Who Will Win the Third 2019 LEGO Ideas Review?

It’s been 4 months since LEGO announced “Medieval Blacksmith” and “Winnie the Pooh” as the winners of the Second 2019 LEGO Ideas Review. And 10 days ago, the LEGO Ideas blog completed the last “10K Club Interview” for the 12 qualifiers for the Third 2019 LEGO Ideas Review. And the LEGO Ideas staff is now dropping hints that “we might have something else coming soon”.

This can only mean one thing. The results of the Third 2019 LEGO Ideas Review will be announced very soon.

Last January, I made my predictions on the winners of the Second 2019 LEGO Ideas Review. And I did pretty well, if I do say so myself. I correctly predicted Medieval Blacksmith by Namirob as one of the winning designs. And I also predicted that one of the three Disney designs in the review would win, although my choice was “The Seven Dwarfs’s House” instead of the eventual winner, Winnie the Pooh.

So for that round, I humbly gave myself credit for 1 and 1/2 predictions out of 2.

I haven’t made any predictions in a while so I thought it would be fun to try my hand at guessing the winners of the Third 2019 LEGO Ideas Review. Before I begin, I once again must give credit and praise to all 12 qualifying designs. I wish they all could be made into official LEGO sets.

But unfortunately, that won’t happen. Based on my detailed review of previous LEGO Ideas reviews, A History of (Great) LEGO Ideas, we know the approval rate is only 19%. That leads me to conclude that only 2 of the 12 qualifying sets will be approved. Which ones will those be? Let’s the predictions begin!

Who should win – Clockwork Aquarium!

I’ve been in love with Clockwork Aquarium! by mjsmiley since the first time I saw it. In fact, it was the first 10,000 supporter winner that I featured on the BrickGeekz Blog, back in December of 2019. If you haven’t had a chance, check out the YouTube video to watch Clockwork Aquarium! in action, complete with swimming fish, a spinning starfish, and a dancing crab.

(Side note – I grew up in the state of Maryland in the United States, and if you’ve ever met anyone from Maryland, you’ll know our obsession with crabs. Now we do prefer our crabs boiled with generous portions of beer and Old Bay Seasoning. But I’ll take a dancing LEGO crab any day of the week.)

The LEGO Ideas submission does not note the size of Clockwork Aquarium!, but it looks to be the smallest of the 12 qualifying sets. And if it wins, it could be the smallest winning LEGO Ideas set in quite some time, perhaps since Tron: Legacy’s 230 pieces. I hope that fact will work in Clockwork Aquarium’s favor. LEGO Ideas sets have be running on the larger end of the LEGO spectrum for quite some time (hello Treehouse and Pirates of Barracuda Bay), and the four most recent winners all seem to continue with this trend. I’d love to see a return to smaller designs with more reasonable price points.

I noted in my previous blog article that designer Mark Smiley was a previous qualifier for a LEGO Ideas Review back in 2015 with Rolling LEGO BB-8. Mark is back with a personal favorite design idea of mine, the “bookshelf” design. Similar to previous winners like Ship in a Bottle (my all time favorite LEGO Ideas set), some LEGO sets are tailor-made for display on your bookshelf at home or in the office. And that’s why I think Clockwork Aquarium should be a winner.

Who will win – LEGO Typewriter

It took me some time to decide on my “will win” prediction. So long, in fact, that I delayed writing this blog article much longer than I expected. But I’m feeling more confident than ever that LEGO Typewriter by Steve Guinness will be announced as a winner of the Third 2019 LEGO Ideas Review.

First, let’s give Steve credit as the winner of the first season of LEGO Masters UK. That wasn’t a factor in my decision – I learned that fact literally just 2 minutes ago, after I wrote the previous paragraph and I wondered “Who is this Steve Guinness guy?” But now that I know who Steve is, I fell certain it solidifies LEGO Typewriter as a potential LEGO Ideas winner.

Initially, I was worried that another recent LEGO Ideas winner, Playable Lego Piano, would work against LEGO Typewriter. I think clever mechanical builds are a winning design idea for LEGO (see Pop-up Book). But would Playable Lego Piano and LEGO Typewriter be released too close together? Perhaps. That’s the reason why I’m not considering several qualifiers in the review, including “Seinfeld 30th Anniversary” (too similar to “Central Perk”), “Ratatouille: Open The Doors!” (need more time between Disney winners), and “Winter Chalet” (too similar to “Medieval Blacksmith”).

My apologies to those three designers .. I hope I’m wrong and one of you ends up winning.

But like Playable Lego Piano, I think the creativity of a LEGO Typewriter build will be too hard for LEGO to pass up. It’s by far the most complex idea in the Third 2019 LEGO Ideas Review, and if LEGO can figure out how to make it into a set, I feel confident it will be a winner.

(And here’s one final reason why I’m going with LEGO Typewriter – about a month ago, long after the qualifying period was over, LEGO Typewriter mysteriously disappeared from the LEGO Ideas website, before reappearing again several days later. It was the only one of the 12 qualifying sets to go missing during this time. Perhaps someone set the wrong “status” switch after the design was approved, preventing LEGO Typewriter from being found in the LEGO Ideas search results? I’m not one to subscribe to rumors and conspiracy theories, but this did seem kind of suspicious.)

Honorable mention – The Huascar

My day job is a technical writer with an international corporation that happens to be a major player in the maritime industry. While I don’t work in that side of the company, I have developed quite an interest in shipping and boats in general. And if I were to develop a top 5 list of LEGO sets I wished I owned, Maresk Line Triple-E would be near the top of that list.

That’s just one reason why I’m giving The Husacar by aldrin the Honorable Mention for this round. It’s based on a real ship from the Peruvian Navy, built in 1865 and serving Peru for more than 15 years before being captured in battle by Chile during the War of the Pacific. The ship still floats today as a museum in the port of Talcahuano, Chile.

This LEGO Ideas submission checks in just under the maximum submission limit, with 2990 parts. To put that in perspective, that’s twice the size of the Maresk Line Triple-E, although I’m sure the LEGO designers could slim that down considerably if they wanted.

But in my humble opinion, The Husacar is a beautiful design rich with history and representing a large portion of the world that has been criticized as being under-served by the LEGO world. For those reasons and more, I’d love to see The Husacar join the list of approved LEGO Ideas.

Do you agree?

So those are my predictions – “Clockwork Aquarium!” should win, “LEGO Typewriter” will win, and “The Husacar” will hopefully play the spoiler in this round. Do you agree with my predictions? Do you have a favorite set of your own? Let me know in the comments below!