Accio Lego

It’s been 5 years since the last system scale Hogwarts Express, but the Collectors Edition just came out last year. I recognize there’s slightly different markets, but I still really doubt they’d do that.

That does seem to be the obvious answer yes. Between the coaster track and the Ukrainian Ironbelly there are plenty of places where a Deathly Hallows Gringott’s could use large molded pieces. Add in a big dome piece on the roof and it’s unsurprising that it has a lower parts ratio than Diagon Alley.

I thought there were two unidentified sets left - 76422 and 76423? Theoretically one of them could be the Sorting Hat we saw in the survey leaks, but I wasn’t aware there’d been any sort of confirmation.

Exactly, I can make an exception for really old movies like Dumbo and Peter Pan that are rather tarnished by period typical racism - if Disney wants to show they’ve moved past that then fine. But adapting anything from the renaissance onward is just gratuitous money grabbing - often for a movie that isn’t a patch on the original. It’s just plain logic – two animated characters are always going to be able to interact better than a human actor and cgi character, and fight scenes will always be smoother when they’re animated all the way through instead of having to choreograph between actors, stuntmen, and full cgi (just look at Into the Spiderverse, The Owl House, and even as far back as ATLA compared to comparable fantasy battles in live action).

Yeah, the lack of cape is a bit annoying, luckily bricklink will provide

I mean, the movie only stuck the Firebolt at the very end right before the credits, so you could consider its presence in the castle at all an Easter egg reference to the fact the Harry gets it for Christmas in the books.

Hard to say for sure, since the Harry Potter sets don't have a concrete June 1st release like the recently revealed Jurassic Park sets, but we got images in early April last year and proper descriptions before that, so there’s a high chance of seeing something within the next month

There’s also Rita Skeeter coming in the new edition of the Character Encyclopedia this summer

Cho Chang from the first Harry Potter series had a rubber hairpiece. It was great because she was one of two characters in a massive 22 character series with the exact same owl mold accessory, but her hair made it really easy to tell them apart.

Yeah, the Staircase promo was definitely odd in the sense that almost all of the Lego exclusive Harry Potter GWPs have come in the fall sometime after the D2C release, but the Staircase came in late summer for some reason. I kinda lucked out in that I hadn’t bought all the summer sets for myself yet, but I can see how it would have messed other people up. Thankfully, the rumored subject of this year’s gwp implies it ties directly into this year’s big D2C, so anyone who’s interested in Gringott’s is probably good to go.

The Harry Potter DOTS sets are back up on shop@home. Looks like the reason they disappeared was because Lego wanted to do a social media push for the collaboration - at least the sets going back up seems to have coincided with Lego posting a promo on Instagram.

Yeah, the interiors really don’t have any room to play in at all. Not only is there not much depth to the rooms, but there’s no height either. Which isn’t a problem with most of them, but when I went to put Umbridge at her seat behind the elevated podium in the courtroom, it took a bit of finagling to actually get her up there. She technically fits, but there’s a support beam that blocks the upper half of her face, including her eyes. The effect if you set up the courtroom scene is fine from a distance, but rather awkward if you actually look at it closely.

Falconfan just posted pics of the polybag on Instagram! Cho Chang, I never thought I’d be so happy to see you in a set ever again!

Agreed, the minifigs last year were decent, but I think the majority consensus among fans is a preference for minifigure scale builds that can be used to create or expand a scene. Luckily, with four of the leaked characters from the same scene and the other two being the Hogsmeade pubs’ landlords, this year’s calendar is looking a lot more like the Yule Ball calendar than any of the others.

The Drumstrang ship would definitely make sense if we take last year’s winter and summer waves into consideration. Last year’s winter wave consisted of 3 ‘gimmick’ sets and the Hospital Wing from the end of PoA. Then the summer wave included the Shrieking Shack and Sirius’ Rescue, two more sets centered around the end of PoA. This year’s winter wave has the four banner sets, the Room of Hidden Things from DH2, and the Lake Task set. We already know there’s going to be another larger Battle of Hogwarts set, but so far there’s no word on any other GoF sets to tie into the Lake set. Given the pattern from last year and even this year of normal winter wave sets being expanded upon in the summer wave, another nautically themed GoF set would fit.

Tonks might be romantically paired with Lupin, but it’s worth noting that her and Kingsley both being aurors and Order members introduced at the exact same time makes them an ideal pair up for merchandising like this.

Is that fabric piece used for the stoles on Cruella and Prince John new? Because it works perfectly. Looking at the leaked Cruella she definitely needed some extra volume around the collar, but the existing plastic fur ruff would have interfered with her iconic hairstyle - which is of course the most important part of depicting her. A fabric piece seems like the perfect compromise in that situation. I also appreciate that there are more accessories than just the ones on the leaked list, like a printed tile for Cruella’s purse, Mulan having a sword, Pocahontas’ autumn leaves, and Tiana coming with a frog. Feels much more like lego pulling out all the stops for Disney’s 100th than the original list we saw. I’m pleasantly surprised by Baymax, he’s not quite perfect, but the new modified arms definitely help with his proportions. He feels out of scale with human minifig characters, but I guess that’s why the didn’t include any other Big Hero 6 characters. The choice for Mulan’s outfit was definitely not what I was expecting, but it looks well executed and I’m looking forward to seeing it in higher resolution.

Fabric pieces don’t tend to leak with the rest of the minifig. We saw this just recently with the orc warrior in series 24. So the Evil Queen will almost certainly come with a cape, we just won’t get to see it until the official reveal. Note that she and Mickey are also lacking any accessories (we can’t yet say whether or not Cruella comes with more than the Dalmatian or not) despite the leaked list clearly stating they both come with them.

Given that it’s supposed to be rare or even impossible for Ideas sets to introduce new molds (which obviously doesn’t happen in practice all the time) and they theoretically could have made do with the current Riddle/Lockhart hair mold for those minifigs, I can only imagine lego introduced it specifically because they fully intend to use it in other places.

I can’t see it being IP locked, the mold itself is too consistent with normal system style dogs when you look past the printing. I’m sure it was designed with reuse in mind.

That’s the Santa beard in grey right? I was considering the same, since it’s actually fairly similar to what Abe’s beard looks like in the Hogwarts Mystery animation. If nothing else, it’s about the right length and helps to differentiate him from Albus a bit.

Doug from the Up house is perfect, and I definitely appreciate the addition of the squirrel. Looks like the house also has an unprinted chicken in turquoise(?) for the weather vane, which I’m pretty sure is a new color for that piece.

There’s been at least one unique printed tile piece in each advent calendar so far (2021 was the sole exception with 5, but that’s likely down to the number of repeated torsos). And given we’re getting Aberforth I’d put the Hog’s Head sign at the top of the list of possibilities. Especially since the Hogsmeade set has already introduced (sticker) versions of the Sirius Black wanted poster and Honeydukes signage. New pics of Aberforth have shown up on Instagram showing the full prints (front and back) on both the head and torso. Pretty good for an advent calendar fig, just a shame he’s missing his kilt.

Can’t wait to see those Up characters at full resolution, but they look horribly tempting

I mean, according to the Escape from Gringotts ride at Universal Orlando Bill was there during the trio’s heist gone wrong. Not necessarily the strongest claim to canon, but with the number of minifigures one would expect from a set that price compared to the number of characters actually in the DH2 movie scenes (the trio, Griphook, Bogrod, and several nameless goblins a security wizards) it’s not out of the question that Lego might include another known bank employee.