M&M's Chocolate Candy Dispenser

When Jonas of ElectryDragonite and I (Marcel of AstonishingStudios; hello!) launched this project, we foolishly anticipated we would reach 10,000 supporters in months. Two years later, we are still unashamedly aiming for success, and the milestone is anticipated for TOMORROW. Committing to the project for years exposed us to familar creators on this platform, resulted in friendships with other experienced builders and sparked relationships through active commenters. Our Ideas experiences would not exist if the project gained 10,000 immediate supporters.

As a sign of gratitude, we invite you to our LEGO Ideas livestream on Tuesday, July 24th, 2018 at 11AM EST (Time Converter: http://bit.do/timeconverter) on the AstonishingStudios YouTube channel, where we will celebrate with a live Q&A and a LEGO challenge inspired by this dispenser.

(PS: We forgot to inform you on our newest M&M's based creation, The Dunkin' Donuts Decorator 5000, which is shown below for those who are interested)

Whenever it seems like our rate of growth declines, somehow it quickly picks back up and throws us back in line for 10k. We're maintaining up our momentum with an air hockey table, that dispenses M&M's whenever someone gets a point. We plan on releasing another video in celebration and for promotion of our LEGO Ideas project, so we're not going down without a fight! 

While the deadline is approaching at an alarming rate, we reached 7,000 supporters with a little under a year left. As usual, we made an M&M's inspired build to celebrate, this time with a foosball machine. We hope you enjoy, and here's to 8,000 (hopefully sooner than later)!

Recently, we have spent more time than ever socializing with the Ideas community, during which we discovered a unique project. Known for his astonishing Flickr portfolio (see what I did there?), our friend Tyler of Legohaulic reconstructed Disney's Stitch–and the similarities are remarkable.

The 7" (17.78 cm) figures boasts thirteen points of articulation, including the mouth, meaning Stitch can convey numerous emotions. Moreover, he can stand on his head, on all four paws or simply on his hind legs, winning a child's approval with playability.

Regarding the design, Tyler must have scrutinized Stitch, for the medium lavendar/blue/medium azure color combo epitomizes the beloved creature. The use of inverted slopes on the ears is clever, the mouth is detailed with shades of red and the eyes have adorable written all over them. What can be critiqued?! As someone whose has not constructed a set since 2014, Legohaulic's Stitch is the only model capable of ending my streak.

Join the Ohana & Support His Project: https://ideas.lego.com/projects/ef31dc6a-6a39-4c8d-8dfa-57c64550c390

A little more than three months after crossing 5,000 supporters, we gained another one thousand. And although we have faith this project will surpass 10k, attracting the remaining support will be an uphill battle. Why? The M&M's dispenser was dropped in July 2016, and considering we are approaching the one year anniversary, our long-term and, possibly, most devout followers have already followed through. This makes the remaining 4,000 supporters a combination of curious LEGO Ideas users and new, passionate subscribers from our YouTube Channels, ElectryDragonite and AstonishingStudios. Fortunately, we have established tactics to discover and attract the final supporters, one of which includes designing more M&M-inspired builds to celebrate our dispenser's milestones. Speaking of which, 6,000 is a number worth celebrating, which is why Astonishing Studios constructed an M&M-themed pinball machine. Cheers to our goal of reaching the review phase! 

Less than a year since our launch date, we passed the halfway point. As two YouTube creators fortunate enough to have six-figure followings, 5000 subscribers is a small (but appreciated!) fraction of our devout fans. However, knowing we are closer to consideration as a product than to our project's launch ranks along our largest accomplishments on social media. To express our gratitude, Astonishing Studios (the fine gentleman writing this update) created an M&M Slot Machine dispenser and reveals how to recreate the model. We plan to create more M&M related models as our project garners more support, so help spread the word and support for more celebratory builds! 

Thank you for 1,000 supporters! This was achieved quickly after the release of the YouTube videos on our channels:

The project just reached the first 100 supporters within its first 48 hours, and that was even without announcing it on our youtube channels. We are so thankful for this initial support, as we only expected to get supporters from the day the videos would go live.

Tomorrow the videos will be posted on the ElectryDragonite and AstonishingStudios youtube channels which will demonstrate the functions of each machine. We will also post an update on this page at that time :)

Thank you so much!

ED x AS