It was submitted to LEGO Ideas no later than last year. It earned 10,000 supporters by April 2018. It joined the Ideas First 2018 Review Stage the following month, and was one of two chosen by reviewers for production, come October. The official set was teased last week, and it was even showcased in the recent New York Toy Fair.
We’re of course talking about LEGO Ideas Flintstones, based on an original submission by Andrew Clark. Set 21316, now listed online at Shop@Home, is scheduled to be released on the first of March. But for LEGO VIP members, say “YABBA-DABBA-DOO!”
That’s right: LEGO Ideas Flintstones (21316) can now be had early by LEGO fans on the VIP program. Considering the timetable, it puts them at just over a week ahead of regular buyers who will need to wait until next month; it’s not much of an advantage, but who can say no to early availability?
At 748 pieces for US$59.99 the LEGO Ideas Flintstones set (21316) is a good deal for both Ideas collectors and fans of good old TV animation and Hanna-Barbera. Four other major regions of Shop@Home – Canada (Eng/Fr), UK, Metropolitan France and Germany – also have it ready for interested LEGO VIP members.
By now, fans of both classic TV animation and LEGO are busy poring over the images of the LEGO Ideas set for “The Flintstones” (21316) that were released in the lead-up towards the New York Toy Fair this past weekend. It and another set, Treehouse, were the two selected product ideas from the First 2018 Review Stage, with the former expected to arrive this March.
Amid the discussion regarding the quality of the final Ideas product (21316) with the original creation of Andrew Clark, the LEGO Ideas Review Panel is continuing its massive backlog of examining 10-K submissions on their online platform. This Monday they finally publicized their choices from the Second 2018 Review Stage, over four months after the First 2018 Review Stage results.
Interestingly, both these new, official and upcoming LEGO Ideas sets have some pretty familiar tunes attached to them. First we have Steamboat Willie from Máté Szabó (Ideas username szabomate90). He worked on this build to commemorate Mickey Mouse’s 90th anniversary, though it’ll be coming late to the party. As for the familiar tune, Mickey’s whistling is sampled in the logo for Walt Disney Animation Studios.
Next, we have Aymeric Fievet/Mric76’s splendid recreation of the Central Perk Café, a prominent gathering place and interior location setting for NBC’s iconic sitcom “Friends.” The set itself is quite wide and roomy, allowing for seven minifigures of the show’s main characters to hang out and have lots of fun. Oh, and you’re probably hearing The Remembrandts’ “I’ll Be There for You” in your heads as you read this blurb.
We’re going to look forward to seeing these licensed-property LEGO Ideas sets being revealed sometime this year, if the gap between the Ideas Flintstones (21316) announcement and official unveiling is any indication. Now, the ball’s in the Third 2018 Review Stage, the five finalists of which were announced last month.
The American International aka New York Toy Fair 2019 ends on Tuesday, February 19. Until then, the world’s biggest toy manufacturers and brands are showing off their best and latest products at the Javits Center. LEGO of course is among them, and from the time the fair started last Saturday they have already shown much.
For the benefit of our readers here at The Brick Show, we’re going to do a recap of all the stuff that LEGO promoted at their booth and elsewhere at the NYTF over the weekend. These are all links to articles of ours that touched on the items in question, whether they were early reveals or from the event itself
Last week, LEGO released a nostalgic little teaser for one of the two lucky entries to the LEGO Ideas First 2018 Review Stage that have become official sets. That was the set for the classic Hanna-Barbera animated sitcom “The Flintstones” as originally conceptualized by Andrew Clark, of which the teaser featured the titular Modern Stone-Age family and their neighbors on the former’s iconic boulder car.
While no date was given, the most likely time for revealing the LEGO Ideas Flintstones set could only be this weekend in the 2019 New York Toy Fair. We certainly weren’t disappointed as LEGO made sure to include this among their many other reveals at the Jacob K. Javits Center.
First off, we now know the LEGO Ideas Flintstones set number, 21316. As with the Andrew Clark original design, the package consists of the Flintstones home, boulder-mobile and four minifigures of Fred and Wilma Flintstone, plus Barney and Betty Rubble.
Our next focus is on the house, in all its familiar stone-slab glory. Structure-wise, the back is left open to allow easy play access to the interior, though the front door does open (as do the window curtains) and the roof can be detached too.
Interior features include a living room with couch, table, TV and fireplace plus kitchen sink. Several base plates can also be spread out to add more floor space to the house, except for the green one that serves as the garden, where a mailbox or prehistoric palm can be placed.
Accessories include a fruit bowl, telephone, floor lamp with shade, a box of bowling equipment, and a cave painting frame element. As for the Technic-like boulder car, it seats four minifigs and can roll freely on its steamroller wheels. The roof is a unique fabric element and it even comes with a dino rib on a tray as shown in the unforgettable credits sequence (Wilma!).
Ahem, while the LEGO instruction booklet is mandatory, the one for LEGO Ideas Flintstones (21316) also has a little history segment on the 1960s show, a quick informational read for both old-time fans and newbies.
Granted, a lot of stuff from Andrew Clark’s product idea never made the final cut, but what remains is still a sweet LEGO commemoration of one important piece of old-school American pop culture. And $60 for 750 pieces isn’t that out of hand, plus it’ll be available Wednesday. Anyone who gets the LEGO Ideas Flintstones (21316) set are sure to have a Gay Old Time. And that “gay” is of the retro definition “happy,” okay?
Do a run-through of aspiring “product ideas” on LEGO Ideas and you’ll find that buildings, particularly houses, are a favorite theme of aspiring builders for their MOC submissions that they hope to become official sets. Really, you can look no further than the latest announced Ideas sets: a sweet Tree House and the “modern stone-age” domicile of Hanna-Barbera’s “The Flintstones.”
Since LEGO house are a proven favorite by both fans and Ideas review panelists, we at The Brick Show have decided to go over some of the current brick-home submissions on the Ideas platform that are on the “Race to 10-K Support” for one set that we think warrants it.
And that set is based on a licensed property, namely the Nickelodeon animated series “The Loud House,” which premiered in 2016 and is still going at three seasons. This build, submitted by Ideas member “Cherry-Rose,” is a sweet minifigure-scale recreation of the Loud Family home, where one (lucky) middle-child boy lives with his parents and ten older and younger sisters.
The titular Loud House is beautifully rendered in all its well lived-in hominess: grassy lawn, paved path to porch, throwing toys left on the roof, the works. And that’s just the exterior; the house itself can swing open in the back to reveal its three packed stories of rooms: living space below and bedrooms above.
Details of the rooms, from the two age-appropriate dining tables, to the various quirks, features and props of the sisters’ rooms, are all copied down from the show. So too are the accompanying vehicles, the “Vanzilla” family transport (with removable roof) and two episode-relevant bicycles.
Of course building sets like these most definitely have accompanying minifigures, and considering the premise of “The Loud House” you know this one will get a lot. A dozen minifigs of Lincoln Loud, his sisters Lori, Leni, Luna, Luan, Lynn, Lucy, Lana, Lola, Lisa & Lily, plus his best buddy Clyde, are all on hand to turn that house upside down. They’ll even all fit inside Vanzilla (rather snugly too).
As a fairly new product idea on the platform, Cherry-Rose’s “The Loud House” set has only garnered over 200 of the 10,000 supporters needed to advance for review, with well over a year of time left to do so.
Fans of LEGO and Nickelodeon will surely get a kick out of this build, and we think it’ll fit right in with any LEGO City sets of a residential bent, maybe even the Christmas Village theme when the Holidays come. The possibilities are endless, so head over to LEGO Ideas and give this set a boost.
It’s the year 2019 now, but it’s only at this point in time that the winners from the First 2018 Review Stage of LEGO Ideas will finally see the light of day as official products. Recall that the results of that review stage were announced only in early October of the year before.
The two product ideas that made the final cut from that 10-set review batch had been a Treehouse and a licensed franchise, Hanna-Barbera’s classic “Flintstones” animated series. Then, following over three months of silence, LEGO Ideas broke the lack of new updates with a cheeky nostalgic teaser.
On Monday, February 11, LEGO Ideas posted a short video clip on their official Twitter page. It should be familiar to longtime “Flintstones” fans, a shortened version of the last few seconds of the familiar colored second intro, with the Flintstones and Rubbles barreling into the prehistoric drive-in theater in the former’s boulder-mobile.
The differences are quickly spotted: the featured movie is titled “LEGO Ideas: The Flintstones.” Also, the Flintstones’ “car” is quite obviously a LEGO-brick stop-motion rendition, likely the official LEGO Ideas conversion of the original submission by Andrew Clark. Finally, the theater screen shows that Ideas will be showing the whole final LEGO Flintstones set soon, punctuated with the iconic series catchphrase “Yabba-dabba-doo!”
Seeing as this LEGO Ideas set is from a recognizable franchise, it makes sense that it gets a teaser ahead of the original-idea Treehouse. Then again the preview neglects to put an actual date on when the LEGO Flintstones set will actually be shown in full, so fans are left with the usual game of guessing “How soon is ‘Coming Soon.’”
Then again, as some comments on our fellow LEGO news site and helpful set guide Brickset indicate, not many fans approve the accompanying minifigures’ faces which have apparently been leaked earlier. Perhaps the promised upcoming official LEGO Ideas reveal might change some minds.
This is one of those rare moments where a LEGO product idea gets the attention of fans and is immediately caught up in a storm of likes and 10K thumbs up to become a potential LEGO Ideas set. I guess timing is one key factor for the success of a particular LEGO set proposal, such as the case of our first product idea for 2019 that managed to garner those coveted 10K approvals from the LEGO community in just a short amount of time. To open the 2019 LEGO Ideas Review Stage, we have our first qualifier in the form of the Museu Nacional – Rio de Janeiro by MaxakalisaurusTopai.
This particular LEGO product idea is inspired by the actual Museu Nacional – Rio de Janeiro in Brazil, which sadly caught fire last September 2, 2018, where a large portion of the country’s historical artifacts was also consumed in the blaze. It was a sad day for the people of Brazil and for the rest of the world where over 90% of its collection throughout its 200 years of existence were unfortunately consumed by the flames. The museum’s collection of more than 20 million artifacts is hailed as one of the largest collections of natural history in the world and it’s just staggering to think that almost all of these are now gone forever.
In honor of the Museu Nacional – Rio de Janeiro, LEGO fan MaxakalisaurusTopai decided to render it in LEGO bricks following the typical design of LEGO Architecture sets, and have it submitted as a LEGO product idea. In just less than a month from its submission, the vast majority of the LEGO community responded with eagerness highlighting the important role the Museu Nacional – Rio de Janeiro has played in the preservation of our history. It is simply heart-warming to see the outpouring of support coming from the LEGO community. Here’s what MaxakalisaurusTopai has to say about this product idea.
Museu Nacional – Rio de Janeiro
The National Museum is the largest Brazilian Museum. Actually it was… On September 2nd, 2018, it caught on fire. The greatest historical, artistic, cultural and scientific patrimony in Brazil, was destroyed by an enormous fire. And with the fire, we lost more than objects and collector’s items. We lost a huge part of our history.
We lost the skeleton of the largest dinosaur ever found in South America, and part of the fossil of Luzia, the oldest habitant of all Americas. We lost the mysterious Egyptian mummy Sha Amun En Su, the imposing African throne of the Kingdom of Dahomey and even the indescribable frescoes of Pompeii. Over 90% of the collection was destroyed. Its 200 years of history and 20 million invaluable items. And also, the museum’s building is a symbol of Brazil’s architectural history, and now is turned into ashes. On top of all that, the reconstruction of the National Museum will take 20 long years.
How to continue inspiring the audience of the National Museum (the majority of families and children) during this time? We’ll leave the National Museum alive in our imagination. We’ll rebuild it brick by brick with LEGO, highlighting its historical importance. And the children who help build the National Museum will actually be helping to rebuild the National Museum in real life.
The Museu Nacional – Rio de Janeiro is our first LEGO product idea for the First 2019 Review Stage. The Third 2018 LEGO Ideas Review Stage has come to a close with five candidates vying to become the next official LEGO Ideas set. We also hope to have a reveal of the Second 2018 LEGO Review Results which is slated to be announced anytime this month until early February.
The LEGO Ideas Review Team has officially announced the five product ideas that qualify for the Third 2018 LEGO Ideas Review Stage which began from September 2018 until early January 2019. It may not be as many as of those from early review stages, but these selections represent a pretty diverse collection of product ideas that appeal to almost all LEGO fans. These are LEGO product ideas that garnered the support of more than 10,000 LEGO fans in the idea-sharing platform during the aforementioned dates.
I have to say that this is a rather tough decision to make, considering that almost all of these product ideas are my personal favorites. But if I really have to choose which among these do I really like to see happen as an official LEGO set, then I have to say my vote goes to FrostBrick’s Food Stand Diners. Here once again are the five product ideas that qualified for the LEGO Ideas Third 2018 Review Stage.
The LEGO Ideas Review Board is still currently working to give us their verdict and results of the LEGO Ideas Second 2018 Review Stage, with 10 awesome product ideas vying to get that seal of approval to be the next official LEGO Ideas set. In case you missed it, here are the qualifiers currently reviewed from this period.
Congratulations to all the qualifiers! Keep on building!
If you recall last October, we featured a LEGO product idea that will probably impress even Mozart if he is alive today. The LEGO Ideas project, Playable LEGO Piano, by builder SleepyCow has gained a lot of support since then and now ranks among the LEGO hopefuls to become the next official LEGO Ideas set alongside four qualifiers. For its Third 2018 Review Stage, the product ideas that have gotten 10,000 supporters during this period are a varied mix of themes – from dinosaur skeletons to a chemical plant, a set of fast-food stalls and a cruise ship. And now the latest addition to these LEGO product ideas now appeals to the musician and builder at heart.
It’s always amazing whenever a LEGO builder does a MOC that includes some mechanical function and non-traditional materials. Ideas member SleepyCow has done just that with a small-scale playable LEGO piano that actually plays thanks to actual strings attached to the keys, and pedal dampers.
The sheer amount of detail SleepyCow put on this playable LEGO piano product idea is mind-blowing. Aside from the aforementioned working 25 piano keys (with hammers hitting correctly-tuned strings) and pedals, the whole setup has legs ending on scaled piano wheels, the player’s bench is adjustable, and it can be converted into a player piano via Power Functions.
Such advanced LEGO mechanics (that don’t require Power) are not so common in mainstream LEGO sets, so it’s only fitting that it’ll come out via the more imaginatively conceptualized LEGO Ideas line. First, we’ll need SleepyCow’s playable LEGO piano to beat its fellow Third 2018 Review Stage submissions, and who knows what other sets make in. Check out his demo video below.
This next LEGO Ideas Contest fell off my radar, and it’s a good thing that we still have two weeks before the contest ends. In case you also missed it, you might be interested to know that the LEGO Ideas team is running another building contest where LEGO fans and builders can get to bag home an awesome array of LEGO Ideas sets. All you need to do is to come up with your most imaginative and bricktastic pop-up story in a similar fashion such as that of LEGO Ideas Pop-Up Book (21315). The deadline for submission of entries is on January 3, 2019 (6AM, EST). Read on for the contest’s overview and what you’ll be getting if yours will be the winning entry. For the complete contest rules, you may visit the LEGO Ideas Create a Bricktastic Pop-Up Story contest page. You may also view other cool entries in this contest right here.
Some of the entries for the ongoing LEGO Ideas Create a Bricktastic Pop-Up Story Contest
Create a Bricktastic Pop-Up Story!
Do you consider yourself an amazing storyteller? Whether you’re into action stories, romance, fairy tales, science fiction, comics or a whole other genre, we now challenge you to build a bricktastic story that will make us all fall off our chairs! To give your story the ultimate twist of creativity, we ask you to build it as a pop-up.
So, get ready, fetch your bricks, and surprise us with some awesome pop-up stories!
The Grand Prize winner will receive:
A custom, special edition Pop-Up Book trophy created by LEGO Designer Wes Talbott and featuring artwork by LEGO Graphic Designer Crystal Fontan
