Alexandrina

Only if you don't want to use it for a knight. There's absolutely no reason pink and knights have to be mutually exclusive colours.

If you read his quotes, that's not what's being said. First off, it doesn't seem as though he has final say on what themes Lego produce, nor does he seem to want Castle gone for good. "Castle is definitely not gone, and I’m hoping that in the near future you will be extremely happy. I don’t know if there’s anything coming, but I’m hoping!" He also seems to be suggesting that - in his capacity as a senior member of the Lego Ideas team - he hopes the sets his department produces inspire a revamp of the classic themes. "Something we always hope when we do these one-off things in LEGO Ideas is that it will revive something and bring some kind of new opportunity for the LEGO Group. So what we were really hoping with 21322 Pirates of Barracuda Bay is that the real LEGO Pirates will come back and be where they should be in their prominent place." On top of that, he specifically seems optimistic about Castle based on the Blacksmith set. "Now we have these cool Black Falcon knights [in 21325 Medieval Blacksmith], and that’s just a peek into an endless world of castle, so who knows what could happen?" The headline is very sensationalised, intended to elicit strong reactions - and that's exactly what it's done. But the truth is probably something different. Besides which, if one of the designers had confirmed in a round-table meeting that Castle and Pirates were ended as themes, why would only one outlet be reporting that?

The closest match in the current Lego palette is Bright Pink - which is also almost certainly what colour a pink castle would predominantly be. There might be darker pink/magenta parts for detailing/roofs, but I'd be very surprised if the main model is pink.

Plenty. The past was far more colourful than it would appear based on the relics that survive - lots of old statues have lost their paint to the centuries, and art has faded away. Craigievar Castle is a late medieval castle that is pink, and though the pink pigmentation was a later addition it's still based on the colour of the natural granite, and that pigmentation would have existed in the middle ages. Add in a touch of fantasy and pink isn't at all an outlandish colour.

If you read the quotes, it's not nearly as bad as the headline makes out. The designer doesn't even say that Castle lives in the 3-in-1 theme, that's just speculation on the part of the article. What he's actually quoted is saying is far more promising - that Castle and Pirates are cornerstones of Lego and are not going away long-term.

The only way I've found is to exit out of the thread altogether and return to it again. Which is a massive pain when you've already typed up a long comment! Why, though? It doesn't matter what colour it is - if a castle set does well, it bodes well for more castle sets in the future. In any case, I don't believe we've had a pink castle yet. That might be very interesting.

There's no point getting your hopes high based on a hairpiece that - based on Lego's past practice and the totality of current evidence - isn't the genuine article. If it's real then great, but if not you're just setting up for disappointment.

If that's right, it's probably put paid to hopes of a Remembrall this year. Not that we need a new Flying Lesson set - Hooch is the only real exciting new minifigure possibility there. I just went back and watched the first Quidditch Match scene, and Angelina Johnson is very prominent in that scene. Katie Bell and Alicia Spinnet do very little (Katie is shown flying around the stands with the Quaffle at one point and getting an assist, which may have been scored by Alicia - she and Angelina are similar enough in appearance that it's hard to tell which one is the blurry shape that scores). On the other hand, Angelina scores one or possibly two goals, including scoring the first immediately from the start of the game without conceding possession for even a second. She also gets called out by name in the commentary (the only other characters called out by name are Flint and Bletchley - not even Harry gets his name mentioned until later on after the jinx) and targeted by Flint. Sadly I doubt Alicia will ever come if the Quidditch match is the £30 one. There's no way they give us two obscure Gryffindor Quidditch players in a set that size, Angelina is more likely than Alicia, and I don't know where else Alicia would fit in. At least with Katie there's the possibility of her showing up in a cursed locket set.

Yes, but depending on the algorithm used to decrease the dimensions, the results will be different. Say you're halving each dimension - you can effectively break the image into 2x2 squares of pixels which need to be merged into one pixel, and the result if you have say the bottom right pixel of every square is going to differ from the result if the software averaged out all the pixels in the square.

I can only speak to GIMP, since that's what I use anyway, but I've found that decreasing the size of images is all in the settings used. GIMP is good for reducing the dimensions of an image while retaining quality even with default settings (I personally use linear interpolation rather than the default cubic, since cubic does a number on the smallest graphics for Football Manager games! ) but I always make sure to export at the highest quality. It's possible that other software - particularly web-based apps - use a lossy compression which causes the drop in quality.

If we're going to get an anniversary wave again, I'm personally glad there's not going to be anything from the Deathly Hallows. I'd rather those films have a dedicated wave to be done properly rather than getting a hamfisted single set in an unrelated wave, and I predict that'll come next year.

100%. I'm not going to say I wouldn't buy well-designed sets that fused Castle and Pirates - because I have an interest in both periods, and it's easy enough to separate the parts out for my own use. But it wouldn't feel quite right. As for fantasy, I visited the Mappa Mundi in Hereford Cathedral a year or so ago (sidenote: is it just me who's hardly done any of the local tourist attractions, because there's no urgency to do something nearby when you can do it any time - and so it never gets done!). For what was intended to be a genuine map of the world as it was known, it's absolutely littered with mythology and fantastical beings. I'd be interested to see blemmyes or similar creatures in a Lego setting - a distinctive design that is so very medieval.

Even so, it's still based on a figure from the original run. Deathly Hallows McGOnagall doesn't fit the period.

We're AFOL's. Overthinking things is what we do!

All the other known Golden Figures are 2001 minifigs. Why would they add a McGOnagall (not from the original run of minifigures) based on a film that came out ten years later?

And Space-Castle can work well. My main point (other than personal preference) is that it's disingenuous to act like a Space-Castle hybrid is terrible but a Pirate-Castle hybrid is great.

I'd missed that it's a Space Shuttle. That's actually a disappointment to me - none of the NASA sets interest me, since I find the source material boring. Ah well. At least I won't be so easily parted from my money!

I can't go into too much detail without straying off topic, but there's a reason Professor Dippet left Hogwarts. I'll say no more!

I have a fan theory that Trelawney made Aunt Petunia into a horcrux when she was a child, which is why she never had magic and why she was so unpleasant.

Harry was a living horcrux. Baby Harry was a living horcrux with no ability to speak and no sense of empathy. What bigger monster is there than that?

You mean those poor minifigures didn't even know they were having their photo taken for all to see? Well, I never...

There was a lot known about it beforehand though. We're comparatively in the dark here, unless I've missed some big revelation.

The sly devil!

So worth keeping an eye on then. It would be nice if there is a Deathly Hallows McGonagall coming, even if it is more likely he's misinterpreted the Hogsmeade one.

Who is Kingwong? Does he have past form for leaks or something, that he's worth taking stock of more than Joe Randomer?