75827 Ghostbusters Firehouse Headquarters revealed [News]

The long-rumored 75827 Ghostbusters Firehouse Headquarters is finally unveiled this morning. Oddly, LEGO has chosen to release the first photographs of the set picturing it in front of the actual firehouse used in the film, instead of the usual polished press photos. There’s no accompanying press release as yet, but we do know the set will contain 4,634 pieces and nine minifigures: Peter Venkman, Raymond Stantz, Egon Spengler, Winston Zeddemore, Janine Melnitz, Dana Barrett, Louis Tully, Zombie Driver and the Library Ghost. It will also include Slimer and pink and blue ghosts. The set will be available for purchase in January for $349.99 USD.

75827 Ghostbusters Firehouse Headquarters

75827 Ghostbusters Firehouse Headquarters

Update: It is now listed on LEGO.com, though not yet available to purchase.

75827 Ghostbusters Firehouse Headquarters
via EW.

6 comments on “75827 Ghostbusters Firehouse Headquarters revealed [News]

  1. bruce n h

    How in the world is this not Sergio512’s rejected Ideas project?!?!? There are a couple of others as well, including the other half of Brent Walker’s accepted and ultimately produced Ecto 1 set, but Sergio’s is pretty darn close to this.

    IMO this highights one of the big projects with LEGO Ideas proposals based on existing IP – LEGO could just take your set and claim their set is based on the original movie and not on your idea. But in this case it is really darn close. Look, for instance, at the lights on either side of the main door in the actual set and in Sergio’s. Also look at that traffic light. This really reminds me of Brucey-Wan’s B’Omarr Monk droid that somehow ended up in the first Jabba’s Palace set.

  2. Chris Post author

    You make very good points, Bruce. The Terms of Service for LEGO Ideas states “Should LEGO choose to commercialize your ideas through the Platform, you will be compensated…” The flip side of that, of course, is that should they choose to commercialize your ideas through other channels, you will not be compensated.

  3. GregCreates63

    bruce n h, are you serious? It’s the Ghostbuster’s Firehouse! It’s iconic! Of course it’s going to look like the smae building as Sergio512 because IT’S THE SAME BUILDING.

    Just because someone else ‘made it first’ doesn’t mean that Lego can’t make it as well (using the bricks that, by the way, they patented).

    Besides that, they no doubt had to get the licensing to make the Ecto1, so using that license only makes good business sense.

    Also, it looks to me like Lego is doing EXACTLY what they say they will do, turning ideas into sets. You see ANY other toy companies out there doing the same, because I don’t.

    Next thing you’re going to suggest is that Sergio512 should sue Lego for stealing his idea!

  4. bruce n h

    I’m obviously not saying that Sergio512 should sue LEGO, I’m just pointing out that this is an inherent problem with the whole Cuusoo/Ideas site. If you post, say, a Batmobile MOC, and later LEGO produces a Batmobile set, what is to say that it either is or is not based on your Idea proposal? We know that the ultimately produced set is not a brick-for-brick reproduction of the Idea proposal – for instance, see the hood of the DeLorean, which pretty much everyone said was better in the original proposal than it was in the ultimately produced set (see, for instance, the review here on BB) (or more annoying to me, the DNA model in the Big Bang set). Therefore when an Idea is chosen to turn into an official set, at best we get an interpretation of the original MOC, with limitations due to piece availability, the economics of producing a set, and some of the considerations we’ve heard of regarding “legal” vs “illegal” techniques. Sometimes the ultimate set is very close to the proposal, see for instance the Mars Rover and the Exo-Suit, but other times less so. So, how close does it have to be?

    We also run into a confusion when more than one person submits an Idea based on the same IP. There were two Ecto 1’s that reached 10,000 votes, but BrentWaller’s was chosen to produce as a set and TeeKay’s was not. Yes, IMO BrentWaller’s version was slightly better, and the ultimately produced set was marginally closer to it, but if BrentWaller’s proposal never existed, they could have produce the same exact set and claimed it was based on TeeKay’s. Then, of course, we had a similar situation with the two Dr. Who proposals – given that both proposals were essentially a model of the Tardis, why is one approved and the other not. Again, it’s pretty arbitrary.

    As I see it, there are three categories for LEGO Ideas sets:
    -Sets based on truly original ideas – e.g. Exo-Suit, Birds, Marble Maze, Research Institute
    -Sets based on some existing IP where the ultimately produced set is a brick-for-brick reproduction of the original proposal – um, none of them
    -Sets based on some existing IP where the ultimately produced set is an interpretation of the original proposal – the rest of them.
    As I tell my students, “similar” is not “same”, so while some of the ultimately produced sets are indeed very close to the original proposal, it is a question of degree as to how close is close enough.

    So, back to the Firehouse. Yes, LEGO can do pretty much whatever they want. I haven’t looked at the fine print of the LEGO Ideas site, but I’m sure LEGO’s lawyers are smart enough to write them so that they are in the clear when someone submits something, but from a purely fan perspective I see the following facts. Multiple Ghostbusters headquarters sets have been submitted to Cuusoo/Ideas. BrentWaller had one as part of his original proposal that reached 10,000. LEGO accepted the proposal and produced the Ecto 1. Sergio512’s proposal also reached 10,000 and earlier this year LEGO said that no, they were rejecting it. There’s at least one more in the works that is currently between 6 and 7,000 votes. Now LEGO is producing an official set. Given the discussion above, the similarity of a produced set to an original Ideas proposal is somewhat subjective, but to my eye at least Sergio512’s proposal looks a heck of a lot like the ultimate set. See, for instance, those lights on either side of the door, the traffic light, the use of those curved slopes for the corbels at the top of the building, the studs-out tiles in gray alongside the windows, the randomly placed “brick” bricks in the walls, etc. Sure, it’s not an exact match, but (at least until we see interior pics – this is all based on the outside shots we’ve seen), it’s a heck of a lot closer to Sergio512’s proposal than the ultimately produced Hayabasu set was to the original Japanese MOC that inspired it.

    Again, I’m not saying that Sergio512 has any legal standing. If I were him, I’d be a little grumpy about this, though. Also, IMO this highlights one of the main weaknesses of the Ideas/Cuusoo thing – those proposals most likely to reach 10,000 will be based on an existing IP, but there are myriad problems with submissions based on existing IP.

    IMO the Cuusoo/Ideas thing has been a boon to LEGO in free publicity – search LEGO on Google News or on Twitter, for instance, and you’ll see a ton of Ideas traffic – and I’m certainly not complaining about the sets that have resulted as they have been really cool, but IMO the Cuusoo/Ideas thing has been more negative than positive for the AFOL community.

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