Accio Lego
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About Accio Lego
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As I already pointed out – a new mold like the baby reindeer in an advent calendar is completely unprecedented, so I’m wondering if it appears first in a regular set we don’t know the details of yet, where it would make sense for it to accompany a realistically colored doe.
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OH YESSSS!!!!! This is the first time I’ve ever seen a new mold introduced in an advent calendar too, so I’m wondering if there’s some forest-y late summer or fall sets coming that it’s actually introduced in (perhaps part of that Nat Geo colab?) City advent calendar also has a pigeon and an honorary mention rocking horse.
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Recolored Fawkes’ being able to pass as a random bird to someone not fussy about ornithology (which Lego admittedly isn’t based on all the birds they’ve used the songbird mold to represent) doesn’t change the fact that his sculpt is very specifically based on the movie design which is almost certainly copyrighted several different ways. I’m not sure the exact legalities involved with IP specific molds, but I have little doubt that for a design specific as Fawkes, Lego couldn’t reuse it even if the wanted to. Real animals are different, obviously. Keeping certain colors and prints IP exclusive seems to be some sort of marketing decision, and the fact that the mastiff hasn’t been recolored in a City set yet comes off as annoying laziness. Especially now – the new pug appearing in a construction site set is weird as hell, a guard dog like a mastiff would make at least a modicum of sense.
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The phoenix in the Harry Potter theme is specifically based on Fawkes from the movies, so it will likely be IP locked just like the perched version appears to be.
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New longhaired cat color and print leaked. Unfortunately it will probably be IP locked out of pick a brick as it looks exactly like Mrs. Norris from the Harry Potter movies and she’s an obvious inclusion in the upcoming Easy Wing set. But that does mean the mold is getting used beyond the context of its CMF introduction, so hopefully we’ll see some other colors spicing up city sets or the BaM tower soon.
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She’s smaller but not that much smaller. Remember, advent calendar fit is determined by what can be efficiently put in the cells by a machine (without risk of chronic jams) and then be easily removed out of a slightly smaller door, not what a human could stuff in that space. There’s a reason the largest animal we’ve gotten in the advent calendar has been a foal, and the doe is clearly much bigger than that.
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As much as I’d love to see the new patronus animals in realistic colors ASAP, I’m not sure the doe really has much of a place in winter/holiday sets – at least not any more than anywhere else. The stag has appeared a few times in Christmas themed sets because its antlers mean it can masquerade as a reindeer. And contrary to what certain 1960s film productions (looking at you Rankin/Bass) want you to believe, female reindeer have antlers just like the males. That means the winter sets aren’t necessarily an automatic fit for the doe (and I’m fairly sure she literally wouldn’t fit behind an advent calendar door), so we might want to save our hopes for a proper woodland set (on the bright side, that increases the odds that she’ll be accompanied by a fawn when she appears).
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Technically Birds is taxonomically a Class (Aves), not a family like Canidae and Felidae. (You are also missing several, including the pigeon) A proper one to one comparison would be to compare all the Mammals to all the Birds (Reptiles and Amphibians are losing out any way you slice it).
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Especially since Lego proved they could pull that off technically with the BaM Dachshund.
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I mean, rats identical to the ones in the Harry Potter sets have been in City sets since shortly before Harry Potter rebooted. So that’s not really relevant. Mrs. Norris has unrealistic red eyes, so I can sort of see how her print could be trademarked, and the first version of Crookshanks appeared in a CMF and obviously wasn’t going to show up anywhere else. The Grimmauld Place Crookshanks and the seven or so different owl recolors+prints locked out of Pick a Brick is annoying, and I’m guessing the Lego designers could fix it by, for example, using the snowy owl in an arctic expedition set like the ones we had recently, but haven’t for some reason. As of right now, the mastiff is the only real world animal mold that hasn’t made the jump outside the theme, and the fact that it hasn’t been recolored and used elsewhere like the patronus animals yet is frankly odd. But who knows, maybe now that Lego has figured out the fawn and black coloring for the pig, they’ll do the mastiff next.
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I mean, all the animals introduced as patronuses (stag, otter, hare) had realistically colored counterparts pretty expediently, as did the flying owl. The phoenix mold is probably off limits because that version of the mythical bird was specifically designed for the WB movies, so, other than the mastiff, the only animals Lego has actually gotten weird about in regards to Harry Potter is not putting most of the owl color variants introduced in the sets on Pick a Brick. With that in mind, we should get a recolored version eventually, and it’s actually odd we haven’t gotten one already.
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We have a sight hound – the Afghan Hound that came with the dog groomers in series 25. The lack of Border Collie, Australia Shepherd, or Corgi to herd the sheep and goats around the farm is annoying though. Oh, definitely. Now that we’ve gotten pigeons we need red foxes and raccoons to root through the City garbage cans for those brand new fish skeletons. As far as species that would need their own wildlife subtheme to introduce, I’d love to see some South American or Australian animals to go with the toucan and koala.
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Definitely agree on the more working breeds – I want dogs that are actually doing something as opposed to set dressing. The mainstay Alsatian, the Golden Retriever (introduced alongside the dog harness), and the vested lab are all excellent, but it would be cool to see breeds more specialized than the three most common service dogs. It would be nice to see the mastiff mold break out of licensed character prison, and I’d also love a Newfoundland, a proper Dalmatian, a Puli, and terriers (at least the last one seems to be coming up based on the Harry Potter leaks). That said, at least the Pug being introduced is finally offering a ‘real’ counterpart to the costumed figure from CMF 21. Perhaps this means we might one day get counterparts to other long neglected animal outfits, like the llama, raccoon, and, of course, the red fox!
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Some more animals to add life to cityscapes would definitely be appreciated – and swans are often seen in parks with lake features because of their history. They also have a decent amount of representation in fairy tales and thus are useful for Castle fans. Chocolate rabbits are ubiquitous with Easter to the point that everyone in the western world has seen armies of mass produced ones lined up on shelves on a yearly basis. In contrast, a swan sculpted out of ephemeral material is basically the go-to for any piece of media to signal you’re at a super fancy party. The dragon that the designers settled on using is not just a nearly unused mold, but also something that would be technically complex to make out of chocolate – which was almost certainly a point of consideration since to character is probably at least partially inspired by Amaury Guichon (aka ‘the Chocolate Guy’). TLDR – this is a gourmet Chocolatier and the general public is too familiar with chocolate bunnies to perceive them as gourmet and handmade.
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Official images of CMF series 29 have dropped, meaning high res pics of the new sitting cat, fish skeleton, and clownfish and recolored unicorn foal and baby dragon. The most interesting thing I can see is that the clownfish doesn’t seem to have an incorporated antistud – instead it looks like it has a hole for a 3.2 shaft, and the CMF box includes one of the transparent ‘nipple’ pieces that it can be put on (as well as a second one for the scuba fin wearing minifigure the clownfish comes with). It’s definitely a take I haven’t seen before with an animal, but it makes sense – a proper built in antistud would mess with the shape of a relatively small fish, and it’s not like anyone will ever want to have a free swimming fish directly attached to a baseplate anyway.