Accio Lego

I was thinking the same thing. And honestly, the trunk format would work really well for quidditch and allow lego to do a new set for the sport without feeling horribly repetitive like the 2010 one did (I remember at the time the only thing exciting about it was the improved minifig lineup since the actual build wasn’t much of an improvement on the 2002 version. Any current iteration would have a similar issue of differentiating itself from the 2018 set). And Lego would have to be pretty lazy to miss the fact that lots of collectors want a set where they can get all 4 quidditch uniforms together, thrown in Lee Jordan with a new dreadlocks piece (well within budget since you don’t need many new prints) and you’ve got an easy moneymaker.

Let’s not forget the alternate Dumbledore mirror of erised image (with him holding socks) from the 2018 Great Hall - the very first set of the reboot to be revealed. That’s definitely a book only Easter egg. Then there’s the little Ravenclaw dorm room in the 2020 Astronomy Tower, not to mention a few other minor details and technicalities scattered throughout the theme (for instance, we don’t see the interiors of half the Diagon Alley shops in the D2C, but that didn’t stop lego from making them with interiors). For that matter, just look at the most recent sets - Grimmauld Place includes the Horocrux locket hidden away in it despite it never being shown there in the movies (not to mention a sticker of a certain curtain covered portrait that never made it into the movie), and Arthur’s office is in the Ministry despite being completely skipped over in the films! In short, Lego might not be able to do anything contradicting the films, but they’ve done plenty of things that didn’t actually appear in them. Most book exclusive content would be riskier to do a set based completely on, but house common rooms? Those are a shoe in. And I’m pretty sure I brought it up before, but it bears mentioning again - all four common rooms have appeared in previous digital games and will continue to appear in any digital game that allows players to choose a house. Hogwarts Mystery features all four common rooms, and Hogwarts Legacy certainly will as well. Both are products of Portkey Games, a company set up by Warner Bros to handle all their Harry Potter video game projects. So it’s not like Warner Bros doesn’t own rights to official appearances of the Ravenclaw and Hufflepuff common rooms (the Gryffindor and Slytherin ones having already appeared in the movies). There really shouldn’t be anything stopping lego from making a series of four common rooms from a legal standpoint.

Interestingly enough, the term “Experience” is already attached to a Harry Potter property - the Forbidden Forest Experience, a nighttime walkthrough wooded location that, from what I can tell, let’s guests stroll along pathways and encounter magical creatures and other things (which mostly look like physical props, although there appears to be a VR screen type thing that allows visitors to ‘cast their patronus’). However, currently the only location is in England, and while a US location was recently announced as coming soon it hardly seems to be something widely recognized enough to make four whole sets based on it. More likely it’s a new term for a specific set type. It’s worth noting that in the case of the house common rooms, half of them don’t even appear in the movies, so there’s no specific moment to base the sets off of. Instead, Lego would be more likely to base their depictions off of the licensed video/mobile games, which fans experience in a different way. I might be grasping there but it’s worth consideration.

They’re enticing enough for certain collectors, and more importantly they’re relatively inexpensive while also not combining with any other sets, so they’re undoubtedly even more popular with the parents/kids demographic, which is why lego probably won’t stop making them anytime soon.

Four moments book price point sets? Dare we hope they’re the house common rooms we’ve all been wishing for? Goodness knows I’d immediately snap those up if lego made them. The teachers could easily be switched out for the respective house ghosts, and we might get some interesting student characters if there’s no excuse to put a Gryffindor in every set.

I don’t see there being a problem with Pepe’s character portrayal per se (he’s a relatively recent addition so he’s probably more pc than other muppets). I think the issue would be more one of the logistics of his arms and proportions and whether lego would consider the extra mold budget worth it when there are a multitude of other muppets who are more popular across generations. Keep in mind, the reason Pepe LePew wouldn’t have been considered for the Loony Toons series isn’t due to him being a French stereotype, it’s because his entire schtick is mistaking some poor unsuspecting creature for a lady skunk and ruthlessly pursuing them despite his poor victim being visibly terrified. He’s not being phased out by WB because he’s a cultural caricature, they’re trying to distance themselves from him because they don’t want to be accused of making light of sexual harassment.

Yes, it was a good movie, and while I don’t think it had the same box office numbers as previous installments, from what I gather it’s done fairly well comparatively in an era where you seem to need an army of rapid marvel fanboys to reach anything close to the opening day numbers you would have gotten 3 years ago. I agree that a Kowalski’s Bakery would be lovely, and I think a system scale buildable Qilin, with Newt and a molded baby to represent Newt’s first scene in the movie would have made for a nice low price point set. I also think that this would have been the perfect time to give us the Hog’s Head, since we’re unlikely to get an OotP version and a DH2 version wouldn’t offer much by way of Minifigure lineup. Honestly, I think merchandising companies shot themselves in the foot right from the start when it comes to the Fantastic Beasts franchise. Even Noble Collection, basically the go to for Harry Potter prop replicas, only did 5 wands and a handful of other basic things when the first movie released. Obvious moneymakers like the Niffler plushies and pose-able bowtruckle toys didn’t make an appearance until long after the movie released. Then Crimes of Grindelwald got a similarly anemic rollout of merchandise. The Zouwu should have been the breakout creature star of that movie, but the only Zouwu merch I ever remember seeing was a hard to get event exclusive Funko Pop. And now the poor Qilin is being similarly ignored by merchandisers, despite the fact that they’d probably have a line of people eager to buy a baby Qilin plush if the just made one. It just flabbergasts me that merchandisers act like Fantastic Beasts is unsellable when they never actually put much effort into giving customers something to buy.

The composite castle in the instructions doesn’t include the flying lesson set or Gryffindor dorm gwp either, and it puts the Fluffy module on the ground floor so the trapdoor can’t be used, so I’m inclined to do something different. I haven’t got Buckbeak’s Rescue yet either, but ultimately I’m hoping to arrange things so that the Gryffindor gwp behind one of the upper doorways (with the fat lady portrait in front of it) and the Fluffy Encounter room behind the other upper doorway so the movie scene can be recreated.

They’re definitely building up to something, although their being rather ambiguous to what it is. Definitely could be the train reveal though since she clearly filmed these spots at the same time as the LegoCon stuff and we know that involved the train platform.

That’s a fun thing to consider. Obviously, the most obvious place to introduce new animals is the city wildlife sets that come out regularly (although they seem to have been replaced by farm sets this year). If I was putting together a wave like that for lego, I’d personally go for a temperate deciduous forest biome. There’s already owls, an eagle/hawk, songbirds, squirrels, rats and mice, rabbits, rabbits, a hare, a river otter (that’s still due for a recolor), and a deer stag. That means you already have plenty of creatures to work with and can use your mold budget to really kick it up a notch. A deer doe and fawn are obvious editions, as are foxes (which can come in a variety of color morphs like squirrels), and I’d personally add a crow/raven (which could be useful in urban and seasonal sets). As a fifth new animal I’d go for a new breed of dog. The dachshund and retriever molds finally gave us floppy eared breeds after a long streak without, but I think it’s time to kick it up a notch and go full bloodhound. One or two of those would work well in a search and rescue theme City police set. (Of course if you hadn’t specified non-licensed, as a Harry Potter collector I’d be obligated to point out we’re overdue for a proper mastiff mold to represent Fang)

Oh yeah, there’s no way that lego put a bunch of their cameras and the suspected designer of the set on that platform and didn’t film a Hogwarts Express reveal, I just don’t think “the magic is you” sounds like a tagline for the train or even an advent calendar reveal. Sounds like they’re hyping something that’s going to have fan interaction. They’re teasing whatever it is just before Comic-Con, maybe we’ll see something there?

Lego social media (at least in the US) just posted a cryptic clip in their stories. A circle of light is drawn and the words “the magic is you” appear inside, along with the Harry Potter and Wizarding World logos. Clearly something is being announced for the theme soon, but the words don’t seem to mesh with a Hogwarts Express reveal. EDIT: looking through actual posts, there’s a slightly longer clip with Evanna Lynch in the studio tour, but it doesn’t really expand on what’s coming. It can’t be referring to the footage from LegoCon, that’s already been posted everywhere for weeks.

The same way regular minifigs ‘sit’ on horses I imagine. In other words, just stick them in there standing up and let your imagination extrapolate that there’s something between the legs despite knowing there’s no physical room there. It would mean the motorcycle looked more like a motor scooter when Hagrid wasn’t sitting in it, but that could be taken care of the same way they do with horses to.

A lot of those (like the recent blue milk Luke) are actually promos of some sort. I imagine that technically giving something away for free (as a bonus when you purchase something else) isn’t the same as selling it directly as far as the laws surrounding these things are concerned.

I doubt it. If anything, I’d expect it to be the other way around, with us getting four licensed series in a row with Muppets, a fall ‘22 licensed series, and then spring and summer ’23 licensed series before the introduction of the first boxes of an unlicensed series in fall ‘23 and possibly seeing a second unlicensed series directly after that. Just my opinion, but if I was an IP owner I’d want my product sold in the tried an true packaging instead of potentially flopping hard as the beta test of a new package style that it’s not hard to find out fans don’t like conceptually. So yeah, if the new package style was going to affect the pattern of licensed to unlicensed I’d expect to see more licensed series before the changeover as the license owners who already had agreements demand their products be marketed with previously agreed upon packaging, and then more unlicensed series after the switch as IP owners wait to see if the new packages sell as well before licensing their own series.

I think there’s a reasonably high chance of getting the Ukrainian Iornbelly separate from the rest of Gringotts. It would simply give the designers more breathing room to make the builds live up to expectations if they did a $150 Gringotts and a $50-60 Ironbelly instead of trying to cram them both into the same set design. You’d basically have to do Gringotts as a D2C if you had the dragon included, separating the two elements out would greatly increase the number of units sold (kids love dragons, and the Ninjago theme proves lego knows that). I think the question should be less ‘will the Ironbelly come as a separate set’ and more ‘will it be a kinetic sculpture like this year’s Horntail or should it be a more articulated build that can perch on to of a Gringotts set?’ Honestly, I love the idea of a Hog’s Head set. What I don’t really love is that lego had the perfect opportunity to do it this year, but all the merchandisers decided to ignore Secrets of Dumbledore for some reason. Seriously, the heroes use Aberforth’s pub as a home base multiple times in the movie and it’s largely unchanged from its appearance in the Harry Potter movies (including the Ariana portrait). It would have been the perfect opportunity to give the Hog’s Head with a unique and interesting line up of figures - as opposed to a DH2 version which can only have Aberforth as an exclusive because the trio are wearing the same outfits they do for the final battle (and an OotP version isn’t likely, there are two many characters in that scene and Aberforth is barely visible). It just a really fun set opportunity that was completely wasted.

I’ve seen CMFs on hangers in check out lines multiple times at Target. I got 75% of Harry Potter series 2 from target checkouts (thank goodness they weren’t being used when I wanted to stand there feeling bags). It’s definitely disappointing that the days of bag feeling are coming to an end. I strongly suspect this will either kill the Minifigures theme or lego will end up backtracking on the decision within a year or two, but who knows, maybe there will be enough resellers buying whole cases to keep it going. Certainly, a reseller is the only way I’ll be getting any figures once the changeover occurs.

Nah, my sister and had a couple and we were 90s kids. I can’t imagine they’ll ever become obsolete. Personally, I’m less interested in the potential period accessory uses and more looking forward to how if the head is a separate piece then unprinted versions could make for some really fun architectural embellishments.

So something interesting I noticed - in the lifestyle pictures on shop@home there’s a wide shot that has all the characters lined up together. At the very end of the line on the left side the costumed knight is show holding her stick horse with the previously pictured shield on the ground as she’s holding some kind of sword in the other hand. It’s a distinctly different design than the one the nutcracker comes with, so it can’t be a matter of him coming with a spare and the photographer mixing it up. So there’s a possibility that the knight comes with a third accessory that isn’t seen in any of the official renders.

No the original dragon suit didn’t, but characters like the Fox and raccoon costumes from more recent series came with 2 larger accessories in addition to their tails so it shouldn’t be outside the scope of possibility. Even in this series you’ve got the sugar fairy with wings and a tutu AND a crown and candy cane. And the turkey costume with new molds for the head and tail AND a new color for the wing arms AND a pumpkin with stem. The fact that the dragon and popcorn costumes don’t have any extra accessories just feels like a step back when you compare them to similar characters from series 19-22

I’m still scratching my head over the fact that the dragon and popcorn costumes don’t come with any accessories, despite comparable costumes in recent series consistently coming with something. Just another way this series isn’t up to scratch. I’m interested to see if the stick horse is a single piece or if it’s a separate horse head and technic rod.

For some reason my first thought was that you blended baby yoda into a smoothie (I guess it makes sense that a Disney lego store would have more Star Wars geared colors in the PaB wall)

Well yeah, it came out during the first year of Covid. Plenty of stores had stopped even stocking those sorts of impulse items, and most of the ones that still had them placed them behind the counter, making it harder to just pick some up on a whim and awkward at best to feel the bags to get a specific character. I imagine series 20 majorly underperformed as well - I think I only saw them in the wild once in all the months they were out. I’m pretty sure my local targets never even bothered stocking them. Anyway, I can’t imagine that the people lego has to crunch their numbers wouldn’t know to take stuff like a global pandemic into account, so even if this guy does have legitimate info it doesn’t mean much on its own.

Stuff I’ve been seeing says $130 usd. Which makes sense, it’s slightly more substantial than last year’s, but not by that much. The reason everyone likes it more is because it’s well designed, not because it has an insane piece count.

True, but the dragon and wolf are at the back of the group, so you can’t see their legs. If they had accessories on the ground next to them like the turkey and elf then we wouldn’t be able to see them. Not much, I know, but worth looking forward to seeing the full images for at least.