“Pitch Me Like One of Your French Sets” — When LEGO meets Tinder

How LEGO fans compete for a place on the shelf — and why designing a set now feels a lot like crafting a dating profile that slaps

Photo by author. The set is , which was originally a LEGO Ideas project.

Some dreams die with a swipe, a scroll… or a thumbnail that didn’t hit quite right — on Tinder, Bumble, and even at LEGO. There are two platforms where fans can submit their own pitches: LEGO Ideas and the BrickLink Designer Program (BDP). People upload builds, tell their story, and if the crowd loves it enough, it might just become a real set. But if you’ve never heard of them before, don’t worry — they’re not secret geek clubs, more like American Idol for tiny plastic bricks.

is their official crowdsourcing platform, where fans pitch original set designs for public voting. is the alternative, younger sibling — a seasonal initiative co-run with BrickLink, a massive online LEGO marketplace owned by the Danish toymaker itself (yes, they bought their own secondhand empire in 2019, smart move).

The rules are simple: build something awesome, post it online, hustle for votes like your set’s future depends on it — because it does — and wish it gets through LEGO’s internal review. If it does, your set becomes a real, beautifully boxed, officially…