Ghostbusters firehouse

[Bruce N H]

Hey all,

LEGO has [url=http://www.ew.com/article/2015/10/27/lego-g ... use-photos]announced[/url] (via Entertainment Weekly, oddly) the long-rumored (and leaked a couple of days ago) Ghostbusters firehouse headquarters.

[url=https://www.flickr.com/photos/thebricktime/22523361325/][img]https://c2.staticflickr.com/6/5690/225233613 ... cddc33.jpg[/img][/url]

It's an awesome looking set, though pricey (US$350) and would fit well with the Ecto 1 set for an 80's movie fan, or also alongside the Cafe Corner style buildings in a town layout of any sort. This set, though, raises an issue. How is this set not the other half of [url=https://ideas.lego.com/projects/36088]Brent Walker's LEGO Ideas project[/url] (the official Ecto 1 set was from his Ideas proposal), or [url=https://ideas.lego.com/projects/89254]mpjdekker's Ideas project[/url], which currently has 6079 votes, or [url=https://ideas.lego.com/projects/60632]Sergio512's Ideas project[/url], which reached 10,000 votes but was rejected? Looking at the details, this set is closest to Sergio512's version, and if I were him I'd be pretty mad, but could equally well be based on any of them. To me this raises the fundamental flaw of any Ideas project based on an existing IP. To the extent that your proposal matches the actual thing, any official set made in the future that similarly matches the actual thing, be it Batmobile, TIE Fighter, Brooklyn Bridge, whatever, infringes on your Idea proposal. IMO the only "valid" Ideas proposals are things like the Exo-Suit, the Research Institute, or the Birds sets (with all due respect to the other excellent builders and the excellent sets that derived from their IP-based proposals).

Bruce

[Lil_Curt]

While it looks cool from the outside, i would like to see eome shots of the interior and play features. While $350 is pricey if it is 4634 as the article states then we would be around $.08 per pirce. I will have to see some more shots before I give up my money however.

[Grover]

I am very excited about this set, but I am also concerned about the implications for the Ideas community since there were several HQs out there, including a couple of very good ones that were quite similar. Without giving these authors credit, it's not encouraging the community to deny one idea, then build it as a set. I'd be reluctant to submit my MOCs now in fear of getting my ideas stolen.

[adamsonofwilliam]

I am very excited about this set, but I am also concerned about the implications for the Ideas community since there were several HQs out there, including a couple of very good ones that were quite similar. Without giving these authors credit, it's not encouraging the community to deny one idea, then build it as a set. I'd be reluctant to submit my MOCs now in fear of getting my ideas stolen.

http://www.swissgb.ch/my-statement-on-the-r ... dquarters/

The link above speaks to that quite well. Sergio paints quite the picture of his experience and how it soured.

[Bruce N H]

Yeah, I was going to link to that here after seeing it linked on Brickset. To me the key paragraph in Sergio's response is this:

And that leads me, a long time AFOL and GB-Fan, to the decision to never again post something on Lego Ideas. I’ve done a lot of free promotion for lego, spreading this out to a lot of communitys and fan-portals. The time I’ve spent to promote the project, I would have spend differently next time.

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Full official pictures have now been released. It does appear that the [url=https://www.flickr.com/photos/thebricktime/2 ... 630584425/]interior[/url] is significantly different from Sergio's proposal at least. It's a pretty darn impressive set, but I do think this whole thing was handled poorly by LEGO. It would have been no skin off their nose to acknowledge the Ideas proposals builders, and they could have even thrown some money their way, but at least according to what Sergio wrote he would have been happy with some acknowledgement.

If they're not going to do that, LEGO Ideas should institute a policy of immediately removing proposals that infringe on existing LEGO product lines. A search on "Batman" comes up with 589 projects. A search on "Star Wars" comes up with 1000, and I'm guessing that the filter just cuts off at that number and there are actually many more. Now, most of those are probably awful, but we all know that any of those that does make it to 10,000 votes is going to be rejected because of the existing product lines. I suppose there is some very outside possibility if an Ideas proposal is very different from existing products. For instance, there was that Star Wars lightsaber proposal. But even these aren't realistically going to be included. So much more so for anything fig-based. Why even leave them on the site, asking people to waste time promoting their MOCs for no reason, unless it's not about the fans at all, but rather about LEGO getting free press? I think I pretty much know the answer to that.

Bruce