LEGO says BrickLink Designer Program needs to be about more than castles

LEGO's Head of the BrickLink Designer Program Alex Kastelic explained that the point of the program needs to be about more than Castle.

Although many a LEGO fan would say that you can never have too many LEGO Castles (including many on the Brick Fanatics team), the reality is much different. We've had some stellar, hugely detailed Castle LEGO sets from the BrickLink Designer Program over the years, but the head of the program, Alex Kastelic, recently explained in an interview with Brads Archives that those behind the scenes need to take a lot more into consideration than the tempting urge to approve every impressive Castle model.

"We could milk it for a year and do 15 Castle sets and then just obliterate the market for it," said Alex with a laugh. "But that wouldn't be the point of the program. A sub-section of the BDP fandom would be extremely excited about that, but everyone else...

"There's only been a couple of series where we haven't [had a Castle set]. There was Series 2, then Series 5 was debatable. We had two in Series 4, which was an anomaly."

Alex goes into a wider discussion about what goes into the decision behind selecting some sets over others, noting that comments underneath models are not taken into account. That's because high numbers of comments are often an indicator not of a set's popularity but of that creator having a large social media following. Of course, that's not to say that those with big social media followings won't be picked, especially as building that audience can often be precisely because they're a talented model designer.

Instead, it does highlight that the BrickLink Designer Program team is not simply following the loudest voices in the forums. For LEGO fans and especially BDP fans, the loudest voices can often be praising Castle designs, thanks to the enduring popularity of the classic theme.

However, what Alex makes clear is that the BDP team wants to cater to a wide range of LEGO fans. That means that a series made up entirely of Castle fans, although popular with Castle fans, is unlikely to happen.

Alex also explained the process of how a top-voted set in the 4,000-piece range essentially excludes other models of that size. That's how the relatively non-traditional Castle-themed set for Series 9, Sleepy Dragon Inn, made it into the final five as opposed to some of the larger, more detailed builds, because The Fisherman's Village had already snagged the spot for sets around 4,000 pieces.

"People can get confused and say, 'there's no way this was the fifth highest-voted set,'" said Alex. "It's like, no, it wasn't. We never said it was the fifth-highest voted set; it was the fifth-highest voted set for its size."

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