Accio Lego

They come in the large chocolate frogs (in movie accurate packaging, hence the pentagonal shape) that are sold at the theme parks, studio tours, and Harry Potter New York. You can also order them online at the Universal Studios shop website and https://harrypottershop.co.uk/ They’re solid milk chocolate and rather large which helps justify the price tag. The chocolate itself isn’t the greatest I’ve ever tasted but it’s still pretty good and leagues better than most chocolate decoratively molded into animals for the amusement of children. They recently introduced a dark chocolate variation at Universal Orlando and I’m eagerly awaiting the rollout to other locations so I can try it.

The crystal ball is a direct reference to the original Hogwarts Castle set, which had one in the exact same place - fitting for an anniversary set. The other objects up there are to help fill an otherwise unoccupied space. The number of frogs in that set is down to the designer being known to really love the frog piece. And he knew he could slip so many in there because of the prevalence of chocolate frogs/pet toads at Hogwarts and the fact that the original sets had a habit of slipping small animals in whenever they could as well.

I think there are definitely some missing details. The dragon and popcorn costumes don’t mention any accessories at all, despite the fact that it’s been ages since having a large costume meant nothing extra. The wolf and ship costumes are also suspiciously sparse. Especially with the wolf - the Fox and raccoon also each came with a sack piece but also came with a chicken and a trash can respectively, so it seems unlikely the wolf would only have a sack (and the sheep/lamb/piglet molds already exist to tie into a pretty classic narrative).

Ron definitely wears similar shirts in the later films. I could have sworn I saw him wearing it before but after looking through several images I couldn’t find a real match. He’s got shirts with slightly different zigzag patterns in a different color, shirts with very similar colors with entirely different patterns, but so far nothing that makes you say “oh, they must be going for that”. Maybe I just need to do another full series rewatch to find it ;)

Honestly, I’ll let Myrtle slide because the CMF version is two years old and I’m sure coming out in 2020 made it impossible for some people to acquire the cmf characters they wanted. I might have been able to get myself a full Harry Potter series 2 eventually, but I was never able to obtain the series 20 figs I wanted because none of the store in my area bothered stocking them. Add on the fact that they’ve changed her color palette to actually match one of the Nicks they’ve done and I consider her a solid choice - sort of like the 2019 Flitwick, not the character you’re buying the advent calendar for but hardly a disappointment. The frustrating inclusion is Tonks honestly. She’s wearing the exact same outfit as she is in the brand new Grimmauld Place set, just with the robe open so they can get out of giving her printed legs. That’s a torso print that really doesn’t need to exist. I’ll admit I like getting an alternate metamorphagus face for Tonks, but why do it this year? Why not wait a year or two and then just reuse the Grimmauld Place figure with a new head like they did with McGonagall and (presumably) Voldemort (and in a sense Griphook too). It would have freed up budget for more unique prints and probably helped sales of both Grimmauld and the two Advent Calendars.

I haven’t seen anyone bring it up yet, but the fairy is said to come with a candy cane. Glossing over just how wild all the winter village enthusiasts will go for a proper candy cane piece, this implies the fairy girl is Christmas themed as well. Could she be intended to be a Sugar Plum Fairy to go with the Nutcracker costume guy?

Just got this and built it for my birthday and it’s fantastic! Really fun build and a great look to the final product. I’m planning on using the wall mounting option for it. Can anyone who’s done that with this or other art sets give me some recommendations on what type of hardware works best with the mounting piece on the back. Specifically what the ideal nail/screw head diameter is.

He wears a brown robe like garment when seeing Harry off at Kings Cross. Combined with the lack of printing continued on the legs we’ve seen multiple times over the year that could easily be interpreted as a sweater. The leaked chevron patterned shirt is a bit confusing though. It has a rather Weasley vibe to it, but a cursory search has so far turned up nothing matching. I can’t help but think that the reason it stumping us is because it’s not from the advent calendar at all. All these torsos are missing arms after all, that means they were just snatched of the production line, right? It wouldn’t be the first time things have been grouped incorrectly or mistaken for something else by leakers. On a slightly less frustrated note, Myrtle’s torso is clearly not a repeat of her cmf color scheme. It’s not glow in the dark either but it looks to be the same as the Nearly Headless Nick from the 2018 Great Hall. That’s great, now stick to that one color palette for ghosts Lego I’m begging you.

The red dragon suit might not have come with any extra accessories, but neither did large molded costumes (like the firework costume from the same series) at the time, so that’s not really a metric even if we didn’t take into account that it’s reusing molds this time. I do hope they use the vidiyo dragon wings, since they’re bigger than the older ones and that would be another way to distinguish it from the red dragon suit.

Yeah, several of the descriptions include accessories but some don’t, and since we’ve been consistently getting accessories even with bulky costumes it seems likely that those characters do have them. Most notably, the green dragon costume lady hasn’t had an accessory revealed. The series 19 Fox costume came with a chicken because foxes and notorious for raiding henhouses, so could we see something similar here? Dragons are known for carrying off livestock after all, and the sheep and all the new baby animals are the right size to fit in a cmf.

Series 18 at least introduced the mouse (which hasn’t appeared in anything since) and the cat and spider costumes came with a fish and spider respectively. No sign of anything like that in series 23 :\

This series is pretty meh for me seeing how there’s no mention of any animals new or otherwise, and generally I’m not interested in costumes. I might pick up the green dragon suit woman though, since I missed picking up the red one in series 18. That’s an interesting thing though, the descriptions don’t seem to mention an accessory for her. I can’t imagine she doesn’t come with one, since she doesn’t use any new molds and the similar raccoon suit woman from series 22 came with two larger accessories.

That’s why I prefer to go to my local store for GWPs. Apart from the fact that lego usually adds on the polybag as a lower threshold store exclusive gwp, my local store tends to sell out of sets slower than the website.

I could see it being more along the lines of $120, but trying to guess when we don’t have a piece count is an effort in futility

Previous GWPs have been at around a $100 threshold although it wouldn’t shock me if this one was higher. I’m just surprised that we’re getting it in July instead of November like usual. And we finally know what 40577 is! Sadly that’s the final nail in the coffin of any hopes we had for an accessory pack this year. I’m excited to see what portraits we’ll get from the grand staircase though.

The 2020 AC goblet was definitely better, but this one seems to have some floor tiles that extend out beside it, presumably so a Minifigure can be secured next to it, and it comes with the printed parchment scrap, so at least it brings something new to the table. The micro Hogwarts Express also seems to come with a mini platform 9 3/4, which nicely sets it apart from the 2019 one. And the small “game included” text on the box has a spinner like last year’s next to it, so no dice on the dice. The box art is definitely not giving much up. My first reaction was that it was a lot sparser than previous years, so I went back and checked. The previous years all had at least one more minibuild visible in the box art, and revealed between 4 and 5 minifigs, whereas this year only has Tonks and Harry. The conscious decision to include significantly fewer minifigs on the box is interesting, especially since one of the two they do show is the repeat of all repeats. The exclusive characters and variants are one of the main selling points for the licensed advent calendars, so only showing off the new Tonks seems counterintuitive. I get that Voldemort wouldn’t be anyone’s first choice for promoting a holiday product, but the other 3 would work fine. Here’s hoping they’re just keeping the really exciting stuff in reserve.

Meh. At least this year they can just reuse the spinner print from last year and not waste any budget on that. Hope they retool the build a bit though, last year’s isn’t exactly the best at spinning.

On the bright side, they do seem to be skipping Ron and Hermione, which is good news for the amount variety in this and future advent calendars.

Honestly, I could see it being this, specifically because of the scene it’s in. See, all of the previous advent calendars have featured at least one stand out tile print. 2019 had the Hogwarts acceptance letter, 2020 had the Yule Ball poster, and last year a a few thanks to the number of repeat torsos. This year the only tile print we can see on the box art seems to be a scrap of paper with Harry’s name on it coming from the Goblet of Fire. Which just doesn’t seem like the sort of thing you’d choose to be your singular exclusive tile in an advent calendar, it seems like the sort of thing you squeeze in because you have the budget and it would be a fun little detail. But you know what does fit with the printed tile pattern from previous years? The old Order of the Phoenix group photo Sirius shows Harry in that exact scene.

Actually Ernie and Hannah DO have lines in some deleted scenes from CoS, which I’ve seen commonly added on into an extended cut of the movie (which I’ve even caught on tv occasionally) The Voldemort tracks with the head we saw leaked. With Tonks getting a new head and torso and Voldemort probably only getting the new head, plus the scrap of parchment from the goblet of fire, that’s 4 new prints already. The 2019 calendar had 7 new prints in total, 2020 had 8, and 2021 had 9 I believe. Assuming Sirius just has a new torso that does leave enough for a new torso print for Neville and a new head+torso+legs for Myrtle (and that’s assuming we don’t get another increase in the number of prints, and I can totally see the designers squeezing ten or more in there this year). If we do get Myrtle I hope she’s glow in the dark like Nick from last year (the ghosts are all fun but I’d like some consistency). That being said, I remain skeptical. The only post on Instagram I found claiming to know the advent calendar characters says they got the info from Promobricks. Which seems odd since I can’t find any sign of it on the actual Promobricks pages. Can anyone who knows German confirm whether or not it’s gotten an offhand mention in one of their articles or something I might not have noticed? Because otherwise this is just someone blowing hot air.

I was under the impression that there were two set numbers in the accessory pack/brickheadz/gwp number range. 40560 AND 40577. 40560 has been confirmed as brickheadz, but 40577 is still unaccounted for, and the fact that it’s non sequential with the brickheadz suggests it’s something different.

I imagine metallic printed packaging is a bit pricier (and probably at least slightly harder to quality control). Whether or not series 23 is anniversary focused, I think we’d all rather have as much of the budget as possible be put towards the contents instead of the bag. It’s also worth noting that other yellow packaged series include series 1, series 18 (celebrating the 40th anniversary of the minifigure), and series 10 (of Mr. Gold infamy). There are more of course, but those 3 are definitely some significant landmarks that mean yellow already has a anniversary connotation within the context of the Minifigure theme - add on the fact that the only 90th anniversary branded set we’ve seen so far, the forestmen gwp, has a yellow box, and I see that color choice actually adding weight to the theory that series 23 is anniversary themed.

Yeah, serious collectors have always been a part of the equation, but I’m guessing a massive chunk of CMF purchases come from impulse buys. That’s going to peter off if they get too pricey.

I know. I’ve been getting the Harry Potter advent calendars since they introduced them and haven’t really been concerned about the city ones since there was never anything particularly exclusive in them like there was with the licensed ones. But now they’re introducing new baby animal colors! So torn.

I’m cool with micro builds since I just add them to my micro Hogwarts Castle display. Also nice to get confirmation that the second Tonks is coming there. And the reveal that Harry (and probably by extension Ron and Hermione) is in standard Hogwarts robes is definitely interesting. When the 2019 calendar used a recycled trio we got 3 new minifigs with printed skirts (a total of 3 new torsos, 3 new ‘skirts’, and 1 new head). The advent calendar Tonks seems to have unprinted legs, meaning just a new torso and head. So there’s a very high chance we’ll see two more completely new minifigs to round out the typical 6 character lineup. And lego has clearly broken from the ‘follow a specific scene/sequence’ pattern they used for the first three advent calendars. Everything is on the table now, and it looks like we’ve got a combination of microbuilds, small minifig scale builds, and characters - much the same way Star Wars traditionally has had.