Accio Lego

There’s an entire sticker sheet for WWW alone, and also no sign of anything for Ollivander’s (which is definitely going to be included because, uh, just look at that Harry variant that leaked), so as far as I’m concerned there’s a very high chance these aren’t the only sticker sheets.

I mean, purely theoretically yes. But that’s assuming a 15-20 minifigure count (which is admittedly a not unsafe assumption considering how minor a character one of our only leaks is), and it fails to actually look at how many new characters we actually got in the CMF. Series 2 features 4 characters (James, Lily, Kingsley, and Myrtle) that have never been made in Lego before, and another 4 characters who are being made for the first time since the reboot (Griphook, Fred, George, and Sprout). That’s HALF the CMF that could be considered ‘new characters’. Of the remaining variants, 7 were variants that had never been done before (and were unlikely to appear in sets), with Neville being the only one who could be said to have a ‘normal’ or ‘repetitive’ outfit. So yeah, I won’t argue that we might get a decent number of variants, and if the fig count is closer to 20 than 15 it might even rival the cmf. But as far as new characters go... We know we’re getting Fortescue and there’s a good chance we’ll see Lucius and Lockhart for the first time since the theme reboot, but with the trio plus some Weasleys given, plus the preexisting Hagrid and Ollivander practically guaranteed, with the distinct possibility that we’ll get more than one version of some characters - I wouldn’t consider the odds of getting 8 new characters particularly high. Add on the fact that the D2C will have much fewer new molds (if any) and the CMF will likely still be the superior choice in regards to new minifigures.

If you’re in the US like me, then I believe it’s a B&N exclusive, and they’ve got it slated for a September 1st release. The Lego store will also be selling it of course, but they’re current official release date is also September 1st (although some Lego stores claim that they can put out the sets early if they arrive before then - my local Lego store was pretty solid on the September 1st date when I called to ask though).

There are actually a decent number of BAM exclusive parts, although they’re all recolors/exclusive prints/recolors+exclusive prints. There’s a whole thread where people post the BAM exclusive pieces they find (or just rare pieces that become available in the BAM towers).

Yep. That’s where it was introduced.

The rat mold was done the same year as the Harry Potter theme rebooted though, so even if appeared in a City set first it was almost certainly done with Harry Potter in mind. And I’m really I’m also kind of speaking in a broader sense here, the older small animals in general just don’t fit lego’s current aesthetic - the owl, cat, dog, spider, and rat have all been redone since the early-mid 2000s at least, so the frog and bat are both due for updating to match (and I suppose you could make arguments about the parrot needing an update as well)

Sounds fun! The real question is are you doing book!Padma or movie!Padma?

We can only keep our fingers crossed for series 3 (and since this theme definitely has enough mileage to go another two years at least, I’m pretty optimistic about that). Werewolf Lupin with Padfoot would definitely be an ideal bag for me, and I hope we get Trevor as well eventually - after all, they’ve remade the owl, spider, and rat molds, the frog/toad mold is due for an update too.

I currently have them all lined up in their own little spot on a shelf, but it’s a tight squeeze with the new series coming out I plan on moving some of the ones that ‘fit’ in existing sets to where those sets are displayed (i.e. Draco with the Quidditch set, pajamas Harry by the Great Hall for the Mirror I’d Erised, Sprout and series 1 Neville by the greenhouse in the Astronomy Tower, etc.). I’ve already put the Bricktober pack Madam Hooch in the Quidditch set with the players so it’s just a logical extension. The figs that don’t fit in any sets will stay in the currently designated space (probably along with the remaining bricktober figs spare trio from this year’s advent calendar). Yeah, I wouldn’t trust this person if they’re trying to pass off that poster as a real piece. Either they know it’s fake and are trying to pull a slightly better fake leak scam than the last guy, or they saw it and reposted just thinking it had to be a leak and didn’t do any research into the source material to discover it wasn’t even based off official art. Either way, they don’t have access to legitimate information.

We might not be see anything for this year’s sets just because by the time things would have actually been finalized a lot of places would have been going into quarantine. I’m not sure how many people work on those stop motion animations, but it’s very labor intensive and it’s going to take longer if you’ve only got one or two people working on it. There’s also the issue of people working from home - because stop motion takes so much time you really can’t have any sort of natural light source seeping into your studio when you’re filming, and most people don’t have access to a windowless room of a proper size in their home. We’ve already speculated that the rendered images vs. photos on the box art could be a product of quarantine caution, stop motion videos could be another casualty unfortunately.

Not for my Harry Potter sets. I’ve got boxes save from the Architecture and Ideas set I’ve gotten over the years, but that’s because they tend to be construed differently and therefore sturdier than the more kid oriented themes. I usually have the instructions and spare parts for a set in the box (and in a couple of cases, the instructions and spare parts from a third party lighting kit), but with those smaller adult targeted sets the boxes really aren’t that big and don’t take up a whole lot of room. With the Harry Potter sets I just keep the instructions piled in their own filing box, with the smaller booklets in a separate aluminum Harry Potter box I got when I was little (which is actually full now, I’m going to need to get another one), but I typically just recycle the boxes because they’re too flimsy to use for storage like the others and I don’t feel like having to store a bunch of collapsed boxes. So far the only Harry Potter box I’ve kept is the Advent Calendar one, and that’s only because the instructions are printed on it.

I’d never considered the focus on social events over action scenes before, but I see it now that you mention it. Although I think part of that might have to do with LEGO’s focus on recreating specific scenes, as opposed to to just throwing in the same six characters + one movie specific character like they did in the 2001/2004/2007 castles. I also suspect having Luna instead of Ron in the RoR set has at least something to do with keeping the Ron/Hermione ratio equal, which the designers seem to be consciously trying to do. As for the lack of a troll or Fluffy, I think that has less to do with them not appealing to girls (trust me, girls like those scenes, some of Hermione’s and McGonagall’s best lines in the first movie come from those scenes) and more to do with the first movie sets being made the same year the them was rebooted, and as a result a massive amount of the theme’s budget went into things like the new wand and hair pieces. Those things were going to be used for years to come, so obviously they took priority over the new molds needed for a three headed dog, troll, or (yes) even a basilisk. As for the Drumstrang ship, that should be interesting. I suspect it didn’t make the cut last year because it’s going to be a big ticket item and right now priority is being given to Castle sections. With the Burrow coming out this year at the same price point as the Astronomy Tower I think we have a better chance of Lego taking a shot with the Drumstrang ship in the future if both this year’s high priced sets sell well and aren’t hurt by the fact that they were released at the same time. That being said, I also wouldn’t be surprised if Lego waited until Barracuda Bay was retired on on the way out before releasing another big ship set in any theme. It’s just that with no current pirates theme I doubt they won’t take advantage of the fact that all the pirates fans will be drawn to a big ship set no matter what the theme if it’s the only one on the market.

The Beauxbatons Carriage is an oddball set, but I’m not going to complain, since it’s also one of my favorites (it’s been a dream set for me since back when I was a little kid and the first GoF sets were released, so it was amazing to actually get it and so we’ll designed). And hopefully it will have sold well enough to reassure Lego that sets for the theme without Harry actually in them are still desirable (I think Borgin & Burke’s could work quite well as a stand-alone set and wouldn’t necessarily need Harry to be included).

The series 1 reveal was definitely unusual for a CMF, since they did a photo shoot with the real minifigures in the Great Hall at the studio tour instead of just uploading the rendered images that get included in the product listing on their website like other CMFs. Which poses an interesting question. Do you guys think that Lego will do the typical high res rendered images like other CMFs or do a repeat of series 1 for series 2. I don’t think the studio tour is open to the public yet, but one Lego employee taking photos should be doable, so it’s really down to being an atheistic choice by Lego. Thoughts?

I agree that the official CMF reveal will almost certainly be done before the Diagon Alley reveal, and frankly if it doesn’t happen on Monday I’ll have a lot of questions (Lego has to know the series has been leaked by now, and given how close we are to the normal announcement time, they should really already have the official images ready and just need to post them). However, I think getting the official images is more than just a formality at this point. We’ve only seen good irl pics of a couple of the characters, for all the rest we’re working solely from the checklist sheet and box art, which aren’t the best pictures, even if we’ve gotten slightly clearer ones now. There’s definitely some printing on Lily and baby Harry that we can’t properly make out, and we wouldn’t know about Bellatrix’s arm printing if someone hadn’t gotten the actual minifigure and posted pictures. I expect to get another layer of detail visible when Lego drops the official images, so I’m looking forward to seeing them.

True, but it also happens to be a scene that there’s already a set depicting - and many people have expressed the opinion that Ginny is ‘missing’ from that set, so there will be plenty of people who want that minifigure (which is the main thing Lego cares about).

My local Lego store told me the release date is now September 1st when I called them yesterday.

It actually not certain that Luna comes with that hairpiece. Between the fact that it’s not actually shown on the checklist sheet and the fact that it’s the hairpiece used for Luna back in 2010 as opposed to the current sets, there’s a good chance the person who took those pictures just already had that hairpiece and put it on the cmf figure to show how it looked without the lion headdress. Don’t forget how half the names were bizarrely misspelled

Some pictures have finally turned up on Instagram where you can actually see some of the finer details on the figs. Like, I can finally see James glasses Some things I’ve noticed with a better look - Lily seems to have more leg printing than I originally thought, but it’s really hard to see because it’s black on dark blue, definitely waiting to see the proper high res pics before passing judgement on this one. - The more I can actually see of the twins’ prints the more satisfied I am with how they were done, they’re just really fun little characters. - Kingsley also seems to have a decent amount of leg printing visible behind his cloth pieces, which is excellent. A much better picture of the box display has also surfaced, and it shows the alternate faces on several characters. Based off the box art and checklist: Kingsley clearly has no alternate face, Griphook, Lily, Ginny, and Neville are unknown, and everyone else definitely has two face options. Even if those four unknowns are all single sided heads, that’s still pretty great for a CMF.

It’s ‘kingnono’ but he just (not surprisingly) deleted his account (for the second time) so I doubt you’ll ever have to worry about seeing him (using the same name). On the subject of whether or not WWW will be in DA, it’s honestly probably the only shop where’d I’d truly be happy one way or the other. I really want to get it so I’d be thrilled if it showed up in the D2C, but I know it has the power to sell as a stand-alone set (not to mention in a good location on the street to do an add on later) and with the last Harry Potter D2C light on the new molds a regular set might actually give the designers a better chance to go all out on it.

For those who have bought (or looked into buying) and complete set of a CMF series on eBay, how much are they usually marked up. Trying to weigh the cost benefits of just buying a full set outright at a markup vs putting in a larger initial investment in time and money but eventually having the net cost not be over retail by buying a full box and selling the extras through eBay myself.

Myrtle is a muggleborn and a Ravenclaw. And the 2per house rumor was started by the disgraced fake-leaker-who-shall-not-be-named. I wasn’t a horrible guess, since there were at least 2 characters from each house in series 1. However, that logic was thrown out the same window as the theory that Disney series 2 would be evenly divided between mascots, classic movies, modern movies, and Pixar like its series 1 was. I’ll admit I’m a bit apprehensive about the actual graphic design on those two, but even the ‘good’ pictures I’m seeing are still on the blurry side, so I’m reserving final judgment for when some actual high res pics show up, because I have no ide how accurately my brain is filling in the details at this point.

I agree. I think people have a knee jerk reaction to ‘twin in the cmf’ and overlook the fact that these two have two sets of entirely unique prints (including on the hats it appears). After having the only version of the twins be a single minifigure with a double sided head for so long (despite the costume designers including subtle differences in most of their outfits), having the Weasley twins not just with different prints but also Hogwarts aged and in casual clothes was practically unthinkable. If you asked me I would have said our odds of getting the twins outside of WWW was pretty slim unless Lego decided to reuse their heads from that and slap them on some uniform torsos to make up part of some sort of a ‘Dumbledore’s Army expansion accessory pack’ or something. And who knows, with Lego reusing CMF prints, this might be their way of making sure the twins each have their own head in WWW (whether that turns out to be in the upcoming D2C or a stand-alone set later on).

Kingsley won’t have a double sided face, because his hat doesn’t cover the back of his head. But the leaked pics of the actual Dumbledore show that he definitely has an alternate face. I wouldn’t be surprised if Lily had a double sided head as well. And the written in diary is just amazing. I definitely considered the diary a likely accessory for Myrtle, and I did think the little conversation between Harry and Tom would be fun to get inside, but I never thought they’d actually give us another printed piece, especially with that level of detail the designers really love this theme and it shows.

There’s definitely more than a good chance we’ll get her in Diagon Alley in some form or other, whether it’s in F&B or WWW. And since the Chamber of Secrets is the set that gets speculated about every time a new wave is announced, I can’t imagine we won’t get a new version sooner or later - probably not next year, but I’d definitely give it good odds for 2022 since the theme definitely seems to be going strong enough to last that long - and the 2002 CoS set was where we got the very first Ginny minifig.