77014 The Temple of Doom joins an illustrious list of cancelled LEGO sets

March 15, 2023 | 34

With the reveal of the 2023 LEGO Indiana Jones set, it’s now confirmed that 77014 The Temple of Doom will not be coming out. It’s not delayed, but we now have definitive confirmation from LEGO that it won’t be expected to launch.

The entire affair has a confusing and titillating affair, mostly because LEGO cancelling sets this far into production is still somewhat of a rare and interesting event. Coupled with Indiana Jones and its large fanbase who have been waiting years for a revival, only to have the only set (that we know of) based on The Temple of Doom cancelled.

Paired with an earlier leaked image of the actual set (presumably shown off at toy fair or through a retailer portal), and multiple mentions on product listings and descriptions, suggests that this set was pulled at the very last minute, which further adds to the controversy and now legend behind the set.

The LEGO Group, in particular the Design Team is famed for its secrecy, so sets cancelled this far into the production process does shed some light on what goes on behind closed doors, and gives us a peek into how many LEGO sets that are conceived and designed, sometimes don’t make it to the shelves.

77014 The Temple of Doom now joins an illustrious list of cancelled and unreleased sets, and to celebrate its induction into this very exclusive list, I thought it’d be a good idea to revisit some of the more well-known examples of unreleased and cancelled sets.

I also want to acknowledge that it’s not an easy or nice process when sets get cancelled. LEGO Designers and Design teams sometimes spend months of a year working on these designs, the minifigures, the graphics and when sets get cancelled (usually out of their control), it represents hundreds of hours of work and passion that doesn’t culminate in the fans getting to play and enjoy these cancelled sets.

There have been some nasty comments floating around online about the cancellation of 77014 The Temple of Doom, so I just want to address this firstly. For anyone who has worked in a creative or business endeavour where you sink months of work, effort and passion into something that doesn’t even launch, you probably can understand just how disappointing it is when it happens.

A note on LEGO’s Product Design Process

LEGO, like most other product development companies utilise what is known as a stage-gate process, where ideas, concepts and products have to pass through various “gates”, and have to get approval from a myriad of gatekeepers from Commercial, Supply Chain, Sales, etc before products get launched.

Anyone who has worked in a product development process knows just how gruelling this process can be, especially if you have to keep refining the product to meet the expectations of each gatekeeper before launch.

The reason why sets like 77014 The Temple of Doom are so interesting is because these examples tend to pass through all the gates, and then only get yanked at the launch section for whatever reason.

To keep this list tight, and somewhat focused – I will not be including product concepts and prototypes (such as Seatron or Europa) which are some of the more well-known concepts when you look up cancelled or unreleased LEGO sets.

We know from many conversations with LEGO Designers that many different concept models exist, and are rarely documented or shared outside of the LEGO Innovation House (where designers work) in Billund, so to keep this list in line with 77014 The Temple of Doom, I’ve only opted to highlight sets that have made it all the way to production, or have had extensive design and packaging work completed that it looks like a final product.

Without further ado, here’s a list of some of the more interesting and controversial cancelled LEGO sets in no particular order.

List of cancelled LEGO sets

3868 Phineas and Ferb (circa 2012)

A really interesting set to kick-start this list is 3868 Phineas and Ferb all the way back from 2012. Originally meant to be part of the LEGO Games theme, which was retired in 2013 and featured brick-built boardgames complete with LEGO Dice.

This set, which doesn’t look like much design-wise captured the imagination of LEGO fans because it was a licensed set, featuring a popular kids cartoon Phineas and Ferb, and was the only one of its kind, with no other LEGO sets made from the property.

Its proximity to the year where LEGO Games was retired suggests that it was canned as a result of the theme winding down.

You can find instructions to the LEGO Phineas and Ferb set online, which demonstrates just how far this one got into production.

3867 Maya Mystica (circa 2012)

Another LEGO Games set unreleased around this era was 3867 Maya Mystica of which only a blurry image of the box exists. As it was meant to be released in 2012, just prior to the cancellation of LEGO Games, it may have suffered the same fate Phineas and Ferb and was culled when the decision was made to sunset the theme.

A shame as the illustration and art looked really interesting, and I’ve always loved seeing Mesoamerican history and culture represented in LEGO.

40489 Mr and Mrs Claus’ Living Room (2021)

One of the more recent examples of a set going all the way to production, and with a very small amount making it into the hands of retailers and customers was 40489 Mr and Mrs Claus’ Living Room from 2021.

It was originally meant to be a Christmas-themed gift with purchase for Black Friday 2021, but was pulled at the very last minute due to LEGO deciding not to release this product as it “didn’t meet our strict quality standards”.

You can pick one up on secondary markets like eBay (for an eye-watering) amount, and you can even attempt to rebuild it from instructions fans have scanned and shared online.

At first glance, there’s nothing seemingly wrong about the structural design, but it’s the presence of the Santa’s Naughty List tile in the set, which LEGO might have felt didn’t quite meet their values and standards that have caused it to be pulled.

Donald (possibly a sneaky reference to ex-US president Donald Trump) on top of the list might also have been something that LEGO didn’t want floating around.

42113 Bell-Boeing V-22 Osprey (2020)

Another infamous cancelled LEGO set was pulled so late and so deep into production that it was already on shelves in regions like Australia and New Zealand before LEGO decided to can it.

The Technic Osprey was infamous for a number of reasons, firstly because there was a high profile “protest” of the set by the German Peace Organisation which alleged that the set’s close ties to the Osprey being used in military applications broke LEGO’s cardinal rule of not producing military (or warlike) sets, despite this particular model and livery being depicted as a search and rescue version.

Next, LEGO reviewers like Brickset and RacingBrick who managed to get their hands on the set uncovered serious mechanical flaws with the functionality, namely its ability to crunch and destroy gears through shoddy power distribution mechanics.

LEGO’s official statement on the cancellation of the Osprey blamed the military depiction, but most reviewers concluded that this was a convenient smokescreen to hide the fact that the design and functionality was fundamentally flawed.

The LEGO Technic Bell Boeing V-22 Osprey was designed to highlight the important role the aircraft plays in search and rescue efforts. While the set clearly depicts how a rescue version of the plane might look, the aircraft is only used by the military. We have a long-standing policy not to create sets which feature real military vehicles, so it has been decided not to proceed with the launch of this product. 

We appreciate that some fans who were looking forward to this set may be disappointed, but we believe it’s important to ensure that we uphold our brand values.  

Nowadays, the Osprey is one of the most valuable cancelled LEGO sets, and there are many on the secondary market if you’d like to add a piece of recent LEGO history to your collection.

1375 Wrestling Scene (2002)

An early example of a set cancelled is 1375 Wrestling Scene from the LEGO Studios theme, featuring a scene from Spider-Man 1 (Tobey Maguire) where Spider-Man in his homemade suit grapples with Bonesaw in a wrestling cage.

It features the only depiction of the wrestler Bonesaw (who is somewhat of a meme) as a minifigure. It’s an incredibly rare piece of LEGO Spider-Man history, and some Bonesaw minifigures have surfaced in recent years, adding to the legend of this set.

21038 Las Vegas Skyline (with Mandalay Bay Hotel) (2018)

Another fascinating chapter of LEGO’s history of cancelled sets is 21038 Las Vegas, an Architecture skyline set that was pulled very late into production because it depicted the Mandalay Hotel in the build.

Originally meant to be released in January 2018, the decision was made to redesign the set due to the 2017 Las Vegas Shooting, which was one of the most tragic mass shootings in US history.

The set was eventually with a new set number, 21047 Las Vegas, and swapped the Mandalay Hotel with The Bellagio.

For a deep dive into the set, I highly recommend checking out BrickArchitect’s review of 21038 Las Vegas, a rare detailed look into the cancelled set, which he managed to source one from South Africa where the cancelled sets were put out on sale.

60278 Crook’s Hideout Raid (2021)

Another recent example of LEGO pulling sets due to incompability with their brand values was a 2021 LEGO City set – 60278 Crook’s Hideout Raid. This one was featured in promotional material but was soon stripped from the portfolio because LEGO felt it didn’t keep with the values of LEGO City.

Here’s LEGO’s official statement.

With LEGO City, we always aim to represent the reality of the world in a way that is fun, positive and appropriate for kids.  With this in mind, we have decided not to launch this product as we no longer feel it is in keeping with the values of the LEGO City brand.   

I guess LEGO didn’t want kids roleplaying as crooks with a giant brick-built stick of dynamite on a building.

76980 Overwatch 2 Titan (2022)

One of the most recent LEGO cancellations also stemmed from a brand values violation, but this time by the Intellectual Property (IP) holder, and not anything to do with the set design itself.

After being revealed and even included in early 2022 LEGO Catalogues, the LEGO Overwatch 2 Titan (76980) was famously scrapped due to LEGO reviewing their partnership with Activision-Blizzard on the back off a highly publicised sexual harassment lawsuit and widespread allegations of improper workplace cultures.

LEGO’s Official Statement on this issue:

We are currently reviewing our partnership with Activision Blizzard, given concerns about the progress being made to address continuing allegations regarding workplace culture, especially the treatment of female colleagues and creating a diverse and inclusive environment. While we complete the review, we will pause the release of a LEGO Overwatch 2 product which was due to go on sale on February 1, 2022. 

It’s been almost a year since then, and we still have not heard of anything LEGO Overwatch 2 related, as it was rumoured that we’d get an entire theme, similar in scale to the original LEGO Overwatch theme from 2019.

If you really want one, you can still find copies on eBay for a pretty penny.

And that’s it for a brief history of some of the most well-known examples of cancelled and unreleased LEGO sets, and we can now add 77014 The Temple of Doom to this infamous list.

It’s all speculation as to why LEGO would cancel the Temple of Doom set – maybe it didn’t want depictions of idol worship, or felt that some of the scenes depicted in The Temple of Doom might offend groups of people, OR in the face of a slowing economy and declining discretionary purchases, it might have been a commercial decision to drop it from the initial launch lineup.

Maybe one day we’ll get the full story, but for now, it joins a very special list of cancelled LEGO sets.

Special thanks to this Brickset list, and Just2Good for helping with the research on this. Just2Good in particular has a great series on Youtube which goes deeper into cancelled and unreleased themes, with lots of great nuggets of information on unreleased concepts/themes if you want to go deeper down this rabbit role.

What do you think of the cancellation of Temple of Doom, and how does it rank against some of these other cancelled sets?