Huigberts Builds

Wow, this is a huge disappointment. Reading the description it feels like they had a lot of different things they wanted this set to be. But rather than picking one of them and doing it well, they picked all of them and were only able to give us a taste of each. Like first of all we didn't get a motorised Hogwarts Express by the sounds of it, which is already disappointing considering how great the city trains are this year. Instead we get more of a ucs train, totally different scale than anything Harry Potter we've gotten before I imagine. Which would be fine, a cool display piece, but it only has 1 passenger car because they also wanted to include interior scenes of the movies and an entire station. They should've just focused on the train if they went this big, now it sounds incomplete. Then the minifigure selection. That's just all over the place. They wanted something from many different movies. They basically give us all the figures from the previous Hogwarts Express again. Then year 1 trio, again. A few random students, yeah this is really the set you want to get your army builder characters from. CMF Luna, another Harry. Draco in his hbp outfit is nice, I must admit, but I would've preferred him in a regular set. The conductor is a welcome addition as well. But then there's only half of the epilogue cast. They could've gone either way and I would've been happy. A train just full of students plus a conductor or 2 and the trolley witch. Just to populate the train. It could've represented any setting, great for display. Lupin, Dementors or Hagrid would've been a nice extra but not even necessary. But instead we get 4 different Harry's. 2 Ron's, 2 Hermione's, not even the ones we wanted I might add. That's really not fun to display. A set completely centered around the epilogue would've been great as well. We could've basically gotten the entire cursed child cast. Especially Albus and Scorpius would've sold this set to me. But we have only gotten the Potters. Why? It will take ages for another opportunity to get those characters again, if ever. (TLTR) So long story short, the set feels incomplete, rather than going all in on 1 idea, they half-baked a ton of them. Not a motorised system scale train with a full track and stations to pass by, nor a full, big UCS like Train, but only half of one so they can add an interior and a station. Not a full cast of students to populate the display, nor a full cast of epilogue characters but just about half of each. Mostly consisting of Harry's and repeats or remakes of figures we've already gotten the past few years. There's a lot of cool stuff in this set and I'm sure it looks great either way, but it would've been so much better if the set was more focused on one specific thing rather than so many. I'm really not sure if I'll buy this one.

Two figures I would still love to see in an advent calendar are Christmas Sweater Fred and George, with the big F and G on the torsos. Mostly because it's the closest movie outfit we have to how they looked in the games, their looks there are so iconic to me. But also because it's the best outfit to tell them apart.

An image of the advent calendar just leaked on Instagram confirming Tonks is definitely from there.

Yes, it looks great. I think I might just try to get 8. It's probably the most complete Hogwarts we've ever gotten in Lego form. Imagine if they did a D2C like this in sytem or minifig scale or somewhere in between, if not just 8 separate sets. Probably unlikely, but it's interesting to speculate how they will portray Hogwarts after the anniversary style. They'll have to keep it interesting.

Ah I didn't know that. Never really payed too much attention to city. Although it's interesting that 2018 is also the year the previous Hogwarts Express came out. Maybe that one will be on a 4 year cycle as well if the theme stays around? Ofcourse previous one wasn't exactly motorised, but it's a nice coincidence nonetheless.

I believe its called "pop-up". I think it's interesting how there's a heavy focus on trains and trains racks in the new lego city sets. Like there are 2 train sets, each with a controller thingy rather than having to use an app on your phone (hopefully that will be the case with the Hogwarts Express as well). And they have a separate train station set as well. If that tells us anything it's that LEGO is going all in on trains this year That's a shame, I'm still waiting for a Dutch version of the Quidditch Cedric book. I mean it doesn't really matter too much, I know English, but still, a Dutch one would be preferred. Which variants?

The new helmets look great, although I hope they'll still use the other 2 every now and then, just whatever works best for the suit they're trying to make. Not too sure if I'll buy it though as other than the new and updated figures, the set itself isn't really all too interesting, for that price at least. I kinda want a new malibu mansion rather than another hall of armor every year or two. This Nick Fury is also getting very repetitive, there are way cheaper ways to get him.

I don't really mind the unprinted legs, I like some variety, even if it's a downgrade, rather than getting the exact same Dumbledore again. BTW, love the brickheadz, especially Moody, although as I don't really collect them it's still gonna be a skip.

Ooh I love the new polybag, it's great to get Dumbledore this easily. The build looks very nice, it looks like 3 polybags will make the entire castle.

Love the medieval Mickey Set, especially jester Donald, with a new facial expression. Although I would've preferred it if goofy was in the camper van considering he is sometimes portrayed as living in one. I wonder what 10779 will contain as we still don't have the keychain goofy. I'm mostly hoping for a Pete figure, but that's probably too much to ask for.

I wonder if it will include goofy with his black jacket rather than the yellow disney parks one from the train d2c, as I noticed that the lego stores were selling keychains of that variant (maybe that's old news, haven't really been following this topic) while he doesn't have that in any of the sets.

Didn't they reveal the Star Wars Razor Crest really early as well a few years ago? Just to let the fans know Grogu stuff was in fact coming. It's been a while so maybe I got the timeframe wrong of reveal and release, but it doesn't sound to crazy if something like that would happen for spider-man or something similar.

I could also see them do a mix of both, like how they included a hbp WWW in a PS/CoS style diagon alley. It's also worth noting that WB brought back the red bridge for Hogwarts Legacy.

But aren't these 2 things kinda contradicting one another? Like on one hand you're saying LEGO is in the middle of transitioning the theme from short-term to evergreen, thus holding onto a few key sets to keep us around wanting more. Which honestly makes sense. But on the other hand you're also saying they're holding onto the sets to go out with a bang. While the entire point of going evergreen is that it doesn't go out, it stays around. Or, if it's goes evergreen, and looking at the sales it might as well, do you really think they'll keep holding onto a Gringotts until the theme eventually dies a slow death just to give it one last bang? When the original diagon alley has already left the shelves and new fans have no way to complete the street now without paying ridiculous prices on the aftermarket, I'll doubt that bang will be even that big. They're remaking many sets already, Great Hall, Clock Tower, Whomping Willow. So why would Gringotts (and to an extension Diagon Alley) be the one set we can only get once, and with that also being the last. That would mean that however long the theme will go on, they'll have to hold out on Gringotts. In an interview a while back the designers have said they already finished the original plan, that ended with 2020's wave. Ofcourse, after the original plan proved to be a huge success, HP got a soft reboot to keep the theme around. In another interview they said they currently didn't have any plans for Gringotts. I think it might have gone a little bit like this: The designers planned for the 2018-2020 waves we got and nothing beyond that. Ofcourse Diagon Alley was part of that wave, but they knew they couldn't just make regular sets on those locations as the average buyer wouldn't be interested in most of the buildings on their own. Only Ollivanders and Gringotts would work on their own. But then again, it wouldn't really be an alley with just 1 building. So it obviously needed to be a D2C to justify releasing the other buildings. The problem is, it's hard to do Gringotts justice as part of such a set. (Sure it's been done before, but we must keep the quality of modern lego sets in mind. ) I mean it isn't just the facade of the building itself. There's an entire system of minecarts, vaults and a dragon underneath. So if you want to include Gringotts AND make it count, it will take away from what they can do to the rest of the street. Not to mention most interesting Gringotts stuff is from DH, and their original plan was mostly based on the more kid friendly earlier movies, with things like the cmf series to fill in the bigger gaps. With what the designer told us, the most simple explanation is that for their original plan, Gringotts simply didn't make the cut. So why didn't it make the cut since then? Well, I assume they first wanted to see how well Diagon Alley would sell before making an extension. And considering the sets are likely designed about a year prior to release, the 2021 set would have been designed around when diagon alley released, so back when the numbers weren't in yet, plus it wouldn't really fit in with the anniversary sets anyway. Then this year's set would have been designed around 2021. But the thing to keep in mind is that people have been asking for a motorised Hogwarts Express since the 2018 one released, 2 years before a D2C Gringotts extension would even cross our mind. I especially seem to recall one of the most asked questions to the designers in 2018 was if the Express that year was designed with motorisation in mind/whether it would be easy to motorise the thing. Not to mention the many videos made on the topic. So the designers were probably thinking about that set before thinking of a Gringotts. Also it's only this year LEGO starts finally dipping their toes in DH sets, so they're probably holding off onto that for a bit. So tldr, while your theory is interesting, I don't think it would make sense for LEGO to do. I think it simply didn't make the cut for the original plan and now must fit into the new plan, for which it might simply not be a priority yet. With that being said, I think 2023 is the perfect year for Gringotts, if not then 2024, which really would be stretching. If we still haven't got it then I think it should be time to worry. On a sidenote, if LEGO wants Harry Potter to go evergreen they really should start diving into other stuff than the main movies at some point. Sure FB might not sell as well, but at some point they need something new. So hopefully they'll start looking at things like Hogwarts Legacy.

Hmmm, mixed feelings. I didn't really expect it to be Gringotts considering about a year ago LEGO said they were aware about fans wanting an expansion to the DA D2C, Gringotts in particular, but that they didn't have any current plans for it. And since that's about when this year's D2C should have been "in development" so to speak, I figured there was no way we would see Gringotts this year. Although I'm afraid way too wishful thinking got the better of me anyway. That being said, I kinda hope this set is something like a "Journey to Hogwarts" set. But it needs to include at least some things for me to be interested. (Spoiler tags so it won't clutter the topic)