LEGO Cuusoo Website Launches (Beta)

[Toys N Bricks]

The LEGO Cuusoo site allows people to submit LEGO models/creations to be considered to be made into an actual LEGO set. If there are more than 10 000 votes, there's a high chance that the model will be made into an official LEGO "Cuusoo" set. This was originally launched back in 2008 for Japan. Today, the LEGO Cuusoo site is now open to worldwide and is in beta phase. Thanks to Jeff and others who contacted us with the news. (via Brothers Brick)

LEGO Cuusoo Hayabusa 



LEGO Cuusoo Press Release
Turn your model wishes into reality with LEGO® CUUSOO
LEGO consumers can now give their great ideas directly to the LEGO Group using the LEGO CUUSOO website. Ideas that collect 10,000 supporters could be selected to become part of the toy manufacturers’ product line

BILLUND, Denmark – The LEGO Group announced today that LEGO® CUUSOO, its new international web-based open innovation and crowd sourcing platform, is now available in open beta.

LEGO CUUSOO is an idea collection system that asks the Danish toy manufacturers’ consumers to submit and vote for their favourite ideas for new LEGO products. It can be found at http://lego.cuusoo.com

Ideas that are supported by 10,000 votes have a chance of being selected to become part of the LEGO Group’s product portfolio and sold in LEGO Brand retail stores and the LEGO online shop. Consumers who have their ideas chosen will earn 1% of the total net sales of the product

CUUSOO, which means ‘imagination’ or sometimes ‘wish’ in Japanese, has been developed with CUUSOO SYSTEM, a subsidiary of Japan-based Elephant Design that has worked with open innovation and crowd sourcing for more than 10 years.

The LEGO Group has worked with CUUSOO since 2008 on a Japanese site that has attracted hundreds of ideas and seen thousands of votes cast by a 20,000-strong community. Now the time has come to test the concept internationally.

The first Japanese product, the Shinkai 6500 submersible, went on sale in Japan in February 2011. The next Japanese LEGO CUUSOO model will be the Hayabusa unmanned spacecraft launched in the first quarter of next year. “Our fans and consumers have proved time after time that they have great ideas that can lead to products,” said Paal Smith-Meyer, head of the LEGO New Business Group.

“We have worked with our consumers in the past and continue to do so, for example in the LEGO Architecture series, which we developed with an architect and LEGO fan. LEGO CUUSOO is an attempt to gather more great ideas while streamlining the way we innovate and become inspired.”

“We see this as an investment in the future rather than for immediate sales gain. We are moving from a local Japanese pilot to see if the model is sustainable. We were pleased with the initial results, but we need to see how it will perform on a global platform with global distribution,” he added.
LEGO Cuusoo 21100 Shinkai 6500



Article Link: http://toysnbricks.com/lego-cuusoo-webs ... ches-beta/

[anthonyj8]

I joined this site a couple of days ago and am constantly on it. It really encourages Lego fans to be creative and have some fun at what they're doing, and maybe even make some profit. I'm surprised that something like this wasn't created until 2008!!

[Brick & Blue]

And make sure to come up with something original and not like Doctor Who. More of a likelihood the sets will get made that way.

[Zeya]

I tried it out earlier today. I liked what I saw. There doesn't seem to be too many entries on there, but I have a feeling that will greatly improve soon. Looks promising. I voted for a couple things already.

[legitimatealex]

This should have come around a long time ago. Fans make some of the best creations around and people would pay top dollar for those sets.

[vynsane]

I think they should tie this in with LEGO Digital Designer in future releases of the software, add CUUSOO as a building theme in LDD adding the ability to upload the final design to the CUUSOO site as opposed to DbM.

[GalaxyCommander]

Received an email from the LEGO cuusoo Team today saying that due to a "glitch" my account was cancelled because during the sign-up process somehow my birth year shown indicated that I was 13 or younger. I'm 51, so I don't know how that would have happened. Now I'm having a devil of a time dealing with LEGO trying to get my account back. So far with no success. LEGO is initially saying that "they" can't help and that I need to go through the feedback process at the LEGO cuusoo website (there is no other contact info listed on the cuusoo site). Only problem with that is that in order to leave feedback you need to be a registered user. I've called LEGO back and they are "checking" into the problem. Still waiting to hear anything back. Has anyone else's account been cancelled or suspended do to this issue?

[vynsane]

It looks like some people are able to post their issues on Feedback still. You could also try contacting them via Twitter just to alert them to the issue in order to get an email address to send further details to.

[GalaxyCommander]

Finally able to send a message via Cuusoo's Feedback (not very intuitive) after 3 calls to LEGO for assistance. Still waiting to hear back from them. The main problem I'm having is that although my account info was suppose to be wiped clean, I can't re-sign up using my original email address because it says that my email address has already been "activated". When I talked with LEGO, they said that I should still be able to re-sign using my current email address and that they don't know why this is happening. This is compounded by the fact that since the Cuusoo site is Beta, there is little to no support staff available. Still waiting to hear back. Stay tuned...

[Bobsterino]

I just revisited the CUUSOO site - I'm not terribly impressed with the selection of user creations. Is it because the site is not very well-known yet? There's definitely way more creativity out there in the AFOL community than the CUUSOO site would seem to indicate. I do like the concept of the site, but it needs more creative input!