Sunday 18 January 2015

"And the Gimme LEGO Readers' Choice Award for Best Set of 2014 goes to...."

.....Set 10243 Parisian Restaurant.



If ever you needed proof that the LEGO Modular Buildings have lost none of their allure then this is it - the Parisian Restaurant opened up a healthy lead in the polls early on and never really looked like being overhauled, although Set 70816 Benny's Spaceship, Spaceship, SPACESHIP! at least put up a good fight and kept the competition respectable. The Parisian Restaurant can therefore claim an auspicious double, having already bagged my award for Best Non-Licensed Set in the 2014 Gimme LEGO Awards; although it was narrowly edged into second place in my own affections by Set 70810 MetalBeard's Sea Cow it's undoubtedly a worthy winner and yet another feather in the cap of uber-designer Jamie Berard whose CV grows ever longer and more impressive. You can see Jamie talking about the set in the designer video below.


The final rankings are shown below together with the number of votes polled by each of the sets. While the Parisian Restaurant and Benny's Spaceship were clearly well ahead of the other contenders, overall the votes were quite a lot more evenly spread compared with the 2013 poll when the top two sets polled more than two-thirds of all the votes. Although it was undoubtedly a cool set, I have to confess to being a little surprised that Benny''s Spaceship did so well; in contrast, I'd expected Set 21109 Exo-Suit and Set 76023 The Tumbler to attract more votes. I obviously did a reasonable job of selecting the best sets of 2014 for people to vote for as only 24 people (2.8%) felt that their favourite lay outside the list that I provided; off-piste selections included the likes of Set 76021 The Milano Spaceship Rescue.


Interestingly, voter numbers were down on the 2013 poll even though more people viewed the 2014 Awards posting on Gimme LEGO compared with the numbers who viewed the 2013 Awards posting - barely 10% of people reading the Awards posting placed a vote, compared with around 14% in 2013. Given this, particular thanks are due to Huw at Brickset for publicising the Gimme LEGO Awards and the readers' vote and thus helping to ensure a healthy sample size for the poll. Thanks also to all of you who voted.

I'd like to end by wishing all Gimme LEGO readers a belated Happy New Year, and here's hoping that LEGO's 2015 offerings can maintain the high standards of 2014!