Alexandrina

Is it possible that the Burrow was originally planned for release at a different time? Hedwig is obviously an unconventional set, perhaps the Burrow was planned for the Diagon Alley slot when the set numbers were finalised, and pushed forward once Diagon Alley got greenlit.

Would Lego number their sets based on store exclusives in one country? I don't think the Burrow was an exclusive in the UK, for instance.

Unless I misinterpreted the original poster, the discussion was originally referring to the Lion Knights as a specific faction, the 1980s faction, in the same way that 'Black Falcons' refers to the classic faction. That's not the same as a faction having generic lion heraldry, and my point was merely that the vintage faction does not have much cultural resonance today. I also don't think that lions as a symbol make a faction of knights automatically any more appealing than any other heraldry. If the colours matched a popular faction from media, like Lannister red, it would be a different issue - but I suspect a new faction with lions would sell as well as a new faction with something different. As such, I disagree with the original assertion (not by you, as I recall) that the Lion Knights are overdue a return.

It's possible that the way Kanga and Roo's names combine to make the word 'Kangaroo' impressed itself on little tiny me in a way that a Rabbit called 'Rabbit' didn't. It's probably coming up twenty years since I last read or watched anything Pooh related (other than Goodbye Christopher Robin, which while a beautiful film was more about the Milnes than their characters) so far be it from me to ever try and claim to be an authority on which characters were the bigger ones! Memory is a fickle beast.

I love the way you've followed the Lego tradition of colouring the modular in an unusual colour. Bright light yellow is an unorthodox pick but it works imo. As a sidenote, colour aside it reminds me of one of the banks in my hometown: same building shape, front door in the same place, windows in the same place on all storeys, cashpoint in the same place, even the antenna on the roof in the same place. Your building has more detailing, though - which is a good thing, since my local bank is actually a pretty boring-looking building.

I've not read Winnie the Pooh since I was little, but I remember Kanga and Roo being bigger characters than Rabbit.

I'd question the need to buy new, first off. In my experience, used bricks are often indistinguishable from new ones, unless they're suffering from an issue such as scratches, discolouration, etc, which sellers are pretty good at mentioning in the listing. This is also a far bigger issue for old and rare bricks; a lot of sellers discard poor-quality bricks unless they're rare enough to justify listing them anyway. If you're planning on using the bricks, they're not going to stay brand new anyway - so I don't see the need. Thirty-six seems like a very specific number, but there is a UK store carrying more than twice as many light bluish grey 1 x 2 bricks for 7p a brick. If you aren't too fussy about quantity - and pardon me for being presumptuous, but I figure that most AFOLs going to Bricklink for specific parts are going to have a decent collection anyway, with a good supply of 1 x 2 light bluish greys - there are multiple sellers at 3p or 4p, one at 2p. You can even find new condition bricks for 5p. I can't see how any company can get cheaper while matching/surpassing Lego's quality standards and also having to cover the costs of sourcing the plastic, manufacturing the bricks, storing all the different bricks they've manufactured, and also paying employees who will deal with the manufacturing and logistics and take care of picking the bricks for people's orders. Obviously it's going to be more expensive to part out a set than to buy it. When Lego produce a set, they know the parts will be produced in enough quantity that economies of scale come into play and reduce the costs. The same won't happen for a supplier whose business model revolves around bespoke orders of bricks from a vast library of parts (for a new company to muscle in on Lego, they'd have to be offering every major part Lego do in every colour Lego produce as well as useful new parts, else why would people switch over in the first place?) It does beg the question, though: why would you part out a set in its entirety when the set itself is available for a lower price? It's one thing parting out a set that's no longer produced, or is expensive on the second-hand market, but parting out a currently-available set seems like more trouble than it's worth. And if you only want certain parts from the set, you're not buying all of them anyway, so whether or not it's more expensive to part out the whole set than buy it is moot.

In that case remove my voice from the choir. That said, I can't see Lego doing that - it would look no different to a regular chess set, only Lego would have to pay the licensing fee for it.

Add my voice to the choir. It would be a great way to get "army building" minifigures such as students, Death Eaters, etc. in large quantities.

Aren't common parts going for 1p or 2p? It would be hard to get cheaper than that without making a loss - and more obscure parts are necessarily going to be more expensive to cover the production costs of a product with less demand.

Best case scenario: a continuation of the anniversary wave, with minifigures of minor students (Ernie Macmillan, Blaise Zabini, Romilda Vane, etc.) but all the trio minifigures are rereleases. Worst case scenario: a continuation of the anniversary wave, but remakes of last year's sets with worse minifigures.

If it were to get to the point that Lego were seeing their business drop because of knock-offs with different business practices, surely Lego would adapt their business model. They're easily the market leader at the moment, and deservedly so - and don't forget that they also have Bricklink as a major hub for part resale, something which as far as I'm aware doesn't exist for other companies' products. It would take sustained exceptional poor performance for Lego to go to the wall within twenty years even if they didn't adapt to counter upcoming rivals. On a longer timescale you might well be correct (though personally I think it's more likely Lego becomes so firmly entrenched as the construction toy brand that they're effectively the Coca-Cola of plastic bricks) but twenty years would be an absolute whirlwind.

Lego, no doubt, have factored in people like you when planning what sets they'll produce. There's a reason they're using the Black Falcons again in the 3-in-1, and it's not because they think people will only want to have one faction of soldiers ever. It's probably better for everyone if Lego keep the Black Falcons up and add in a smattering of civilians, and give us a new faction when a new theme comes along - people who want civilians are happy, because they get to buy the set and get a new civilian; people who love Black Falcons are happy, because they get more Black Falcons; and people who want a new faction are eventually happy, because when their new faction comes out in a year or so's time they get to buy them easier. If Lego had put, say, Lion Knights in the 3-in-1, all it would do is mean neither Black Falcons or Lion Knights were easy to get hold of, because both would be permanently out of stock on Bricks & Pieces and in only one set each that costs over £100. As it stands, the Black Falcons will be in two sets, and it's easier to justify spending three figures on two different sets that happen to have figures you want than on the same set twice entirely because of the figures. The Lion Knights will have their time too. And both can come alongside civilians, to truly bolster the peasant armies.

That could be said of most Western companies, to be honest. I'm not sure that Lego are "allowing" designs to be copied, so much as the Chinese company is doing it anyway and Lego have no realistic recourse. You're right in that they could/should release you from the contract - but anything beyond that is entirely out of Lego's hands.

There was also a version of each in 2002, but that won't really have any bearing on whether most people decide to get the new ones or not. Though for my money the Goyle print is the most screen accurate of all the yellow-head Harry Potter figures (faint praise indeed)

The thing is, having a different faction with shared heraldry can be good for army building (I personally wouldn't combine the Kingdoms knights with the Lion Knights but that's just me) but they are still different factions. The new Black Falcons are very clearly a modernised version of the old ones. The same hasn't happened for the Lion Knights, and they're not so iconic that they specifically need to be updated ASAP. Lions are a common feature of heraldry - almost one of the default set. You can link them to the Plantagenets and the English kings of the High Middle Ages, and other places besides, so it's not surprising that they crop up a lot. That doesn't mean that the Lego faction known as 'Lion Knights' is similarly iconic. In any case, there are plenty of heraldic animals Lego haven't really used yet. I'd like to see gryphons on the next faction.

That's fair enough. I guess my own interests lie more in the traditional fantasy aesthetic, as well as the period surrounding the Angevin Empire, and this tends to mesh with the sort of parts you get in a Castle theme - so it's easy for me to go along with that. Even then, I'd argue that the Professor Sprout torso is too modern (I don't have the others to hand right now to compare) - her coat looks too modern imo.

I had to look up Witch Hazel. She might have been in a lot of the original cartoons, but they don't seem to be the ones that are getting shown on TV nowadays (or at least, they weren't being shown when I was growing up). Bugs, Daffy, Sylvester, etc? All the time. Yosemite Sam and Foghorn? Sometimes. Never a witch. Lola, by contrast, might not have been in the original cartoon but in the modern era she's one of the core stable. Personally I'd rather see her than a character I didn't grow up with - but more than that, merchandise is going to be based on what Warner Brothers see as the core cast. It's the same as Thomas the Tank Engine - any adult would name the core cast as Thomas, Edward, Henry, Gordon, James, Percy, Toby, Duck (numbers 1-8). The current officially recognised core cast is only four of them, Thomas, Gordon, James and Percy, as well as new characters Emily, Nia and Rebecca (the latter two not appearing at all during the Mitton era or even in the post-Mitton live-action series). Merchandise is focused on those seven, without regard to who was prominent in the original run. I'd be surprised, therefore, if any of the Baby Looney Tunes cast (Bugs, Daffy, Sylvester, Tweety, Taz, Lola) don't appear.

We'll have to agree to disagree on that - except for Nearly Headless Nick, who other than the desaturated colour palette does look period appropriate to Shakespeare. I would argue, though, that Elizabethan England is more modern than the traditional aesthetics of a Castle theme, which to me seem more rooted in the High Middle Ages.

I don't think they're mutually exclusive. Harry Potter is based on films set in the relative modern-day, with some locations being a castle. There's no reason there can't also be a Castle theme.

I swear Sir Cadogan is actually in Prisoner of Azkaban. Maybe it's a false memory, but I seem to remember him dashing about swinging his sword through various paintings on the other side of the hallway in the scene where everyone's gathered around the slashed portrait of the Fat Lady.

Lord of the Rings is definitely seen as representing Castle, but it also finished seven years ago, so it's kind of moot in the present discussion. Harry Potter might be set in a castle, but it doesn't have period appropriate minifigures or anything.

If they ever release the deleted scenes, I bet we'll suddenly have loads of new characters to turn into minifigure form. Almost all of Ernie Macmillan's lines are in a deleted scene from Chamber of Secrets, and Charlotte Skeoch played Hannah Abbott twice without getting a single line that made it to cinema release. What's the betting there are others like them who were cast but never made the cut?

Don't forget that Rik Mayall filmed scenes for Philosopher's Stone as Peeves - so at the very least, there are reference photos and costume designs somewhere in the Warner Brothers vaults. Lego could theoretically give us a screen-accurate Peeves even if Peeves never hit the screen.

I don't think I've ever seen that figure before. Was that in the 2007 range? I was too busy buying Star Wars sets at the time to pay much attention to the Harry Potter offerings then. He looks sleepy - too many of Hermione's enchanted muffins, clearly.