LEGO Winnie the Pooh and Medieval Workshop are your next LEGO Ideas sets!

February 14, 2020 | 19

Yesterday, the LEGO Ideas team unveiled their results from the second 2019 review results and they’ve announced that Ben Alder’s Winnie the Pooh set and Clemens Fiedler’s Medieval Blacksmith have made the cut and will be turned into LEGO Ideas sets!

The Medieval Blacksmith should delight Castle fans, especially those who have been very vocal about bringing back the theme.

To me, it’s an undeniable homage to 3739 Blacksmith Shop, with the blue roof and Tudor architecture.

The LEGO Ideas project looks amazing, and I think this will perform very strongly especially to fill in the LEGO Castle-gap that fans have been yearning for.

Winnie the Pooh is the most interesting decision for me – mostly because it’s a fun, kid-centric, parent-approved IP, but also because of the political controversy that surrounds the titular rotund yellow bear.

In case you didn’t know, China, specifically its leader Xi Jinping has a massive problem with Winnie the Pooh.

Pooh is “banned” in China, mostly because of memes that have circulated depicting Xi as Winnie the Pooh, which has annoyed him (what a snowflake) so he’s pretty much slapped a ban on all things Winnie the Pooh in China.

Since the early 2010s, LEGO have flagged China as an absolute priority to fuel their global growth, and have done a LOT to court the Chinese market, such as releasing Chinese New Year sets, and opening a massive flagship store in Shanghai.

Releasing a LEGO Winnie the Pooh set is a risky, risky move that COULD anger the Chinese Community Party (CCP), so the fact that they even greenlit this is surprising.

Then again, as a global Danish company, kudos to LEGO for not kowtowing to any potential pressure from China and sticking to their guns.

I can’t wait for both sets and think they’ll do really well, especially if they get the minifigures right for Winnie the Pooh.

Are you happy with the results? It’s a shame that the UCS Space Shuttle Atlantis didn’t make it but with the International Space Station, I think LEGO are pretty set for Space and NASA-themed sets for awhile.