Accio Lego

We haven’t gotten a Gambon Dumbledore since the Yule Ball based Clocktower in 2019. At this point the designers need to use him again or risk his hat and beard molds going defunct.

I think I remember seeing in the Lego Ideas guidelines that the broad strokes for alcohol (and maybe guns?) was no modern depictions, but historical and fantasy stuff is fine. Indy clearly falls into the historical category, and I imagine superheroes fall into the fantasy category (there’s decent odds of Black Widow sharing a set with an actual Norse god after all). In contrast, cartoon hijinks and talking animals probably don’t cross the fantasy threshold, and despite being around for a while l, Looney Toons setting and general technology is still very recognizable to modern audiences.

When Indiana Jones, Batman villains, or any agent of SHIELD fires a gun at someone they tend to drop dead. When Elmer Fudd or Yosemite Sam shoot someone goofy cartoon hijinks happen that the subject shakes off instantly.

Yes, that’s crux of the problem here. Gun toting Loony Toons characters are a particularly poignant example for this too. Think about all the times Elmer Fudd actually manages to shoot someone with his shotgun (a weapon many people in real life own), what happens? Elmer ends up with his face blacken and his hat shredded, or maybe Daffy’s bill spins round his head while his eyes stay in place. Whoever the victim is recovers almost instantly whatever the case, which is obviously extremely different from real life.

Lifestyle images are real life pictures of the actual set that are among the product images on the Lego website. For actual sets this often involves them being in a household setting and some combination of built/in progress and with/without human models interacting with it. With CMFs they tend not to want to distract from the smaller minifigs, so their lifestyle images tend to be in front of a plain photographer’s backdrop - one of them all lined up and a couple more of some kids holding them. If you go to the shop@home pages of the currently available series and scroll through the images the last three pics for both are this style of pic. r/legoleaks on Reddit currently has a post compiling all the recently leaked images (the lifestyle picture and some individual close up reders)

Some new images of series 27 have leaked. A lifestyle image of the entire series with the Jetpack Racer, Plushie Collector, Beastmaster, and Cupid in the foreground and the rest much smaller in the background (quality pretty low). And close up renders of the Beastmaster, Astronomy Kid, Hamster Costume, Jetpack Racer, and Pterodactyl Costume. Although sadly the animals and telescope didn’t make it into those. Especially frustrating considering the Cat Lover’s feline friend is cut off in the group shot. Noteworthy observations from what we can see: - Beastmaster’s cape looks new - Astronomy Kid does indeed have a prosthetic hand - Cupid seems to have an alternate face with heart eyes - Steampunk Inventor is out of focus in the background but there’s a clear difference between his legs, supporting the speculation of a robot prosthetic - Quartermaster is similarly hard to see, but clearly has some sort of fabric piece attached at the hips - Pterodactyl wing arms are definitely a new design different from the preexisting bat wing arms - Cat Lover has printed cat hairs covering their legs (absolutely adorable detail)

Lego has been advertising a live reveal and giveaway for a signed set that viewers can enter tomorrow. That’s almost certainly when the Botanical Garden will be revealed (I’m pretty sure the Endurance is the only other big D2C for this year that hasn’t been revealed yet, and the Farden is coming out first).

It would be kinda crazy if Camp Cretaceous/Chaos Theory’s version of Blue never got a version of her adult form, wouldn’t it? (Although obviously there’s a baby Ankylosaurus and a buildable baby Bumpy set) But I don’t think it’s been confirmed what the set names are yet, and that’s rather crucial to finding out which dinosaurs will feature.

It’s really hard to tell because so many of the shots clearly have a blue filter to make it look dark and gloomy. But checking Dobby’s death scene that comes immediately afterwards, it does look like it might be very dark brown or even black corduroy. And presumably Warner Bros. has given the Lego designers access to a better look at the actual costumes.

Looks like the new gargoyle piece will be flanking the Malfoy Manor gates – excellent. I also like the white peacocks side build. A little peeved they included Luna and Voldemort but left out Ron though.

Yeah, the buildable figures can’t be going too horribly – they just released a buildable figure set each in the new Wednesday and Wicked themes, including a new dual molded piece for the forearm + hand. That to me suggests that the concept has tested well enough that Lego is confident at being able to sell plenty more similar sets.

You never know – with Malfoy Manor on the release list we could get a Battle of the Seven Potters set at any time

By all rights a proper rendition of the dueling club should bring back the cobra from the Series 13 snake charmer. Lego skipped it in 2021, but the dueling club didn’t get its own set back then, it was basically just an extra play feature hidden in the Chamber of Secrets set. When you’re doing an actual set called Hogwarts Castle: Durling Club though, I expect to be able to properly act out the pivotal moment where Harry talks down a rearing cobra.

I mean, the Unikitty theme itself was extremely short lived despite having a tie in cartoon like Ninjago, Monkey Kid, and Dreamzzz. That suggests that none of the Unikitty products sold particularly well.

For those who don’t know “Mini Owl No. 22” hasn’t appeared in a Harry Potter set yet – it first appeared in a Friends set this summer (but delightfully has normal printing) which is why it isn’t IP locked like the new owls from the Owlery set in March. So if you’re like me and want every owl you can get your hands on to expand the parliament inhabiting your Wizarding World, it’s a great opportunity. I’ve already grabbed a couple, as well as some of the unprinted mini dragons (I’m planning on using the trans orange ones to add to the Feindfire in the Room of Hidden Things set), and a whole bunch of parts to redecorate the new Great Hall for Halloween like it should be. The confirmation that the upcoming Hagrid’s Motorbike set isn’t minifigure scale is a bit disappointing but completely unsurprising. The parts to price ratio for 76443 was always more in the buildable object/character range instead of a playset. I’ll hold out on any further judgement until we actually get pictures – the Harry Potter line doesn’t have the best track record here, but the buildable characters released recently for Wicked and Wednesday are decent enough. The Charms Classroom being half the size of the Potions Classroom is more worrying. We probably shouldn’t expect it to be fully enclosed this time – it will likely be open fronted like the bathroom and Hufflepuff common room modules from the Great Hall.

I mean, obviously Titanosaurus is the actual biggest known land dinosaur, but it’s never actually been brought back to life in the Jurassic franchise as far as I’m aware. Whereas those three large carnivores have been. Admittedly, the writers would be foolish not to make sure to introduce some new dinos, but given how ‘new’ dinosaurs come to be in-universe I can’t really see how Titanosaur would be explained (bringing back the world’s largest sauropod isn’t particularly cost effective when it doesn’t have any military applications, the theme park is defunct, and it would cost exponentially more than the already existing brachiosaurus to keep alive).

The synopsis floating around specifically says they need DNA samples from “the three most colossal creatures across land, sea and air” – so velociraptor and triceratops are not going to be on the characters’ list, and T. rex and Spinosaurus are unlikely to both be on it unless the writers want to imply the Mosasaur met a tragic end and go with a more modernly recognizable Spino that’s semi aquatic. Realistically though, we’re looking at Mosasaur, Quetzalcoatlus (which lego conveniently already has the molds for), and a theropod like Giganotosaurus or T.rex, or the rumored Spinosaurus. Which isn’t to say that the other classics won’t appear, they just won’t be part of the characters’ main goal.

Be careful where you say that. They might just go back to giving us vaguely phallic shaped fruits and vegetables.

Like the goat, the red panda features painted on decorations. At least the panda puts on a good show to make up for the price tag.

To be fair, the Death Eaters only start doing that smoke trail thing in later movies, so because Lego has been favoring everything before OotP we’re that special effect was introduced, there’s a very limited number of sets we would actually expect that sort of feature to even be on the table. The only set I can think of where it would truly be appropriate for the actual action sequences taking place is the Battle of Hogwarts set, and I think the budget was much better spent on the new casting wand and spell effect pieces. Maybe if the Hagrid’s Motorbike set is DH1 based we’ll finally see it in the Harry Potter theme.

When I first checked this several hours ago it listed two new bottles (same design, different colors) as amount the named parts with no images. It seems they’ve since confirmed that they’re the two new flasks from the Harry Potter Potions Classroom set – which is a nice confirmation. Really excited for Wednesday.

It’s entirely possible we’re going to see that when we get higher quality images of the Astronomy Kid. They appear to be wearing either the current prosthetic forearm made for Autumn in the Friends theme or something very similar to it. Given that Autumn has been sporting an arm stump since the Friend’s soft reboot a little while ago I find it hard to believe that the CMF team would be lazy and not make the Minifigure equivalent to her arm and prosthetic two separate pieces. There’s also a character that will feature heavily in the upcoming Jurassic World Chaos Theory seasons (the first season got a wave of sets) who is missing part of their left arm with no prosthetic in sight based off the trailers. Coincidentally, the left arm is also the one that Astronomy Kid seems to be wearing a prosthetic on, so make of that what you will.

To be honest, I completely forgot Train Costume kid was in that series. Good catch, and a quarter of the last ‘normal’ series having a visible disability aid just makes it all the more likely that Lego will want mor than one character like that this series.

The Harry Potter Potions smoke effects are there, but I’m not seeing the new flask (unless I’m missing it). That’s really good though – makes me hope that new gargoyle just introduced in the Wednesday theme will show up in PaB too. In addition to the baby stroller, the new brown wheelchair from the latest Harry Potter is also available for anyone who’s interested in historical/fantasy compatible disability aids. I forgot those Ninjago mini dragons would be available soon! I’m going to need some of those.

Fingers crossed that it’s something like D&D that can feature a bunch of new accessories and parts that can be useful outside of the license. Properties like Simpsons/Loony Toons/Muppets typically have almost no new parts outside of molds representing the specific characters, and it would kinda be a bummer for the CMFs to go 8 whole months without producing anything that people who aren’t interested in very specific licenses would be interested in.