Accio Lego

Out of curiosity – now that we seem to have the full line up of 25th anniversary patronuses, what kind of display are people planning for them? Everything other than the stag really doesn’t fit much with the sets they came with, so I was thinking of creating a display base for them all to be together around the 2023 Expecto Patronum set like the golden minifigures got in the Hogwarts Icons set. I just hadn’t started formatting it yet.

That’s one of the things that irks me – the movie Ministry’s most distinctive feature is the subway tiles everywhere. They literally just had to put down a layer of 1x2 black tiles with some strategically placed studs and I doubt it would have changed the price that much. I hope you have a robust collection of cats to make it accurate. :)

Just saw a build video of the Ministry and Harry has a new alternate face to represent when he gets possessed at the end of the final battle in OotP. That’s a really nice extra detail, especially since otherwise he’d be the most basic minifig in the set.

The point is that Borgin & Burke’s IS still a good set and nobody is arguing otherwise despite the fact that the element that introduced it to the story is basically a doggy door with a sticker instead of anything resembling a proper fireplace. We’ve all accepted that there are some things in every set that Lego will not have the space or budget to do in full, and part of the reason we accept it is because the designers often go out of their way to try and include some of the missing pieces elsewhere. The B&B gwp might have come out a few years ago, for instance, but I doubt the designers of the time weren’t aware that any future playset version in the style of the Diagon Alley subtheme would have room for a full floo fireplace that worked the same as the one in the Burrow, so they made one as a gwp. In other news: The metal D2C specific gwp has been revealed via an official Lego announcement. Like the last two it’s a flat upright display – this time depicting Harry in the visitors’ entrance phone both with a slider function that lets it go up and down. There’s also going to be a bauble ornament available from the Insiders reward center for 1700 points. One side features the trio in their SS third floor corridor outfits and the year, while the other side has the 25 Years of Magic logo. The ribbon is white with black stars and a Lego Insiders logo, so it’s possible we’ll be seeing more ornaments from different themes in the rewards center in the future.

Please feel free to use any physical or digital method you’d like to show how the floor space of the atrium in this set could fit both sections of fountain while still leaving literally any room for minifigures to be shown walking around and fighting. Because it sure as hell doesn’t look like there’s room to me. It seems crazy to me to be so up in arms over Lego not giving us a ridiculously overcrowded and therefore completely unusable atrium while putting the ‘missing’ elements in a separate gwp. Was anyone here complaining that this summer’s Borgin and Burke’s had a truly awful floo fireplace that looks like a barely considered afterthought? No. Because if you want a B&B fireplace with a solid floo play function that matches the Collector’s Edition Burrow then there’s a gwp that came out at the same time. We’ve acknowledged for years that the sets just don’t have unlimited room and budget, why attack the Lego designers when they use the preexisting gwp system to make things they literally couldn’t fit elsewhere. The only element of this gwp I’ll concede could have been in the main set is Fudge – but I’d bet if we put up a poll on who people would want if the set had just one more minifigure, Bellatrix would beat him hands down. He simply doesn’t do enough compared to literally everyone else in the set, but Lego does have a problem with shortchanging us on minifigures. (Harry Potter specifically too, The Daily Bugle coming out with 25 minifigures for less than Diagon Alley did with 17 the year before was a bit of a slap in the face)

O!M!G! Not only do we get the snack stand and newspaper stall, we get (part) of the missing section of the Fountain of Magical Brethren! And THREE whole minifigs too (albeit one unprinted). The most we’ve ever had in a Harry Potter gwp was two (and only one – for the 20th anniversary). No new prints, of course, but a solid line up nonetheless. Great to get Fudge here – I realize why many people wouldn’t like not getting in the actual Ministry set, but he ultimately does very little action-wise in the OotP battle which is the main focus, and since he’s a complete copy paste from the Hogsmeade set last year it makes more sense budget-wise to stick him here. Really like the extension of the fountain too. The gold plastic cape is a nice touch – since a lot of the secondary statue is incorporated into the flow of the witch’s robes and it’s nice to see that alluded to even if gold recolors for the centaur, goblin, and house elf were obviously never in the cards. (Not usually a fan of the plastic capes, but this is the perfect place for one. Is gold a recolor for that?) All in all, the piece count might be modest, but the three minifigures and three builds make it feel like you’re really getting a lot.

Something that I didn’t spot in the blurry leaks of the box but are on full view in the promo video are the Ministry memos. They come in colors like canon and have details in what look like stickers – which is a major upgrade from the unadorned white triangles we got in the previous playset. There’s also a prophecy orb with a printed label on it (presumably identifying it as pertaining to the Dark Lord and (?)Harry Potter)’ – which is another really fun detail to have. And while Dumbledore and Mrs. Figg leave something to be desired with hair choices, the designers went all out to make the first (and quite possibly only) genuine!Moody a definitive version of the character. His printing is flawless and he even has a brick built staff that properly looks like the movie prop instead of defaulting to the generic pole part they used in the past.

I mean, there’s having a difference of opinion and then there’s straight up lying about what I can see with my own two eyes to try and feel righteous. There can’t be more than one stud of space on either side of the half of the fountain we did get, ditto for in front of the office windows, the floo fireplace has only two or three studs of space in front of it and can’t really be blocked to keep it functional, and there’s three, maybe four, studs in front of the fountain which also needs to be clear because that’s literally the canon open space where the epic Dumbledore v. Voldemort duel happens. I wasn’t being hyperbolic when I said there was no room for any other builds. If you disagree with the premise of GWPs that’s fine, just say that. I’m not deaf to the argument that it’s an exploitation tactic. But trying to claim Lego is ripping people off because this particular GWP should’ve been part of the D2C is just dishonest. Thank you, I’m glad someone else is pointing it out too.

I stand corrected, it happens to have the dubious honor of being ‘that random unoccupied thing behind Harry while he’s being possessed’. I suppose I’ll forgive myself for not paying attention to the background enough to register it during that scene. My point about its significance and necessity to the Ministry set stands, and I think it can be argued that if the atrium space had enough room for more builds, we’d all rather see the rest of the Fountain of Magical Brethren or Voldemort’s fiendfire basilisk, not random convenience stands. So acting like they should have been in the main set and Lego is committing some horrible slight by making them a gwp is just silly.

Except it’s not really part of the scene. The newsstand in OotP is set up partway down the long hall of floo fireplaces that act as the entrance to the Ministry. In the set there is no long hallway, just a single fireplace to represent its entrance to conserve space and pieces. The canon spot for the newsstand is floating a few inches off the side of the set. The accompanying snack stand doesn’t exist in the movie at all. It’s not a tie fighter rack that completes the scene, it’s a little cleaning droid that acts as a cute little detail you can live without. It’s the same as when they did a newsstand gwp alongside one of the modular city sets – is it a nice to have that little detail, sure, but if you see the display without it you’re not going to feel like you’re missing anything (as demonstrated by the fact that nobody even mentioned the newsstand with three seconds of screen time wasn’t included until today ).

It’s a ferret, and I’m surprised they haven’t done that yet either, since it can be a domestic pet in City sets.

Absolutely hilarious that there are multiple people here clutching their pearls and claiming the newspaper stand is essential and Lego is awful for not including it in the main set when 1) it’s on screen for only a few seconds and not directly interacted with by any named characters, and 2) nobody here even mentioned its absence until the gwp name leaked. The ‘Ministry Munchies’ stand? Not even in the movies or books. The fact of the matter is, the modular city sets have done things like convince stands as GWPs before, so it wasn’t like Lego reached far for the idea. It’s a minor and non-essential bit of set dressing that will probably include some fun stickers and prints and a Ministry employee of some sort. It will make a fun addition to the Ministry or a Diagon Alley display for whoever makes a >$130 purchase at the beginning of September, but based on the discussion here between the set and gwp reveals, nobody who doesn’t get it will feel like they’re missing out on anything crucial.

Kingsley’s and Arthur’s patronuses show up almost back to back in the books with arguably equal prominence. The Lynx warns the wedding goers about the fall of the Ministry right before Death Eaters attack, and then after the trio escape and reach Grimmauld Place the Weasel shows up and gives them news about how the others are doing and tells them to keep hidden. Only Kingsley’s spell made it to the movies (albeit in that torturous incorporeal form Warner Bros. insisted on corrupting all the coolest patronus scenes into), so that probably also affected which of the two was chosen for the Ministry set. (Although having their patronus casting scenes cut didn’t stop Dumbledore and McGonagall from being represented.)

It is kinda weird that they skipped out on giving us masked Death Eaters when recreating the scene that made the masks iconic. Maybe we’ll get optional extra heads and hoods for Lucius and friend.

The Lego designers basically had the choice between doing the Lynx or a Weasel (Arthur Weasley’s patronus) and clearly decided the Lynx would be more recognizable and potentially useful in the future. There’s also six more known patronuses beyond the weasel, three of which are preexisting Lego molds (Fox, goat, and horse). They just have the misfortune to belong to much less prominent characters. (Except perhaps for Ginny, who probably just got shafted because of how expensive it would be to recolor the horse.) RIP the chances of getting a weasel, magpie, swan, or boar from this gimmick.

YES! WE’RE GETTING KINGSLEY’S LYNX! In other animal news there’s also a pigeon inhabiting ground level. I’ll admit, it’s a bit of a bummer that Fudge and Bellatrix aren’t included, but at least those two already exist from other sets and aren’t hard to get ahold of – whereas Tonks’s outfit for the DoM battle is pretty unique and we’ve never had Arabella Figg or a tru Mad-Eye Moody before. All in all, while we’re getting less bang for our buck, that’s unfortunately to be expected with modern economics, and Lego is still giving us plenty of fun details – for instance, the 2007 Hogwarts version of Umbridge’s office features her frolicking kitten plates as a single sticker applied to a flat wall, while here they’re represented as actual 2x2 round tiles.

There seems to be multiple custom fabric pieces for the Veil and Fudge banner, and large fabric parts tend to add quite a bit to the price tag.

As a weak defense of the lack of owl variety outside Harry Potter – owls are very rarely seen by your average urban citizen in real life, nor are they often encountered by daytime hikers (which doesn’t account for why the arctic exploration sets didn’t include one of the preexisting snowy owls, of course). Now that there’s a new Halloween version of the winter village series, it wouldn’t surprise me if we start to see more owls in future sets from that line.

So the identity of the GWP for the Icons PlayStation set has been leaked (Astrobot). Given that it’s scheduled to release October 1st that leaves me questioning what’s taking so long to reveal what’s coming with the Ministry coming out on September 1st. I’d be fine with only a name at this point, just give us something!

It’s not just based off a different image, it’s based on a preliminary version of the set. You can tell because there’s a door where the hall of prophecies is in the blurry picture, a cage-like structure (the elevator?) where the large Fudge banner is, and the muggle building up top clearly has a back wall while the newer picture shows it being open at the back. Using any details from that sketch as hard evidence would be foolish. In other news, I think instead of those offices on either side of the atrium being pull out modules, I think they’re just accessible from the back. I think the whole set might have features on the back actually, that would explain why the muggle building up top is basically just an archway accessible from both sides. And someone else here has already pointed out that it looks like there’s plenty of space for Courtroom 10 behind the Department of Mysteries.

The idea has occurred to me before, but the problem is that last year’s gwp was the DH resistance hideout version of the RoR – so it would kinda be having the same subject matter for the gwp two years in a row. Not impossible, since they are different, but seems unlikely.

Luna never being in a polybag is actually a little shocking given how popular she is. You’d think her plus a baby thestral and a small forbidden forest tree build would have been more popular than the Draco one (although I get why they didn’t do that at the time). I’m also surprised that we haven’t seen McGonagall yet, since there’s been a Dumbledore one in the past. Really, there are a lot of characters (irregardless of gender) who would probably be popular in polybags, but Lego hampers themselves by insisting on featuring Harry in every other one – despite Harry being in nearly every set and hands down the one character that anyone who own Harry Potter sets would have multiples of. At least a Herbology Lesson has the potential to be useful in multiples for people who want to build an expanded class (much like the Cho Chang quidditch one) and the build should be useful enough in multiples as well – which is an upgrade from this year’s Dumbledore’s Office one.

Bit annoying that the rumors of the new microscale Hogwarts having an exclusive minifig were false and got us wondering over nothing, but at least that means collectors who already have the previous microscale castles don’t need to fret over getting it. It’s a decent set that holds up well against the previous Disney sets of the same format.

*At least* 14 minifigs – Snape and his doe patronus were notably missing when the East Wing leaked like this. Knockturn Alley was more accurate but there’s no way to know one way or the other until proper pics leak.

Counting the entirety of the Gringotts building and underground as one level each is wildly disingenuous. The room we see inside the building is an atrium, which are typically multiple stories high to impress – hence the single roomed Gringott’s building standing slightly above all the two story Diagon shops it’s designed to be compatible with. The underground section has three levels of vaults. The entire thing is probably about five minifigure stories high, not including the dragon. Ultimately, I think the Ministry’s piece count is going to be lower because instead of the main structure being constructed to look like a building with all the necessary details, it’s essentially going to be just a box to contain the various rooms. Gringott’s got away with having the underground section be open around a central pillar, but the Ministry isn’t compatible with that kind of set up, so 75% of the back and sides of this thing are going to be featureless walls just there to provide structure. It wouldn’t surprise me if there were a lot of large panels used for the walls instead of the regular bricks used to build up the Gringotts and Diagon buildings. I image only the center of the middle level is going to be the atrium, with a couple of offices on one or both sides to maintain the whole ‘wall of windows’ feature from the movies. Once you’ve got offices for Umbridge, Arthur Weasley, and maybe the minister or aurors out of the way, your left with just needing to include Courtroom 10 and the department of mysteries, both of which are canonically on the lowest level.