Lego Ideas Boeing 747 Cockpit Achieves 10k Supporters | Hacker News Reader

Lego Ideas Boeing 747 Cockpit Achieves 10k Supporters

thebrickfan.com

For those interested, a second aircraft-related Ideas submission that has a higher likelihood of making it to production is this "aircraft engine workshop":

https://ideas.lego.com/projects/224b606d-44d0-452e-9693-88be...

Nice! And very cool to see the photos and videos done with KLM.

I wonder what's the story for including "international spy"?

Guess it got something to do with this: https://www.theguardian.com/business/2015/apr/30/airbus-coul...

Decades of corporate/industrial espionage, of course

Maybe this [0]?

[0] https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/former-raytheon-engineer-sent...

Someone kindly held the door open and didn't notice that one person's badge didn't register.

I'm not an aviation geek, but I love the clearly deep level of aviation geekery on display with this one. The industrial-espionage minifig cracked me up.

I don’t see this happening. Others mentioned IP issues already, but the sell quality is just low: For playing it does not work, as it is not minifig scale and is only the cockpit so what is there to play. For visuals I am missing the plane and I don’t find the build to be directly recognisable as a very famous plane either. (I am no plane expert, just an adult lego builder). The outside on its own is a bit odd in my opinion and it is the first thing you see.

I think it works better as an instruction guide / rebrickable for plane enthusiasts than an IDEA set.

This would be for adult and I don’t think they would actually play with the completed kit?

A lot of adults are into aviation and they are probably the target audience.

Personally growing up with lego sets in 80s I prefer kits that do not have too many specialized blocks and parts because it kills composability, so even though I love planes and Lego, I don't think I'd buy this.

I would also wonder how much this has a "Snakes on a Plane" surface appeal, lots of attention ... almost nobody buying.

The 747 is one of the most famous planes. It’s the jumbo jet

As an adult Lego enthusiast, I disagree. I'm probably not the target for this one, but I can see others wanting it. None of my sets are for playing with after built. Like my Saturn V rocket. Try and play with that, and you'll have a pile of bricks very soon. It's for building & looking at, once completed. I'm the sort that loves the model aspect of Lego, especially with a lot of the newer (past 15-20 years) large sets. I have some of the larger Star Wars sets (Death Star, Star Destroyer, Millenium Falcon, etc). None of these can you play with as a kid would. You can't pick up the Star Destroyer or Millenium Falcon and run around a room making pew pew sounds.

It's cool and all, but Boeing appears to license their IP to Cobi (yet another questionable decision), so this project seems unlikely to proceed.

edit - add link to Cobi sets https://www.boeingstore.com/search?q=cobi&type=product&optio...

Maybe take an Airbus cockpit instead then. Makes more sense also to have a European aircraft as a European toy :)

Boeing is a military contractor[1], and Lego appears to have a strict policy against doing military sets[2] (unlike Cobi[3]). Here's another company which makes Lego-compatible military sets[4].

[1] https://www.boeing.com/defense/

[2] https://www.zmescience.com/other/did-you-know/lego-military-...

[3] https://cobi.pl/en/armed-forces/

[4] https://bricktanks.co.uk/

The 747 isn’t a military vehicle. LEGO have released a Boeing branded set before, for the Dreamliner: https://www.lego.com/en-us/service/buildinginstructions/1017...

The James Webb Telescope got his 10k votes too. I hope it'll be approved by the LEGO review board.

https://ideas.lego.com/projects/3decd220-889e-4eb3-b938-96aa...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aR62coEAaY8

That looks more likely to be made into a set than this (since it's self contained, not just a part of a plane). Very cool and beautifully well done.

It looks like a legit kit!

Yeah that needs some polish but absolutely fits the pattern of other realistic space lego sets that have sold well.

I don’t think this is a very interesting design and seems to rely heavily on stickers or printed pieces for a lot of the detail. Without those it would just be a tan panel. There are also exposed plate bottoms on many sides which are kind of an eyesore.

Agreed. I’m surprised there are more than 500 parts. I guess to do a proper Justice the kit would need to be twice as big with 5 times more parts

I'm out of the loop here - what is "LEGO Ideas", and why is it noteworthy that this has 10,000 supporters?

https://ideas.lego.com/

It's where fans can submit their own creations. At 10k supporters Lego takes a closer look (fitness for the Ideas series, cost of production, IP rights etc.).

If Lego decides to build it, the fan gets a share of the profit from the set.

Lego Ideas is the premier adult Lego series, with lots of cool sets at high price points.

10,000 people on a website looks like an easy number to reach, and one that bots or a group of loosely organized trolls (4chan) could easily game.

Maybe 50,000 should be the requirement?

Presumably LEGO will raise the limit if they get swamped, but 10,000 is just the bar to get considered by the staff, it confers no guarantee of success and hence isn't super worth gaming.

I think Lego wouldn’t need to spend too many resources on throwing out 4Chan ideas

If 10,000 votes is easy to reach by bots or organised trolls, why is 50,000 not?

10,000 just gets Lego to review it. They don't have to approve it.

Very interesting - thanks for the response!

As others said, "crowd-sourced" LEGO sets. To see what the fans have came up with, here's someone's list of the top 10 best LEGO Ideas sets: https://www.dudeshopping.com/top-10-best-lego-ideas-ranked/

I seem to recall Lego had figures that fit those chairs in Technik back in the 80-90 that where not minifigs. Does anyone remember that?

Edit: yes, they where called "Technic figures" and would fit better with this set than minifigs.

I still have a couple. They are awesome.

Some context/background from a few clicks deep:

https://ideas.lego.com/projects/2eee0d6e-74db-4414-ba89-0d56...

> Congratulations on reaching the 10,000 supporter milestone! What an achievement it is!

> We now officially advance this project to the Review phase.

> What happens now?

> This project moves from the Idea stage to the Review stage. A "LEGO Review Board" composed of designers, product managers, and other key team members will examine the idea. [...]

The Boeing cockpit looks awesome, but still waiting for Lego Van Gogh's Starry Night to be made available: https://ideas.lego.com/projects/acc7c4c8-3967-4563-8fb5-a498...

It was approved in 2020 but no release date yet. There's evidently a long lag between approval and actual release.

Wow this is very cool, definitely one to watch out for. Thanks for the heads up

That's awesome. I don't think Lego are likely to approve though. There was an awesome looking project to do a Rolls-Royce UltraFan Jet Engine that was rejected a few years ago https://ideas.lego.com/projects/f18a11c6-f704-4827-b06a-fba8...

Direct link: https://ideas.lego.com/projects/2eee0d6e-74db-4414-ba89-0d56...

If they do this I really hope they do proper printed-on bricks and not use stickers for absolutely everything, Lego product quality has gone down :/

I remember my lego sets coming with apply-your-own decals in the 90's...

Probably not going to pass by LEGO's review board, like a lot of these aircraft projects.

Would Boeing be entitled to a share of the proceeds from the sale of 747 sets?

That's part of the review happening at 10k supporters.

For all practical purposes the answer is yes. It would have to licensed from Boeing. This set doesn't make sense (at 150 to 200 Euros, based on the number of pieces) without being able to call it a "Boeing 747". Few people would buy a no-name airplane cockpit. So Lego needs the trademark license.

The newer 787 model comes with a dedicated block for the faulty MCAS system.

737-MAX

Saw this ages ago and clicked support. Glad to see it has made it.

> Error establishing a database connection

Clearly not Web Scale.

Edit: this was a poor attempt at humor

It's one guy with a Lego fan hobby blog. Not everything needs to be Web Scale all the time

I 100% agree!

https://web.archive.org/web/20220207213153/https://www.thebr...

Here's the project itself: https://ideas.lego.com/projects/2eee0d6e-74db-4414-ba89-0d56...

How much money does it cost to build?

Bricked

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