The LEGO Ideas theme, which started in 2008 as an offshoot of the Japanese website Cuusoo, then formally known as LEGO Cuusoo, is based around a website which allows users to submit ideas for LEGO products to be turned into potential sets available commercially. If fellow users in the LEGO Ideas community up vote the project to 10000 then LEGO Group has a committee which votes on whether to build the set and release it. If the project is approved and cleared for production, it is developed and later released as an official set under the "LEGO Ideas" banner and the original designer receives 1% of the royalties and a number of free sets. Typically, a few projects are approved a year and most are rejected due to various restrictions.
2017 LEGO Sets
2017 was a big year for the LEGO movies with the release of The LEGO Batman Movie and The LEGO Ninjago Movie. With these films LEGO gave us a number of new sets and themes around these movies, with many of them already being significant investments for collectors. We also saw a number of new themes released that year including BrickHeadz, DC Super Hero Girls, Boost and of course sets for The LEGO Batman and The LEGO Ninjago movies. However, sadly as it is LEGo did retire the much beloved BIONICLE and Mixels themes as well as the short-lived The Angry Birds Movie theme.