LEGO Ideas is the platform that the Danish company has to receive new projects from fans of these brick games and, as is customary, every few months all those proposals go through the filter of the popularity of those who are subscribed and, therefore, receive a tacit approval to turn that suggestion into a pack that can reach the stores.
Zelda turned into chips
Thanks to LEGO Ideas, sets have been created that otherwise would have been impossible, such as the mansion from Home Alone, the famous '90s movie, or Vincent Van Gogh's Starry Night painting , as well as a replica of the Fender Stratocaster guitar. How can you participate in these voting? Just subscribe to their newsletter; you'll receive regular emails with each new project proposal and can vote for your favorites.
If any of those proposed sets exceeds 10.000 votes, it automatically goes on to be evaluated by a panel of company experts, who will be in charge of giving it the OK (or not) and guaranteeing its viability to land in stores… something that doesn't seem likely to happen anytime soon with the protagonists of The Legend of Zelda.
As you can see from the images attached to this article, a user has created an entire set based on the Nintendo franchise using their own LEGO pieces, consisting of Hyrule Castle (in the image and likeness of the one we saw in The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild ) as well as miniatures of Link, the princess, the paraglider, and the Master Cycle that came with one of the latest DLCs.
Missed the cut... again
However, it seems that The Legend of Zelda 's relationship with LEGO isn't exactly one of love, because this isn't the first time a set inspired by Link's adventures hasn't made the cut . A few years ago, another recreation of Hyrule Castle was left in limbo, only that time it was based on the Nintendo 64 games. So, if you're a die-hard fan of the series, you'll have to keep waiting for our hero to have the same privilege as Mario, who in recent times has starred in a whole series of sets inspired by his platforms.
There, too, we could find explanations for what happened with these automatic rejections of the Zelda sets, in the royalties LEGO should pay Nintendo to put licensed products on the market. Even in their quality control, which the Japanese don't leave to chance and have amply demonstrated is often more important to them than the financial transaction itself.
For that reason, we highly doubt that a user-designed set will ever be commercially released with Nintendo's blessing, knowing how tightly they control everything they do. So, instead of blaming LEGO, what if we consider that it's the Japanese company that wants to control how Link and Zelda will be transformed into building blocks?
The only certainty is that, to this day, Zelda still doesn't have her (deserved) LEGO set.