Last week, we shared details about how the LEGO Review of projects that reach 10,000 supporters will be held quarterly. To recap, the first quarterly review will take place this summer. All projects that reach 10,000 supporters before June 4, 2012 (midnight GMT) will be included in the Summer review. Future quarterly review deadlines will be will be early September, December, and March respectively.

When you see new LEGO set releases, you’re seeing our products in finished condition. You don’t see the months or even years of development and preparation to make the product. There are many phases in the life of a LEGO product, from concept development to model design, business case, license agreements (if applicable), box artwork and building instruction production, molding, printing, packing, and finally distribution. Only then can a new LEGO set make it to your doorstep.

To us this process is both a labor of love and a time-tested method to create quality products that people love. Since LEGO CUUSOO crowdsources the concept development by asking you to submit your ideas, once your project receives enough supporters the responsibility shifts to our team, and we must work our magic and create the product—quite an involved process!

Since it takes a tremendous amount of time and resources to make a new LEGO product, before we commit to producing your project as a set, we need to make sure it makes sense to produce it. Because the LEGO Group is a business, ultimately we must ensure that if we were to sell your project, we would sell enough to make it worthwhile and profitable for us.

Who performs the LEGO Review?
Each LEGO Review is performed by a “LEGO Jury” led by the LEGO CUUSOO project team within New Business Group. Jury members include a cross-section of roles, including a project manager, model designer, graphic designer, corporate counsel, licensing representative, brand management, and a production manager. Jury members participate and make a recommendation on the production of each LEGO CUUSOO project in review.

The LEGO Review doesn’t have a definite timeframe. Here’s why.
While projects can receive supporters quickly on LEGO CUUSOO, it takes time to research the feasibility of a new product and develop the final model. It’s relatively quick to perform a brand-fit review, but the other parts of the review—building a business case and securing any necessary licenses—can take several months.

Each project requires a full business case. This is interlinked with the model design, as we only determine the manufacturing cost after one of our LEGO model designers creates the final model. The outcome depends also on the model design itself; can we produce an attractive, stable design at the appropriate price point using available elements? Are new element molds or new colors of existing elements required? Designing new elements takes time, and every single new element endures its own rigorous review and is approved into the LEGO System. These factors can affect the outcome and whether or not we are able to create a product from a LEGO CUUSOO project.

For licensed projects, don’t expect the speed at which we turned around the Minecraft project to be the norm; in fact, it is the exception. The LEGO® Minecraft™ Micro World was a very special case as we were able to reach a license agreement in a couple of weeks. Most licenses are owned by large corporations, so striking an agreement requires many stakeholders and legal complexity. Also, some licenses can be exclusive or can forbid us from working with competing brands.

Each LEGO Review features these four phases:

Brand Fit Analysis (Approx. 2 Weeks)
The Brand Fit Analysis decides if a project or IP is appropriate for the LEGO Company to produce, and looks at potential conflicts with existing or planned products. Projects that pass advance to the next phase, and projects that don’t pass this phase are not considered further.

Business Case Development and License Agreements (Timeframe Varies)
The review team builds a separate business case for each project that passes the Brand Fit Analysis. At the same time, the Licensing department pursues an agreement for all projects requiring a license. During this process, the team analyzes supporter data from LEGO CUUSOO (demographics, desired quantity and price point), examines the market potential, and looks at any potential internal or licensing conflicts.

Model Design (3-4 Weeks)
Simultaneously to the Business Case development, a LEGO model designer creates official models based on the submitted LEGO CUUSOO project. This process looks to deliver an attractive, buildable, and stable model at the required price point. Our designer considers the “Play Promise” as well; how playable is the model, and how playable does the model need to be considering the target audience? When possible, we involve the fans who submitted the project to LEGO CUUSOO. After this process is complete, the cost of elements used in the model is incorporated into the business case.

Final Review (1-2 Weeks)
After all research is done on brand fit, business case, license agreements, and model design, the LEGO Jury reviews each project and the recommendations of the review to make a final decision on which products to produce. Once these decisions are made, we announce the results.

Phew, what a process! We hope that you now have a better understanding of what happens to projects once they achieve 10,000 supporters, and the various factors involved in the LEGO Group deciding to produce a project as a LEGO set.

This is the second post in a three-part series about the LEGO Review. The first post explained the quarterly review schedule. Next week the third post in this series will give you tips for increasing your project’s chances of passing the LEGO Review with flying colors!

In just over six months of open beta, you’ve come from all corners of the Internet and created some awesome projects in hopes of getting your idea produced as a LEGO product. Wow! We can’t tell you how stoked we are at all of your incredible ideas. It’s hard to contain our excitement when we browse the kinds of things you’re making and supporting.

Opening ourselves to your suggestions is still new territory for us. Allowing you to build an audience for your ideas is both a huge opportunity and a risk. Our production abilities are still subject to the laws of physics (drat!), high costs of new molds, and distribution for toy retailers is planned out well in advance too. This makes it easier to sell one-off’s online like the LEGO Minecraft Micro World, but tricky if you want a playtheme or new elements in your project.

The LEGO Review will now happen quarterly
From here forward, we will conduct the LEGO Review of projects that reach 10,000 supporters quarterly. All projects that reach 10,000 supporters between now and June 4 (midnight GMT) will be included in the Summer review. Future quarterly review deadlines will be will be early September, December, and March respectively. Review periods do not have a definite end date due to the complexity of the process, which we will explain in our next post on this topic.

During the review, projects will be evaluated for brand fit (is it appropriate?), strategy fit (does it conflict with anything we’re producing?), business case (can we sell enough of them profitably at the necessary price point?), model design (can we make an appealing model that adheres to our standards?), and other criteria. Each project will be considered independently, but now we’ll review them at the same time.

We queue for production models that pass the LEGO Review
At the end of the review, projects will either be approved or not approved based on how they fit our review criteria. When we announce the review results, we’ll also reveal the final production models for each approved project. We can then potentially pick one project per quarter to put into immediate production as the next LEGO CUUSOO set. This potential set is chosen based on strategic fit and the business case from the review.

The remaining projects that pass Review will be placed in a queue where they will await an open production slot and may be chosen for production at a later date. The order in which they are produced is also dependent on strategy and the business case for each. As the LEGO Group alone takes on the cost of production and associated risk, we will choose LEGO CUUSOO sets for production at our discretion.

LEGO CUUSOO Remains in Beta
It’s important to note both the LEGO CUUSOO website and the operations that produce fan-inspired sets remain in a beta testing period. LEGO CUUSOO is breaking new ground for the LEGO Group, for LEGO fans, and for brand fan communities as a whole. As we work to produce your favourite CUUSOO projects as LEGO sets, it is important that we do so in a way that is scalable and sustainable as a business. Our team will continue to improve and refine this process, and we’re exploring possibilities that will allow you to share the risk of production costs so that your favorite projects can make it into production faster.

This post is the first of a three-part series about the LEGO Review. Look forward to the next post on this topic next week, where we give you an in-depth look at how the LEGO Review process works for projects that reach 10,000 supporters.

Starting next week, the tags on your projects will become more useful. Tags will now be clickable and will take you to a search result page showing projects with the same tag.

We are limiting the number of tags allowed per project to 10, to encourage users to create more meaningful tags so they are more useful in finding both your project and related projects. We will also change the tagging and search algorithm, so the site will be able to handle more traffic. The new tag rules are as follows:

• Projects can have up to 10 tags
• Tags can be between 2 and 32 characters
• Tags may not contain the word "LEGO" alone, but it is acceptable in multi-word tags like "LEGO Architecture."
• Tags may not contain the following special characters in a tag: \, :, <, or >

Please check your project to make sure it has no more than 10 tags. On Tuesday May 22, we will automatically remove excess tags on projects including tags more then 32 characters.

Ever since we announced that the Winchester, and now the Firefly Serenity playset did not pass the LEGO Review, there has been some speculation about how we will handle various LEGO CUUSOO projects that skirt the line of the LEGO brand standards.

The LEGO Company sells construction toys for builders of all ages. Over the last ten-plus years, LEGO products for teens and adults have proven very popular, including LEGO Mindstorms, the UCS series, and the LEGO Direct Exclusives to name a few. Adult builders create incredible models that reflect their passions and interests. As the LEGO Company creates products for an older audience, we takes great care to ensure that everything we produce is appropriate for children and the parents who trust us.

LEGO CUUSOO has opened the floor for you to submit product concepts to us that we can consider for production. As of March 29, all new projects are first held in a queue and approved by a moderator before being posted to the site. We’re able to catch a lot more things this way, but some things are not obvious on the surface and we can't give every project a thorough review. Projects that are obviously over the line will be caught, but some will inevitably pass through.

Our team is very aware that some potentially inappropriate projects remain active on the site; most of those projects were posted before we began approving new projects. We're in the process of examining questionable projects and removing the inappropriate ones. This will take some time. Look forward to updates in the coming weeks that refine the Guidelines and House Rules as we work to communicate more clearly what is acceptable and not. Understand that we will not produce products that are related to these topics:

• Politics and political symbols
• Religious references including symbols, buildings, or people
• Sex, drugs, or smoking
• Alcohol in any present day situation
• Swearing
• Death, killing, blood, terrorism, or torture
• First-person shooter video games
• Warfare or war vehicles in any situation post-WWII to present
• Racism, bullying, or cruelty to real life animals

The determination of how a project fits these above standards will be at our discretion. There's always a chance that something will be approved, then removed from the site after being reviewed in greater depth, or not approved during the LEGO Review stage for projects that achieve 10,000 supporters.

Conversely, there are plenty of LEGO product ideas that appeal to older fans and do not skirt these lines. Our advice is to stick to what's safe. Remember, some things are more appropriate for you to build with your own bricks and share online yourself. There are many great ideas out there, but not all make appropriate official LEGO products.

As always, best wishes with your LEGO CUUSOO projects!

First and foremost, huge congratulations to tbone_tbl for reaching 10,000 supporters on LEGO CUUSOO, and toward everyone for all of the support of the Firefly Serenity Playset project!

LEGO CUUSOO gives the opportunity for adult LEGO fans to submit product ideas. You submit some incredible things, and we’re huge fans of all of your work. This is a beautiful model and a skilled rendition of the beloved Serenity from Firefly built with LEGO bricks.

When reviewing projects for production, the LEGO Jury first looks at how the concept fits the LEGO brand. We learned the IP was questionable regarding a brand fit, and since we anticipated this project reaching 10,000 the team got a head start and reviewed the project on these criteria.

LEGO produces toys for children. Therefore all LEGO products, regardless of age target, must be content-appropriate for this core audience. With this in mind we have decided that as cool as the Serenity model is, the Firefly TV show and Serenity film contain content that is not appropriate for our core target audience of children ages 6-11. While we know this news will disappoint those who supported the project, we will not be producing this as a LEGO product.

Opening ourselves to new product suggestions invites popular ideas that don’t always fit our brand. We are grateful for the spirit behind projects like the Firefly Serenity and for the opportunity to be challenged. It keeps us sharp and looking toward the future of the LEGO brick.

In the first six months of operating the global version of LEGO CUUSOO, we’ve seen an encouraging pattern emerge: collaboration on projects. Teamwork makes us smile. Some people are very good at building a model or illustrating a concept with good artwork. Others are good at promoting their project and gaining traffic from other websites to increase their supporter count. By working together, you can complement each others' strengths and increase your success.

So, we’ve updated our Project Guidelines so you can “legally” collaborate with other builders and feature others’ work with permission. Projects are still owned by the project creator or owner. As a project owner, you can collaborate with one or more fellow CUUSOO users to build the LEGO model or concept artwork to communicate your idea. All collaborators must have a LEGO CUUSOO account and adhere to the Guidelines and House Rules.

To register your collaborative project, have each team member read Guideline #6 and register your collaborative project with us via the instructions. This way, we can log each collaborator so we know that they have given you permission to include their work in your project.

Happy Collaborating!

The LEGO Jury has completed the review of the Winchester - Shaun of the Dead project that hit 10,000 supporters on LEGO CUUSOO on March 31, 2012.

LEGO CUUSOO gives the opportunity to submit product ideas, however all LEGO products, regardless of age target, must be content appropriate for our core audience. With this in mind we have decided that – good though the model is – the film Shaun of the Dead contains content that is not appropriate for our core target audience of children ages 6-11.

Long before the Winchester received mainstream media attention, Greg (Yatkuu) contacted us in earnest to see if his project was acceptable. We recognized the potential conflict, but didn’t see a reason to remove the project. The model was presented tastefully and we thought it deserved fair consideration. With 10,000 supporters, the Winchester earned the opportunity to receive the full LEGO Review.

Greg has been a pleasure to work with throughout this process. We’re impressed by his model, grateful for his constructive approach with us, and we are sad to disappoint such a devoted LEGO fan.

We appreciate the passion exhibited for new product ideas on LEGO CUUSOO. Opening ourselves to new product suggestions invites popular ideas that don’t always fit our brand. This is the first time we’ve felt that we should turn a LEGO CUUSOO idea down, but we’re grateful for the spirit behind projects like the Winchester and for the opportunity to be challenged. It keeps us sharp and looking toward the future of the LEGO brick.

So, you’ve got a great project idea, and you want to learn what it will take to reach 10,000 supporters. Just what does it take to get there? We took a look at the habits of some of the most successful projects owners on LEGO CUUSOO, and here’s what we found.

While we can’t promise you results, follow these habits and you’ll be well on your way to gaining more supporters for your project.

Highly Effective LEGO CUUSOO Project Owners…

1. Take the long view. Before they start, they understand that achieving 10,000 is not going to be easy and it’s going to take a lot of effort and patience.
2. Make a quality project before posting. The best projects feature original work that the builder has put a lot of time into.
3. Only post one or two projects at a time. Trying to do more than one or two means you can’t put the quality into your projects to make them worthy of being noticed.
4. Make the effort to write a good description. The best descriptions are two to three paragraphs, using proper grammar and punctuation. They tell the story of the  project and inspire people to support it, without directly asking.
5. Use appropriate tags. Successful project owners know the right tags makes a project easier to find. They also only use tags that are relevant, and don’t use unrelated tags, which is considered “tag spam.”
6. Tirelessly promote on relevant websites and social networks. They know that each person who sees a project can only support it once, so they keep sharing their work with other people and communities who can drive traffic to their project.
7. Participate respectfully in the LEGO CUUSOO community. They’re helpful and thankful, they don’t spam others’ projects, and they’re polite and encouraging when giving constructive feedback. They make sure all of their comments follow the Guidelines and House Rules.

For inspiration, check out the most supported projects on LEGO CUUSOO. Take a look at at their photos and descriptions, and start living these seven habits.

Want to hear it directly from a successful project owner? Check out this interview with Yatkuu, the builder of the Winchester model that achieved 10,000 supporters. He gives advice to others submitting projects to LEGO CUUSOO.

Best of luck to you on your quest to 10,000 supporters!

Dear LEGO CUUSOO Users,

Today we introduce an approval process for new projects, similar to how the Apple App Store handles new app submissions. Our team will check for adherence to the Guidelines and House Rules. We do this so that we can maintain a healthy community by only allowing appropriate projects from the start.

We’ll check for plagiarism, too, but can’t guarantee we’ll catch every instance. You will still be able to report projects that aren’t based on original work, and if we confirm a project uses someone else’s work, we will remove it.

Once we examine your new project, we’ll either approve and publish it, or let you know the reason it was not approved so you can edit it and submit again. Please understand that by approving and publishing your project, our team is not endorsing your project as a product idea.

It’s our hope that adding this review step will provide a better experience than the old setup of allowing you to publish your project and then removing it later if it doesn’t follow the community standards.

Thank you again for using LEGO CUUSOO and best of luck with your projects!

The LEGO CUUSOO Team

The second LEGO CUUSOO release, Japanese spacecraft Hayabusa, is now on sale in the Japanese market and available for purchase at CUUSOO STORE Japan for ￥6,615!

For those of you outside Japan, we have a little surprise for you: a limited number of Hayabusa sets will also be available exclusively online via shop.LEGO.com. We're still finalizing the release date, but couldn't wait to share the exciting news. The set will be sold online to all 23 countries that shop.LEGO.com services and retail at $49.00 / €49,00. Once we have release dates, we will let you know here.

The original Hayabusa model on LEGO CUUSOO was built by Daisuke Okubo, and achieved 1,000 supporters on the Japanese-only version of LEGO CUUSOO in the spring of 2011. LEGO model designer Melody Louise Caddick designed the final model you see today by refining the concept models that were built based on Daisuke’s original project. The March issue of LEGO fan magazine BrickJournal features an article that interviews both Okubo and Caddick.

Hayabusa (“falcon” in English) is an unmanned spacecraft built by the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA), designed to travel to a small near-Earth asteroid named Itokawa and return sample material to Earth.  Hayabusa’s mission began in 2003 and ended successfully in 2010.

The base of the LEGO model represents the surface of Itokawa, the near-Earth asteroid that Hayabusa was sent to explore. The black tube contacting the asteroid is called the “sampler horn.” Upon contact, Hayabusa fired a bullet through the sampler horn into the asteroid. Since gravity on Ikotawa is less than 1/100,000th that of Earth, fragments floated up into the spacecraft’s sample container and were returned to Earth. The sample material was returned to Earth in the gold-colored re-entry capsule, that descended through the Earth’s atmosphere and was recovered in the south Australian outback at the conclusion of the mission.

The model also features the small gray and blue Minerva mini-lander, intended to hop across the surface of the asteroid and feed back images from it’s camera to the satellite. The actual Minerva was 12cm in diameter and 10cm tall (about the size of a softball).

The Hayabusa model was produced and packed at the LEGO factory in Billund, Denmark in December 2011. Exclusive products like these are packed by hand in a smaller factory, which you can see in the behind-the-scenes video below.