Accio Lego

Huh, not something I would have guessed, but it looks like at least one of those two new themes is a female focused tv/movie property. That lends credibility to the rumors that both new themes are “for girls” and the remaining ‘Buffalo’ theme is additionally a Netflix property. I’m betting that $90 set is going to be great for anyone who loves trans green parts.

That’s definitely fun parts usage - but I’m not sure it’s ‘legal’ in the sense that I don’t think lego would ever allow removing minifigure hands to thread something onto the arms to be included as an official instruction.

Hogwarts Mystery released a book canon blue version of the dress awhile back that honestly looks a lot better, but it’s also prudent to remember that this isn’t meant to be a grand ball gown from a top designer - it’s a fancy party dress chosen by a fourteen year old girl who doesn’t care that much for fashion. In that sense, the horribly lackluster dresses sported by Fleur and the Patil twins bother me a lot more because those characters are supposed to care more about their clothes on a regular basis.

The problem is that advent calendars only have so much budget for new prints. That’s why we’ve had at least two recycled minifigs each year (three in the original Yule Ball calendar when the new figs needed skirt prints as well as torso prints). That’s why there was a bit of a pattern those first few years - Harry Potter had only just been rebooted so there were limited minifigures to pull from for the repeats, so the designers tended to grab them from one of the larger sets from the previous year.

It’s a throwback like the sand green roofs I think. The original Snape minifig had a lot of purple.

Moody has one of my favorite Yule Ball outfits purely because of his white ferret sporran, but I fear that wouldn’t translate well into lego

The thing is, based on the last two advent calendars and what sets are currently on shelves I don’t think lego can go with anything from the first three movies in the near future. That leaves a new Yule Ball calendar - which, fair enough, it’s been four years since the last one and there are plenty of variants to work with - or one of the OotP or HBP scenes. The Yule Ball definitely seems likely, but the 2020 Astronomy Tower is still on shelves and a Christmas at the Burrow theme would pair nicely with this year’s D2C so it’s hard to guess what the designer would choose.

So I was digging around and reports are that 40695 is this year’s Harry Potter GWP (no known threshold or release date yet). And 76438 seems to be the Advent Calendar with 301 pieces and the same price as last year’s. The latter is fun to speculate about - with the return of scene based advent calendars last year which movie/scene do we think the designers will go for this year? We’ve got: 1. Harry’s first proper Christmas in SS (mostly done in 2019 - with other elements appearing in 2018 and 2022 sets) 2. The polyjuice potion plot from CoS (mostly covered in the 2021 Polyjuice Potion Mistake set, although elements like Myrtle, the Slytherin common room, and the Hogwarts Architect’s Statue have appeared in other sets since then) 3. PoA Hogsmeade visit (2023 advent calendar) 4. Yule Ball (2019 Clocktower set, 2020 advent calendar, several characters/variants that could still be done) 5. Christmas at Grimmauld Place 6a. Slughorn’s Christmas party (2020 Astronomy Tower set, with the Ginny variant coming in that year’s CMF. Cormac McLaggen a notable missing character) 6b. Christmas at the Burrow (technically the 2020 set Attack on the Burrow occurs at this time, but does not feature any Christmas decorations) 7. Christmas in Godric’s Hollow Obviously 5 is a prime candidate since it hasn’t really been done before, but with the big Triwizard Tournament arrival set this summer a revisit of the Yule Ball wouldn’t shock me either. Ultimately I think anything between 4 and 6b is a possibility this year.

Pics of the Maribel set and buildable Stitch came out awhile back because they’re March releases, but I do love that capybara. Rather annoying that it only comes in a $30 DOTS style set so far - hopefully we’ll see it in pick a brick eventually.

That definitely makes a whole lot of sense. And for a set that’s essentially an afterthought I think it turned out rather well, there are certainly a whole bunch of fun parts in there. I do wish they hadn’t used it as the premise for this year’s polybag as well though.

I’m fairly certain the upcoming magical creatures set just didn’t have the budget for a brand new animal, especially not something as par and complex as a unicorn. The set we got just doesn’t have any new molds, only a couple of new prints, one or two revivals of disused colors… but that’s a long ways away from new mold budget. They didn’t even bring back the fan favorite dual molded Niffler, so I’m wouldn’t be surprised if a new creature was completely off the table right from the start of the design process.

To be fair, if you put Harry, Firenze, and the Voldemort shade in a set and you’re already looking at a set in the budget of the typical small Forbidden Forest sets Lego has been doing. Especially if they include the unicorn a lot of people would really like. (Admittedly, I don’t think Lego would do a unicorn corpse, but if lego bent canon a little bit so that the objective is to save the wounded unicorn from Voldemort…)

I was definitely expecting the PoA versions of Harry and Hermione, but I can’t help but wonder why the Hermione one uses a One Ring to represent her Time Turner when a printed tile of the exact same size already exists.

Yeah, it’s pretty meh as far as polybags go. They could have at least used the new grey smowl from the Owlery instead of the barn owl (which was already in the 2021 polybag). There aren’t even any of the glow elements that make the set it attaches to interesting. It’s not even using a different Draco torso from the Hagrid’s Hut set, so it’s not like there’s a possibility this is the only uniformed Draco we’ll see this year. For a theme that’s been otherwise good about putting at least something interesting for collectors in most sets over the last few years, it’s definitely a letdown. The lack of collectible portrait is definitely a letdown. Do we know anything about a Gift with Purchase for this year?

The size doesn’t surprise me, you need both a speaker and a chip with enough memory and programming for 31 sound combinations - 4x4 and slightly more than a regular brick’s height is fairly believable. The lavender color though - well, Lego has a habit of making parts that are supposed to be covered up bright colors, but not normally that one. Maybe there’s going to be a semi-exposed sound brick in an upcoming Friends set? It’s the right color palette and that theme often has music focused sets. What I like is that it seems small enough to fit inside a plant pot. Perhaps the buildable Mandrake in the summer wave will actually scream?

The original Drumstrang ship was actually pretty light on piece count because the hull was constructed from two very large molded pieces. Not sure if they’d do that again, but I can see the outer hull being fairly low on parts. It’s also worth noting that the 2019 Carriage was designed to open up in a similar way to the Newt’s Suitcase set since it’s canonically bigger on the inside. That led to a lot of extra detail which theoretically the new version might streamline.

That’s animation? Yes, ATLA is western animation, but it borrows several stylistic choices from anime, so some people consider it borderline. For the purposes of legalities though, no it isn’t.

It randomly struck me while half awake this morning that since the Beauxbatons Carriage set in 2019 Lego has actually introduced a fabric piece that’s the exact same shape as the shall in their uniforms (in the Disney 100 cmf with both Cruella DeVil and Prince John). Now I’m wondering if Lego will reuse the old torso print or if we’ll get the blazer with the shall overtop.

I mean, even if Lego’s current contract does only cover the WB movies and not the WB owned games for some reason, both parties will be looking to renegotiate that with the upcoming Max show in the works anyway, so… @Tariq j I didn’t even think of Flamel or Bagshot! Both are immediately recognizable names as they played small but very pivotal roles in the main plots of the first and final movies respectively, and they both have official movie appearances but will 100% never appear normally in a set. They’d be perfect as special celebration minifigures.

I mean, the entire reason I’m even thinking so much about this is that this clearly isn’t a film only thing. Of the two anniversary Star Wars figs revealed, neither has ever appeared in the movies - one has only appeared in the cartoons and the other is from video games. And as I already said, another of the rumored characters is also video game exclusive. And while there’s no guarantee that lego will celebrate a future anniversary with exclusive figs, it’s a safe bet since minifigures are more individually collectible than any other lego element. If their tactic of including niche characters and variants goes over well with Star Wars, then I don’t see why the Harry Potter designer wouldn’t try the same thing with their theme – especially since they’re already going out of their way to give us some more obscure characters. And with no visual media off the table I could easily think of a wave’s worth of characters that would make fun minifigs. Celestina Warbeck has made appearances at the theme parks and in Hogwarts Mystery, Phineas Black has now made an appearance in Hogwarts Legacy to compensate for being cut from the movies, portrait only characters like the Fat Lady or Sir Cadogan would definitely generate some interest, and while Fantastic Beasts never got off the ground as it’s own theme - Young Dumbledore and Nagini would probably be well received by fans on their own, not to mention Peeves and Binns. And that’s not even getting into game exclusive characters, or even niche characters/variants from the main movies that are unlikely to make it into sets like Auntie Muriel or Krum in his quidditch robes.

So this is obviously a little further into the future than this year’s sets, but pictures of the first couple of 25th anniversary branded Star Wars sets recently dropped and it got me thinking about Harry Potter’s own anniversary of that same milestone being just a couple years out. The thing I really noticed is that Lego has changed tactics on the exclusive anniversary figs. The 20th anniversary figs were main characters with a gimmick (throwbacks for Star Wars, gold for Harry Potter) that ultimately meant the new figs were exclusively display pieces unable to integrate with regular minifigures in sets or MOCs. But for the Star Wars 25th lego seems to be pulling out all the stops and making the anniversary figs fairly detailed characters or variants that might otherwise be impossible to include in sets (for example, the player character from the Jedi: Fallen Order video game is supposedly the exclusive figure for the upcoming Death Star set). With that in mind, I’m wondering what it might look like if Harry Potter got the same treatment for its own 25th anniversary. If nothing else, it would be the perfect opportunity to finally give us Peeves.

That’s been brought up before, but there’s still the glaring fact that Buffalo’s sets are rated 10+ and Wednesday’s blood and gore means it’s very firmly teen rated. I’d expect any sets based on that IP to be rated 14+ irregardless of building techniques. The 10+ rating suggests a more family friendly property - possibly a little more intense than whatever Bright is or maybe just something with prominent non-human characters (10+ seems to be a common rating for buildable creatures across themes).

Oh yeah, I meant to put Rizzo on there, can’t believe I forgot. I do think ‘Marley & Marley’ would be better than the Ghosts of Past and Yet-to-Come though. Those two just don’t really fit the muppets vibe to me, and past is frankly kinda creepy. Whereas the Marley brother could just recolor the existing Statler and Waldorf heads and have their own catchy song in the movie.

Oooo that would be amazing. Let’s see: 1. Kermit as Bob Cratchit 2. Miss Piggy as Emily Cratchit 3. Robin as Tiny Tim 4. Fozzy Bear as Fezziwig (aka ‘Fozziwig’) 5. Gonzo as Charles Dickens/the narrator 6. Waldorf as Robert Marley 7. Statler as Jacob Marley 8. Bean Bunny as the street urchin 9. Ghost of Christmas Present 10. Sam the Eagle as the headmaster 11. Lew Zealand 12. Ebenezer Scrooge

The trick with doing entirely different types would be size differences. The chimp and current monkey aren’t that far off, but I expect the gorilla will be bigger and possibly feature some articulation. That said, we do know for sure that we’re getting a baby gorilla as well…