all the detailing, the side faces falls short by a bit. To be fair there are official LEGO modular buildings sets that also have this problem, but more recent ones tend to limit this a bit more. Speaking of modular LEGO building sets, this MOC, if made into a set, will most likely be changed to fit along the lines of the modular building series (although I suspect the original builder might not have intended so). This likely means I would not be surprised if the brick built water base was instead replaced with a tile-covered baseplate to allow for compatibility with other modular building sets. One detail I really like but unfortunately probably won’t be kept is the clips for the clothing, which are severed minifigure hands. I don’t think they actually come as standalone bricks unfortunately. I would estimate a price of at roughly 249.99 USD for the brick count alone, but since it’s mostly regular bricks and not a lot of specialty molds, possibly lower.

Next we have “DUOLINGO” by Jelle ter Veer. This is just a cute little set with association with the Duolingo language learning program. The Duolingo Owl is surprisingly well built with a lot of play features. However I do feel in general, this set doesn’t fit very well with the LEGO brand, which is a shame since I quite like the build of the owl. Duolingo isn’t exactly a pop culture icon, more of a trendy thing made popular by internet media. The addition of the brick build accessories are cool but could be seen as superfluous potentially. LEGO has been pushing the idea of IDEAS sets being 18+ sets recently, trying to market these more towards the adult fanbase. And this set does feel like it would have a hard time fitting in with LEGO’s vision of IDEAS sets. The description didn’t include a brick count but I’m estimating under 300 bricks at most probably. If made, it would likely have a price range of above 30 USD since there’s also an associated licensing fee.

The “HOT DOG VAN” by artkazmin is certainly an entertaining build, but I feel like it lacks certain elements that would qualify it as an official build. There’s an element of “generic-ness” to it, a trait that sometimes benefits IDEAS sets in order to appeal to a wider audience. But I would argue this MOC is too generic and lacks the sort of appeal that would draw in potential customers. I also feel the design is too angular and lacking in fine details that is characteristic of other IDEAS sets. It’s a very smooth, clean, and visually appealing build but it lacks the complexity that I would prefer to see in a LEGO set. The description states that the interior has a lot of details that the builder has modeled after real food trucks he studied. Which would be quite cool, but unfortunately no pictures are attached. Overall the build feels too clean and unapologetically plain to warrant it becoming an actual set. But then again, I could say that about the original MOC for the BTS set, which I would have given similar complaints. The later official LEGO set cleaned it up very nicely and added a lot of details. They could do that here too. I think the set could benefit from being a larger than minifigure scale build with more details and interesting geometry to add to the feeling of real food trucks. Maybe utilize a few SNOT techniques here and there. You can easily make a 40-50 USD set here.

(funny side unrelated side detail: there’s a floating disembodied arm in one of the pictures for some reason)

The “DISNEY PIXAR’S LUXO JR LAMP” by T0BY1KENOBI20506 is an amazingly built set of a very iconic figure in animation. This honestly hits a lot of the checkmarks associated with a good IDEAS set. It’s a recognizable icon and has very interesting and complicated build techniques. But there are things that I think hold it back and will require changes for a real product. The structural integrity is something that needs consideration for all sets. And there are multiple points of questionable connection in this build. Those of you who have noticed the connection point between the headlamp and rest of the body may be reminded of the Wall-E fiasco from a few years back (there was an IDEAS Wall-E set with a head that was too loosely attached so it couldn’t hold its position). Held by what appears to be a single technic pin, the head may be a bit too large and heavy to be held at any angle other than straight down. There are also segments in the body composed of stacked 1 by 1 bricks. The base also features a hinge brick, which in this context may actually be fine. But I do want to point out that the hinge pieces might not come in the color white anymore so color consistency may need to be sacrificed. This does appear to be a smaller set, no more than 250 pieces maybe? Probably less? I could see this being a 30 USD set however, due to all the larger bricks and the attached IP.

The “MEDITERRANEAN HOUSE” by Artem Biziaev is a really cool build that I sure hope becomes a real set. It is reminiscent of the Lighthouse IDEAS set with the brick built rocky base on water (which I like even more than the rocky base on the lighthouse set). This MOC honestly could just be a real set as is. There’s very little I think would change if it did get made into a set. The use of unique sections and lack of repetitive chunks of building would certainly make this a great building experience. It will all come down to how many builders share my opinions. It certainly has my vote. Not much to say about this one since I think it’s already pretty good. Simple, but very nice visual appeal. I could see this being an 80-100 USD set. Hard to gauge the piece count without knowing the brick count. There are a lot of small single and double stud elements.