Accio Lego

It’s not just a lego thing, Ginny’s underrepresented in merchandise no matter what brand you look at. I think the sad fact of the matter is that all these companies have done their market research and concluded that she’s just not as popular among fans as Luna or Hermione, so she’s more likely to get lost in the shuffle when a product has limited character spots.

It’s amazing tiny little details like that that make this series actually feel worth the price. I can’t wait to see what the tile in The Prince’s book looks like.

If there’s one thing I actually do enjoy about all my predictions for the last five CMF slots being wrong, it’s that it official killed the last shreds of credibility he was trying to salvage Yeah, Harry Potter compared to Star Wars definitely proves that quality beats quantity. True Harry Potter has the advantage in the CMF budget Star Wars can’t use, and the several years of inactivity before the reboot gave the redux sets more room to grow - but given that I thought “surely the Burrow is the one set from the old theme that can’t really be improved upon” and Lego said “hold my butterbeer”, it’s so obvious that designers really love this theme. You might not think much of Quidditch fan Luna and prison robes Bellatrix, but both characters are fan favorites, those variants will never be able to appear in sets, and had both been proposed as CMF possibilities long before the first package leak. You probably won’t see AFOLs army building them like some of the others, but I can guarantee there will be plenty of kids and adult Harry Potter fans who don’t collect Lego grabbing blind bags for themselves in hopes of getting one of those two specifically.

But unlike Disney series 2, where they had a lackluster character line up and then proceeded to screw several of the characters over in terms of accessories and prints (Jasmine blatantly reused the hair and accessory from the Princess sets and her prints did not make up for it) - pretty much all of the Harry Potter series 2 minifigures have really nice prints and unique accessories that don’t disappoint. Yes, there’s more of a focus on casual clothes but that just means the series will attract a decent number of non-Harry Potter fans and get a sales boost (between just the sword of Gryffindor, goblin ears, and Butterbeer mugs I can see a whole lot of AFOLs who were disappointed by everything but the Viking in series 20 being very interested in a licensed series when they otherwise wouldn’t be). The Disney series was half composed of mascot characters with molded heads (and very little else going for them) and the fact that two of those were practically identical to the minifigures in the Steamboat Willie ideas set was basically an insult to all those involved. Likewise, the DC Superheroes series failed to score enough nostalgia points to make up for the fact that some of the designs were too simple, and many fans were disgruntled with how many parts and prints were recycled when it felt like the new price hike justified something more. In contrast, for all the character selection might fall flat, pretty every single one of these actually looks like it justifies the higher price tag, and even the characters and variations that we might feel were ‘wasted spots’ are still ones that would never have appeared in a set (except for perhaps Ginny, although as much as I wish they’d just put her in the AT and spared Neville the indignity of the waiter’s outfit, I realize they were down to the wire on they’re budget).

I think Winky is the only one who gets drunk on it in the books. All the other scenes with drunk characters either don’t specify the drink or stated it to be something else. It’s regularly served to minors who are explicitly not allowed to consume drinks that are shown to actually get adult wizards drunk (Slughorn seems to have a laissez-faire attitude towards serving Harry alcohol in HBP despite him being a few month underage), like mulled mead or firewhisky. In any case, since the (extremely mildly) alcoholic version is totally fictional and the real version is nonalcoholic, it fits into lego’s guidelines of not depicting real life alcohol consumption.

Yeah, for two character variations that would have run the risk of being completely lackluster otherwise, they really went as extravagant as they could with Ron and Hermione. Plus, those outfits will fit in City/contemporary MOCs easily, and the Butterbeer mugs... the Butterbeer mugs take advantage of having a fictional nonalcoholic drink that looks a lot like beer to make a piece that lego’s policies would otherwise never allow. There will be a ton of AFOLs clambering to get ahold of those things. And a clear glass with colored ‘liquid’ in it for drinking is a new thing in general isn’t it? (I know there’s been a Erlenmeyer flask in a couple of different colors before, but that’s not exactly a proper drinking vessel).

The Unikitty ''CMF'' series says otherwise They also frequently print on the ‘hip’ pieces of minifigure legs, which definitely aren’t thicker than a tile/plate edge

Anyone else feeling a little more optimistic about actually getting Florian Fortescue’s ice cream parlor and not just the minifigure now that Ginny’s appeared with that very appropriate ice cream dish?

A better look at the instructions has been posted and the twins’ suitcase has a little betting table printed in the inside of the lid and comes with two printed 1x1 tiles in different colors. They really went all out on the details. Edit: it also clearly shows James with dual molded and printed legs. So that’s another plus.

As much as I feel let down by some of the character choices (I wanted OotP Tonks so much), I can’t say I’m disappointed by the new parts and prints! It’s crazy that we knew about DH Griphook being part of the line up, we’re still being totally blindsided by that amazing sword of Gryffindor (complete with ruby encrusted hilt! Have we ever gotten a sword with printed details before this ). I was also grumpy that the Hogwarts Students accessory pack only came with an open Marauders Map, but one of the twins coming with the more iconic closed version more than makes up for it. And Fawkes, and the butterbeer, and the amazing little details like the printed cheese wedge in the monster book. So amazing. And I think there are only FOUR minifigures in the entire series that don’t have at least one new mold, and of the remaining four, three have new recolors and they all have printed accessories. This might not be really close to what I’d want from a character lineup, but all of these minifigures are really well done (especially when compared to some of the lackluster offerings from the last two licensed series).

To this day the Hogwarts Classrooms (with Harry) and the Gryffindor Tower Rooms (with Ron) are some of the only Harry Potter sets from the old theme that I don’t have. Some enterprising relative gifted me with the Diagon Alley Shops one (whether they thought I’d like the Hermione one because I’m a girl or whether they knew me well enough to know she was my favorite character I can’t remember). The cardboard backgrounds were definitely weird, and they had an entirely different color palette from the rest of the theme. I remember wondering if they were some sort of knock off when I got mine because it was so different from the others and I’d never seen it in the Lego adds for the rest of the theme, but nope, Lego just released those three sets as their own little candy colored mini wave.

The original waves made up for their lack of screen accuracy and relatively low piece counts (compared to modern sets) by being jam packed with all sorts of random play features (there are so many hidden compartments with gemstones in that first Hogwarts Castle), throwing in as many owls, rats, and weirdly fluorescent spiders as they could, and being spiced with subtle design motifs from the pre-movie era merchandise artwork (those star spangled capes from the first two waves were clearly a direct reference to the old Mark Braught illustrations). They were just so much fun to play with, and they had such random goofy features peppered throughout them (Snape had a glow in the dark head, the Basilisk’s fangs were actually knives that also glow in the dark, nobody at WB ever bothered to tell Lego that Peeves was cut out of the movie fairly early on (although they did cast an actor for him) so he made it into two of the original sets, the really tall spiral staircases that got phased out around the same time flesh tones were phased in, and I can’t stress how much I love those random trans fluorescent spiders - if they do an anniversary set next year there’d better be fluorescent spiders or it wouldn’t be complete).

Yeah, I couldn’t tell you specifically either, just that I must have gotten multiple sets from that very first wave as birthday/Christmas gifts as a little kid when they were first released. The Flying Class set is one of the very few I didn’t save the instructions for so that was probably an early acquisition I guess, and I’m pretty sure the first Hogwarts Castle and Hogwarts Express and Forbidden Corridor sets were among that fist group as well?

Good to know. I’ll probably call my local Lego store tomorrow to see if they’re operating on the same information, and if they are, to see if they’d be willing to put me on some sort of mail list to let me know then the sets get in (if not I just I’ll just end up calling whenever they get a restocking shipment, but we’ll see).

Lol. Now I’m just imagining all those straight laced Harry Potter Lego fans who never sully themselves with leaks and only found out about the D2C because of the VIP questionnaire getting antsy “it’s been nearly two weeks!” while all of us on here are just sitting around like the Titanic meme “it’s been 84 years...”

If they don’t fully reveal it then they’ll definitely tease it. But seriously, the VIP question submission pretty much revealed to anyone not up to date on gossip that there definitely is a Harry Potter D2C coming, and by Friday it will be nearly two weeks since that submission page appeared, so they’ve definitely given themselves enough time to select questions for an interview on a very Harry Potter fandom significant day. And even if we don’t get a full D2C reveal this week, it’s almost certain we’ll get the CMF reveal this week (or at the very latest Monday or Tuesday of next week) - we have no idea when the D2C comes out, but we know the CMF comes out at the start of September, and they typically get revealed about a month before their release, so it’s time. Basically, the odds of us finishing this week without a Harry Potter reveal are slim, and if we don’t get I’d be inclined to suspect Lego was planning something but had to delay it for some reason (the Q&A being opened for questions less than two weeks before the 31st is too much of a coincidence).

So I’ve noticed that Funko’s 2018 Harry Potter advent calendar featured Harry and Ron in their Christmas jumpers, just like lego’s 2019 Harry Potter advent calendar. And then Funko’s 2019 calendar was Yule Ball themed and this year’s Lego calendar is as well. Using that logic, could Funko’s just revealed Harry Potter advent calendar for this year give us clues for next year’s Lego advent calendar? (Not that I think Lego is copying Funko, but if both companies are using the same logic and formulas to determine which Harry Potter Christmases will be the most marketable...)

CMFs generally don’t get big video announcements from what I’ve seen. Lego just tends to drop the pictures on their social media within a certain timeframe (the most recent series being an exception because it was shown at toy fair). With that in mind, I could definitely see Lego posting the CMF pictures one morning and releasing the DA announcement/Q&A interview in the afternoon (with maybe the designers talking about elements of the a CMF in their answers), since CMF reveals are never really promoted like D2C or Ideas reveals.

The CMF too. The DA hype is all from the Q&A and us making guesses on when they’ll release the video of that, but we’re right down to the wire of the typical CMF reveal window too. If the reveal doesn’t happen tomorrow, Friday, or Monday it’s going to start verging into ‘worryingly late’, so we all no it could drop any time and that makes us antsy.

For me it’s more the fact that the hair is in braids and Hermione wears hers loose in the winter scenes.

My choice would probably be OotP Tonks, probably in her Ministry battle outfit and coming with multiple colors of hair pieces. Don’t get me wrong, there are plenty of other characters I’d like to get for the first time or get proper updated versions of, but I think it would be a shame if the only version of Tonks we ever got was the HBP one in the Burrow - that movie really screws over her character in terms of development, so the only representation of the book Tonks that is such a fan favorite is really in the OotP movie.

I mean, being popular enough to get an entire new line of advent calendars started its second year out of the gate is pretty unprecedented. Especially since Harry Potter is full stop getting more exclusive prints and characters in its ACs compared to Star Wars.

Yeah, the movies play fast and loose with exact dates when it comes to anything other than Harry’s birthday, Halloween, and Christmas. Not that the books are that much better since September 2nd/the first day of classes seems to fall on a Monday six years in a row.

Why are we even discussing August 1st as an option? Not only is it a weekend, when Lego typically doesn’t do reveals, but it isn’t the date of Harry’s first visit to Diagon Alley. Hagrid breaks down the door of the-hut-on-the-rock just after it strikes midnight and becomes July 31st, he gives the whole “yer a wizard Harry” speech, they both get a few hours of sleep, wake up after the sun’s risen, then Hagrid takes Harry directly to Diagon Alley still on July 31st. By the time August 1st rolls around Harry is already back at No. 4 Privet Drive. If Lego wants the use a date significant to the story they’re only option is July 31st (unless the really reach and use Neville’s birthday I guess, but that’s still not in August).

Whatever next year’s expansion is I imagine it will be Deathly Hallows based, focused on some aspect of the Battle of Hogwarts. As for potential castle sets beyond that - I suspect the Forbidden Corridor and the Chamber of Secrets will probably take priority over a room that never had a proper action sequence in it. Lego hasn’t done all the potential sets from OotP by a long shot, but the thing is, after the first two movies more and more of the really big action scenes happen outside of the castle until DH2 (there’s a reason the large castle sets from the last two years have both featured Christmas parties). It’s even more noticeable in OotP where 90% of the story has the main characters helpless to influence the main conflict and most of the meaty scenes with a large number of characters (inside the castle) happen in the already done Room of Requirement. With the Weasley twins’ fireworks rather trick to pull off properly in LEGO form, I can only really see Umbridge’s office sneaking into a set if they ever get around to redoing the Room of Requirement or Dumbledore’s office.