Accio Lego

Yeah, they branded the Camp Cretaceous sets as “Jurassic World” and included Claire or Owen in each of the sets despite neither ever meeting the teen characters. Frankly I think our best best is that we might gets something with Binns or Peeves in it, seeing as they’re originally from the books and the majority of the fandom would know who they are. (With the class subjects that we’ve seen in the movies almost entirely exhausted, I think there’s a decent opportunity for a History of Magic moments set)

Has there been any news at all on whether the new sets this summer will still include chocolate frog cards like the Hospital Wing and Magical Trunk did? Or are we unlikely to get any news one way or the other until the set photos get released?

Aww, jealous. I was just gearing up to do a bricks and pieces order with plenty of animals, but then the service went down temporarily in the US Gonna have to wait until it’s back up to get my sea turtles and squirrels.

It was a promotional set a couple years back. Not sure how it was available elsewhere, but here in the states you showed up to a special Barnes and Noble event and got a free golden snitch build (after everyone with actual children of course).

The American website has taken down Bricks and Pieces and put up the statement: “We’re making some improvements to our brick buying experience. To keep everything going smoothly, we aren’t selling pieces through Bricks & Pieces while we make our updates. We’ll be back online (and better than ever!) very soon.” Pick a Brick is still the same though, so we’ll see what happens.

Personally, as far as Quidditch goes I’d much rather Lego finally give us a Hogwarts Quidditch teams accessory pack than a giant expensive stadium that would be nearly impossible to properly display.

You say there wouldn’t be enough people who opted out of Gringotts if it came as part of a much more expensive set to offset the increased price tag - I think there would be. Ultimately, neither of us has the knowledge and know how to say that for certain. Only whatever marketing team lego has working for them has all the numbers from previous sales and the ability to set up focus groups that will give them the data they need to determine what would be more profitable for the company, and we won’t know the results until Lego actually releases a new Gringott’s. Nobody would have thought they’d do a $250 set with Hedwig as the giant centerpiece only a year after releasing a $40 Hedwig, but Lego did it, and they probably sold a whole bunch to people who already had the $40 set. I think it’s safe to say that whoever is determining the subject matter of these sets isn’t always using the same logic as us. (I also think you’re severely underestimating how excited people will get over a powered model train, but that’s an entirely different subject) At the end of the day all we’ve got is unfounded speculation for the next several months (which is why I’m personally spending much more time wondering about the accessory pack and retailer exclusive, my curiosity will be satisfied much sooner)

I think you’re stuck in an adult collector’s mindset here. There’s not many people who would pay $100 each for Flourish and Blott’s or even Quality Quidditch Supplies outside the adult fans like us - so they don’t lose much by bundling them all together, because at the end of the day there aren’t going to be many people saying ‘Oh, I wanted Ollivander’s but I’m not going to get it because I don’t care about those other shops and it’s too expensive when I only want part of it’. They slapped an 18+ rating on that set for a reason, they know there aren’t many kids who’ll be super upset that their parents won’t buy it for them. Gringott’s, however, probably has more scenes than the rest of Diagon Alley combined, including some that are very action heavy. Add in the dragon and you’ve got one of the few DH2 sets that you can make, and another massive draw for kids. Gringotts can sell on it’s own in a way that stores’ whose interiors never appeared on screen just couldn’t, and there are going to be a lot of people who are willing to buy a Gringott’s set but wouldn’t be interested in paying an extra $300+ for it to be padded out with things they don’t care about. If you want an example from previous Harry Potter sets, don’t look any farther than last year. Myrtle’s bathroom is arguably a pretty important part of the Chamber of Secrets, but the actual Chamber of Secrets set didn’t include it, because Lego knew if they sold it with minifigs from another scene for a fifth of the price then they could sell the Polyjuice Potion Mistake set to everyone who’d bought the Chamber and a large number of people who won’t get the big Chamber set for whatever reason but are willing to get the much cheaper bathroom set. The same logic fits Gringott’s and Diagon Alley pretty perfectly. Yes, and like last year a lot of people are doing their best to ignore the very real possibility of the D2C being something other than a Minifigure based play set. There’s a very real possibility we’ll see lego announcing a life sized Dobby or Fawkes this year, but nobody seems to want to talk about that. As for the Hogwarts Express, the last one retailed at $80, but once you add power functions, multiple carriages, the extra minifigs to populate those carriages, a decent amount of track, expand the size of the station, and possibly even include both stations, you start getting up to that $470 figure. It wouldn’t look as pretty on a shelf as the Hogwarts Icons or microscale castle, but the working train angle would balance that out. So yeah, between the possibility of a sculptural set bringing the list of potential candidates well above just two and the Hogwarts Express being a perfectly healthy contender itself, I think we all need to recognize that Diagon Alley part 2 is far from guaranteed this year, because acting otherwise is a set up for disappointment.

yeah, I’m also having a hard time believing we’ll see Gringotts as part of this year’s D2C. After all, why leave it out of the original Diagon Alley set if not to sell it on its own as more affordable set later? And let’s not forget that this time last year the $250 D2C “had to be” Gringotts as well, and proceeded to throw everybody for a loop by not even being close.

The rumors are also saying that the Shack is going to come with the Whomping Willow as a side build. That’s where Lupin actually transforms in the movie, and while the two locations are connected by a passageway, they aren’t really adjacent enough for them to be bundled together unless they are specifically including it because they wanted to include Werewolf!Lupin as well.

The preliminary images of the Creator 3 in 1 Viking Ship just leaked and it looks like there are a couple of brick built ravens. Obviously this doesn’t mean any new molds because these creator 3 in 1 sets are always strictly brick built animals so far as I’ve seen, but here’s hoping it’s a step in the right direction of lego finally acknowledging that we need something other than seagulls and songbirds to populate our parks and streets.

That’s the thing, literally nobody was expecting some sort of big sculptural set until the named dropped, and even once we knew it was buildable objects I don’t think anybody truly expected Hedwig to be the crowning glory of the whole thing just one year after we’d gotten her as a $40 kinetic sculpture. So everyone saying it can’t be another sculptural set just one year after the Icons one might want to avoid putting money on it.

I think the main problem with that idea is that when we talk about the non-Great Hall+Grand Staircase parts of the castle not being as iconic and marketable, we aren’t talking about the interiors so much as the exteriors. The original microscale Hogwarts sold well because it featured that iconic exterior that we first saw in the original movie. There were plenty of AFOLs who skipped out on that set purely because it was microscale, but lego probably more that made up those numbers from Harry Potter fans who hadn’t thought of buying a lego set in years seeing their promo video recreating the nostalgia triggering scene from Sorcerer’s Stone and deciding they needed that. The rest of the castle though? That’s not nearly as recognizable a silhouette – in no small part because everything other than the Great Hall and main tower tended to get changed around a bit from movie to movie. The rest of the castle just isn’t enough to pull in the non-AFOL adults lego would need to sell this to in order to make it worthwhile, and adding the castle grounds and Hogsmeade wouldn’t really help - those smaller, low profile things would basically disappear next to a huge castle. tldr: Lego won’t make a microscale castle part two for the same reason they refused to approve the launch umbilical tower that was in scale with the already sold Saturn V set when it came up for review on Lego Ideas - there might be a small group of fans who would love it, but they’ve got a whole marketing team telling them it wouldn’t sell enough.

That particular torso pulled double duty as a casual look for both Hermione and Ginny in the 2010-11 waves, and it was used on Ginny first, so it’s hardly surprising that it seems more like one of her outfits. Hermione only appeared with this torso in the 2011 Diagon Alley, and since that set didn’t even have the budget for unique Weasley twins it’s hardly surprising they had to recycle a casual torso for Hermione.

Oddly enough - the US lego shop@home site has the Jane Goodall promo listed as having a $120 threshold on the ‘Offers & Sale’ page of the website, but $150 on the ‘Stores’ page. Clearly one of those is wrong.

Yeah, Angelina is one of my favorite minor characters, she’s got a lot of personality for such a small role in the books. And she actually does get a name drop during Lee Jordan’s announcing in the first movie too if I recall. Sadly, Lee’s commentary does not make into later movies, so we miss out on McGonagall having to tell him off for bemoaning the fact that Angelina won’t go out with him mid-match

Personally, I’d vote Angelina Johnson as the Gryffindor player if we were to ever able to miraculously get an accessory pack without Harry. But if we do get a quidditch pack it’ll probably be the first time I give in to temptation and buy multiples so I can at least build an entire Gryffindor team, so I the end it doesn’t really matter who we get (just that there’s a range of ages so we get different leg lengths).

There’s been a decent number of new hair pieces that have leaked (including the lavender one we’ve all been speculating is for Tonks) as well as some new grey unprinted parts that are obviously test pieces and a couple of Thor minifigs leaked right before the sets were announced. But there are definitely fewer leaks recently.

Janice has been part of Electric Mayhem and the Muppet Show in general since the very beginning. She’s hardly a random choice (there actually are random female characters that they could have dredged up to even out the gender ratio even more) and plenty of people know her, since she was mentioned as a possible character here multiple times before the list leaked.

After the recent reveal of the Marvel accessory pack I’m a lot less confident in my theory of a Harry Potter one based of the OotP Ministry battle. It would be a clever way for lego to give us some of the parts needed to convert the DH1 Ministry set, but it would require new minifigs for Tonks and the generic Death Eaters, and it’s pretty clear that these licensed minifig packs are never going to have more than one minifigure’s worth of new prints. I guess that narrows down where OotP Tonks could appear to either the Advent Calendar or $120 retailer exclusive. It also means it’s a little more likely that we could see a quidditch teams accessory pack, although I’m trying not to get my hopes too high, because we thought it was a shoe in last year and look how that turned out. One thing in favor of the quidditch pack though is that one of the last parts we needed to make fully diversified teams finally (theoretically) exists - the leaked Muppets CMF shows that Dr. Honeydew uses printed white midi-legs, implying there are unprinted ones in a lego factory somewhere. Medium white legs are pretty much essential if you want to put together an accurate full Gryffindor team from any year, and also useful for giving texture to the other house teams if you want to put those together. So fingers crossed that that’s a good sign.

Wow! Was not expecting Animal to come with a complete drum kit but it looks spectacular! And Kermit gets a brand new banjo, but Fozzy comes with a banana instead of a rubber chicken just like I expected. The Swedish Chef, Dr. Honeydew, Janice, and Gonzo are all completely expected accessories as well, but they’re executed flawlessly - love how the printing on Camila worked out. Love all the little details on these guys. Some of the general proportions are a little off, but nothing enough to be off putting (the Tweety Bird from the Loony Toons series just didn’t work for me). Waldorf and Statler are definitely the most ‘off’ feeling, but I can’t help wonder if part of the reason is that you never really see them standing up. And I was a little surprised when Scooter didn’t make the cut, but it looks like he ended up getting a tiny little cameo after all. I’m not sure what that laptop is all about, but I assume it’s from the Muppets Now show. All in all, I’m probably going to need to pick up at least half this series, if not all of them. Totally amazing.

Ugh. Jealous. That special isn’t going to be available in the US until April, and that’s only on HBO Max so who knows when/if it will air somewhere that isn’t behind a paywall. Here’s hoping it will eventually come out on DVD.

Not only is the Shrieking Shack (a dilapidated old house associated with Sirius Black) being released in the Harry Potter theme this year, but apparently the Marvel theme is releasing a modular style Sanctum Sanctorum (an unusual townhouse in a major city that acts as the headquarters for a secret society of magic users) for Doctor Strange 2. That’s two sets with an awful lot of overlap with Grimmauld Place coming out this year, and I’m not sure a $120 Grimmauld would be able to compete with either of them. Here’s hoping that all of us talking about it will convince lego they can sell us a proper modular style Grimmauld next year though, Marvel is hardly the only theme that could utilize that format.

I’m extremely curious about the accessories as well. The first Disney series didn’t give any accessories to characters with molded heads, but series 2 and the Loony Toons series seem to have firmly established that lego is including accessories with all characters now. With that in mind, I suspect that the lack of accessories on the leaked packaging is an aesthetic choice to keep it uncluttered (the Loony Toons series had accessories on the package, but I suspect that had a lot to do with wanting Porky Pig’s “That’s All Folks” sign on there). So the Muppets will almost certainly come with accessories, but we don’t have the faintest idea what any of them are. None of the molded head focused series over the last few years, so my guesses would be as follows: - Kermit the Frog: megaphone, Muppets poster 2x3 tile - Miss Piggy: handbag, lipstick? (This one’s tricky as she doesn’t have any classic props like some of the others, but I’d guess something related to fashion) - Fozzy Bear: microphone, banana - Gonzo the Great: chicken - Animal: drumsticks, chain - Janice: electric guitar (I know she’s a bassist, but I doubt lego would care enough about the distinction if they’re not doing new molds for accessories) - Swedish Chef: meat cleaver, whisk, I saw someone mention screaming vegetables before and the parts for that definitely already exist and have been printed before (in which case you’re definitely going to see the cleaver as well) Dr. Bunsen Honeydew: Erlenmeyer flask (or possibly a brick built propane torch) Beaker: brick built fire extinguisher Rowlf the Dog: 2x2 printed tile of sheet music or poetry Waldorf: cane, playbill Statler: heckling signs maybe? Obviously, Kermit and Fozzy would be better with a banjo and rubber chicken respectively, but that just doesn’t fit the pattern we’ve seen, and we’re already talking about 12 new molds just for the heads here. But who knows, I could be wrong, and lego has certainly bent the rules for where and what new molds are introduced for Disney before.

You know, I’ve seen a few suggestions for what the $120 retailer exclusive could be. Grimmauld Place is a popular one, the Drumstrang Ship, Second Task, or a combination of the two is also common. I’ve also seen more unlikely possibilities like more maxi figs or a SoD set. But so far I haven’t seen anyone really set the cat amongst the pigeons and point out that $120 is a high enough price point to accommodate a Diagon Alley compatible Gringotts.