Accio Lego

Technically it’s a double bass and not a cello, although with how minifig proportions work you could probably make it work as a cello if you wanted to. And the double bass isn’t always played with a bow, jazz players often just pluck the strings - as seen in the Jazz Club and Jazz Quartet sets. In a classical orchestra you’ll see them played with a bow, but since lego just uses the Harry Potter wand piece for a bow, it’s really easy to get ahold of (pretty much any Harry Potter collector has a massive stockpile).

There’s a few more shots up and I’m now 100% sure that it’s the small owl in a new color, but it’s not shown close up enough to see if the eyes are minifig system compatible. The same set also appears to introduce beavers, albeit in the Friends style.

This is such a weird selection of images to leak together. A shot of the back of the Great Hall, the minifigs close up, and a weird little close up of Quirrel in the set. The back of Malkin’s with the front lifestyle shot of Ollivander’s (which only show 4 of the 6 characters), the mandrake in and out of its pot, and a posed shot of Buckbeak that doesn’t show the full set. No shots of Triwizard Arrival, Potions Class, or Aragog at all. I know I was saying that we had a chance of getting getting leaks when a 3rd party site uploaded them early but geez. My first observations are that the slide out modules look very useful for play - that was a big drawback I noticed with the last system, reaching in the little rooms to move things around was cramped and fiddly - some room modules would let you pull off the front crossbar for slightly easier access but that did very little good when everything was assembled into a larger castle. The new slide out modules can be removed and replaced easily, and their lack of high walls makes it easy to play with them when they’re out in the open. The Great Hall Minifigs look good, as does the new Troll. Great to get the Fat Friar but I can’t help but notice that he uses the bowl cut hair piece instead of having a proper tonsure. The Great Hall also has 5 visible Collectible Portraits from what we can see in these photos. Four in the small hallway module and one in the Hufflepuff Common Room. The Diagon Alley shops look fun, I really want better shots of them. And there’s a signpost with Gringotts Bsnk on the left and Quality Quidditch Supplies and Flourish & Blott’s towards the right – a potential clue for next year perhaps? The Mandrake and Buckbeak both look rather disappointing right now, although I’ll reserve judgement on the latter until I see him in a better pose with his base. But there’s a high chance I’ll skip those two like I did with Dobby last year.

New summer camp Friends sets have leaked. Most of the animals are in the minidoll style, but one has a purple butterfly (pretty sure that’s a new color) and the other seems to have a small owl in dark tan??? I’m not sure about that one since the current picture quality is low and it’s a small part, but there’s definitely something perched in the tree there that’s smaller than any of the normal Friends birds.

It’s not new info at all - we’ve known that the Buckbeak set will contain some brick built pumpkins and ‘a bird’ since before the Dreamzzz sets with the new ravens were revealed. It’s been debated since whether the bird is brick built like the pumpkins or not because the grammar is just ambiguous enough for that kind of speculation.

Yeah, I’ve already seen people speculating about a possible Odin/Allfather character in the future CMFs thread. For that matter, Valkyries were often depicted as being accompanied by ravens (since Valkyries are supposed to escort the souls of slain warriors to Valhalla, and ravens also tend to swoop down on the corpses left on the battlefield for more practical purposes), and so far as I can tell, while Lego did a Viking woman in a cmf awhile back (long enough for her to be less than impressive next to the Viking Village figs), they’ve never done an actual Valkyrie. So that would be cool to see as well.

Yeah, it’s a shame that Hidden side isn’t still around - I feel like it and Dreamzzz could have a lot of fun using the new parts the other spawned in different ways. It sucks that Lego just can’t seem to handle doing themes with a digital tie in game these days, I’m not into the spooky aesthetic, but I know it’s popular enough that it was the focus of the very first themed CMF back with series 14, and Hidden Side was like a spiritual successor to the old Monster Hunters theme. Still, at least Dreamzzz is making good use of thier villains to partially fill that niche.

The side builds are an information plaque like the ones the Discovery set has and an in-scale Orion capsule. I’ve seen some people calling the latter a ‘satellite’, presumably because it has solar panels, but it’s definitely the Orion crew capsule. There’s also a little base for the Orion capsule so it can float in space (as opposed to the Apollo capsule in the Saturn V set which was displayed in its splash down configuration).

It’s in ‘Castle Nocturnia’ - the biggest set of this Dreamzzz wave. That set and a second one that leaked today also have the ravens, so our total number of them is up to 8, while there are currently 3 total sets featuring the red panda (counting the as yet unseen City set).

Dreamzzz is a Lego in-house property so there wouldn’t be a problem with any new molds they introduce either way. There’s been no chatter about the theme ending anytime soon, and while I wouldn’t blame anyone for skepticism after both Hidden Side and Vidiyo were scrapped with little warning after barely having any time on the shelves (and both with planned sets that never saw the light of day if I recall) - Dreamzzz isn’t trying to pair itself with a phone app as a major part of its play features. Instead it’s got a tie-in cartoon series, which is a strategy that’s worked well for both Ninjago and Monkey Kid, so I don’t think there’s any risk of it getting axed in the immediate future. Which is nice, because the designers have been introducing all sorts of fun new molds (still waiting for Izzy’s hair in a natural color).

Good catches, I had a feeling I’d seen the tuxedo before, but it’s fairly generic so I wasn’t sure where. I don’t keep up with Ninjago so I didn’t spot that one. Either way, the more interesting offerings from those two figs in my opinion are the rarely seen double bass and the new cowboy chaps printed legs for those who like those archetypes. Personally, I’ve had the double bass on my list to grab from PaB next time I do an order for a while, so I’ll be checking my local store’s BaM tower next month when I’m in.

To be fair, there’s that grey period where third party retailers will either upload photos early or as metadata and we’ll get ahold of the before lego does the official reveal. There are some Dreamzzz sets that just leaked which I’m pretty sure happened via that method since there’s only shots of the box art so far. It’s far from the first time we’ve gotten lower quality pics of sets just a little while before lego puts the more detailed high res shots on their own website.

For those not interested in the City style Space suits, it looks like there’s also a new cowboy (complete with chaps), a construction worker, and they’ve put out a (new?) tuxedo torso alongside releasing the double bass accessory - which I believe has only appeared in the Jazz Club before.

It also looks like all the Dreamzzz sets this wave include those mystical ravens (we’re up to 6 now) so that set is perfect for anyone who wants both new animals.

Since the diorama sets often include quotes, we’ve essentially already gotten a 4 in 1 diorama set with the Collectors Edition Hogwarts Express. That said, other prime candidates for diorama scenes would be things like Hagrid giving Harry the album at the end of SS or the patronus scene in PoA, and those have both been made into sets already. I think the reason that Star Wars can make dioramas work is because playsets have to favor the various vehicles, while dioramas largely get to put those vehicles in a setting (the only SW diorama I can recall that wasn’t like that was the trash compactor, which physically has to be built as a diorama). In contrast, the only Jurassic Park diorama I can remember features the T-Rex in a pose that the molded animals that come in the playsets just can’t be positioned into. In contrast - Harry Potter has far fewer vehicles, and the ones it does have don’t engage in combat. And there’s a limited number of large creatures - most of which don’t take any iconic poses that would be difficult for their playset versions to replicate. The Horntail chasing Harry could count, but that’s already been done very well as a kinetic sculpture. The only thing in that category I can think of that fans might want is the shot of Harry standing on top of the Slytherin statue in the Chamber of Secrets with the Basilisk looming over him preparing to strike - since modern playsets won’t have clearance over the statue or a basilisk capable of balancing on the end of its tail like that.