Accio Lego

When you think about it, all the books have some notable underground scenes (I guess a lot of the wizarding world is literally underground), and the only movie that doesn’t have a really iconic underground scene is GoF (since they cut out the scenes with the house elves in the basement kitchens and Harry and Malfoy’s attempted duel outside the potions classroom).

The reason that I was very skeptical of kingnono at first (and still retain a healthy pinch of skepticism just in case) is because his earlier hints were clearly meant to be extremely vaugue, and most pointed to things we’d already guessed or speculated. He’s gotten more specific as time goes on, but take the ‘He’s Back’ clue. Most people take that to be a quote, but kingnono’s previous quote clues all included quotation marks and there hadn’t been one for a while before ‘He’s Back’ was posted, meaning it might not be a quote at all, and that interpretation could mean it refers to any number of male characters who haven’t appeared since the original theme run. I think the only way I’ll ever feel really certain that he’s not just taking us all for a ride is if he ends up right about the really specific things like the advent calendar being OotP based or Borgin and Burke’s being in the D2C or 75978 and the D2C being different sets (since he seems to be one of the only sources for that information).

Yeah, I saw how four pages filled up overnight (for me) and assumed some new info must have dropped, but nope. This topic is going to explode when the D2C and CMF get announced.

Well, when you think about it, there aren’t many characters who actually need new leg prints (and it’s specifically new leg prints that kingnono implies we won’t be getting many of). Lockhart and maybe the twins need new legs, but Lucius can just use the Snape ones and I have a feeling the rest of the minifigure lineup for DA will be the trio and other teenage characters (possibly with alternate forms from different movies) and goblins, none of whom would use leg prints at all, let alone new ones. On the bright side - less budget spent on new leg prints means more money for new torso and face prints, right?

If 75987 turns out to be a Gringotts add on instead of the speculated Ministry battle then I’d hope it would be the dragon escape from Deathly Hallows. It’s not like there isn’t a bit of a precedent for Lego to skip ahead a bit (Hogwarts Express) and one of Kingnono’s early hints was a quote from Hermione polyjuiced as Bellatrix. I’d rather get Hagrid and year one casual clothes Harry in the Diagon Alley set, since that outfit for Harry is much more iconic in the Ollivander’s scene.

I don’t understand a word of German but I still found that very informative. I love the fact that it shows a closer look at the Ministry Educational Decrees, it’s so cute how they replaced the pointing finger graphic with a little gesturing minifigure hand. And you’re right, the minifigures all look much better in person than rendered.

Yeah, I think it’s practically guaranteed we’ll get Ollivander’s, and I’m definitely going to be stuffing it with all my spare wands too (I also have a ton, and expect to get a bunch more, especially with a new CMF coming). It all depends on the design but I imagine I’ll end up MOCing some extra shelves to go in the shop or extend out the back.

Ah yes, I nearly forgot about the glow in the Dark part - someone at Lego must have really subscribed to the whole’Snape is a vampire’ fantheory that apparently floated around for awhile (although did anyone really believe that or was it just a joke?) I suppose a rather confusingly done manakin is as good an explanation as any for that Death Eater. Although it does remind me of another shortfall of that set - namely that none of the characters had their own wands, there was just a little rotating display in the ‘Room of Requirement’ section that held four different colored L4 bars (which is what they used for wands back then). I much prefer Lego’s current take, where every witch and wizard gets a wand regardless of whether we ever see them using it or not and I’ve got so many spares that I can easily fix the few exceptions to that rule.

I think the worst part of the 2007 figures was that they just reused the Ron and Hermione heads from the 2005 GoF 2nd Task set - you can tell because they both have alternate sleeping faces, and the designers who originally did them obviously never really expected the waking faces to be visible, because the Hermione face especially is just off, it’s not really proportioned normally at all. And I think you’re misremembering what pre-flesh toned Snape looked like. He was never made with yellow skin, always grey. Funnily enough, the 2007 set is actually the first time he was available in flesh tone. He didn’t appear in the GoF wave and for some reason despite literally every other character switching to flesh tones in the 2004 PoA wave, Snape and Boggart Snape were still grey skinned. It was super weird in retrospect. And the random Death Eater in the 2007 set bothered me so much as a kid because Death Eaters didn’t attack Hogwarts in OotP so why was he there? Teenager me spent so much time trying to figure out where he was supposed to go when I displayed my sets.

Yes the OotP based Hogwarts Castle set that came out around 2007. It was also the first appearance of Umbridge and iirc the skeleton horse piece that it used for thestrals.

I think it’s a bit of a trade off, the old one was bigger but the new one is more open and has more plants.

Don’t forget the chocolate fountain! Add the Weasley family dinner, breakfast in the Great Hall from the polybag, and the floating cake from Privet Drive and we’ve got quite the collection of food this wave. And that’s not even taking into account whatever we’ll inevitably get from the advent calendar.

That seems to be the general expectation, since I think we all accept that with a set this scale the only way it’s going to get fully populated is if at least some of the minifigures have reused prints. Ollivander already has a perfectly acceptable figure in the reboot so naturally we expect the budget for new prints will go to other characters like the twins/Lucius Malfoy/Lockhart/etc. That being said, we don’t have any official word from Lego yet so nothing is certain yet.

Play features could also include a way to have wands explode off the shelves in Ollivander’s, a flu fireplace in Borgin and Burke’s, or even a moving wall in a potential Leaky Cauldron. On the topic of minifigures, I was just looking at pics of the WWW scene to check what the trio and Ginny were wearing, and I realized that Fred and George aren’t wearing the exact same outfit. It’s not super noticeable in the screenshots of the film because of the lightning, but it’s fairly obvious in the promotional shots. https://harrypotter.fandom.com/wiki/Fred_and_George_Weasley?file=Fred_and_George_Weasley_(HBP_promo).jpg Which makes me wonder if Lego will do the same figure for both like last time or if we’ll get two unique figs like we deserve.

From what I remember part recolors and new prints cost about the same (although I assume an assemblage like legs or a torso would cost more to recolor than a single solid piece). But yeah, that’s why so many new molds and recolors show up in CMFs, they have a separate budget.

Since we’re speculating on the number of figures in the D2C, there’s also kingnono’s ‘Thorsten and Torben’ riddle to unravel. It’s been pointed out that the names probably refer to Fred and George, who could only be appearing in the D2C, and kingnono has hinted that the ‘can’t change tires between Saturday and Sunday’ part is reference to F1 racing. I’m not familiar with the sport, but according to my research an F1 race takes place on Sunday and has 20 cars. The qualifying rounds take place on Saturday, and the top ten cars from those are required to use the tires from their fastest run in the Sunday race. This could suggest a few things: - 20 figures overall with 10 (including Fred and George) being exclusives - 10 figures overall (including Fred and George) - 10 exclusive figures (including Fred and George) with some other number overall.

I think lego made the decision to keep all the torsos in the minifigure pack generic because they know a lot of people are ultimately going to use it for army building and putting anything that would make it from a specific character or movie would negate its value in that sense.

Some people have theorized this could be referring to Lockhart, since he turns on Harry and Ron after going down to the Chamber of Secrets (not to mention that Lockhart’s entire shtick was to get close to someone who’d done something noteworthy, charm them into telling him their life story and then steal it for his own). Alternatively, it could be referring to Griphook from the CMF. That was a pretty early clue so I can’t remember if it came before or after the package leaked.

Technically speaking they just tacked Lucian Bole’s name onto the Slytherin beater from the first movie’s Quidditch scene - the actor’s character is not given a name in the credits. Hannah Abbot is more prominent in the books, where she’s a Hufflepuff prefect, member of Dumbledore’s Army and eventually marries Neville Longbottom. But if you’ve only seen the cinematic cut of the movies she’s basically just a blond Hufflepuff extra - the only time she has any lines or is addressed by name is a deleted scene in CoS (same for Ernie MacMillan).

Yes, the movies robbed us of getting to see Dobby’s spectacular hodgepodge wardrobe as described in the books and I’ll never forgive them for that. I’m personally hoping for a Quidditch player pack so those Hufflepuff and Ravenclaw tiles in the Quidditch Pitch set can actually be of use, but I definitely understand the appeal of a Death Eater pack, particularly with Deathly Hallows sets presumably coming next year. As for Teachers, who would be included? We’ve already got McGonagall, Quirrell, Snape, Lupin, Flitwick, Trelawney, Moody, Umbridge, Slughorn, Hooch, and Hagrid, and we know we’re getting Sprout and all rumors point to us getting Lockhart as well. Who’s left? We never really see Charity Burbage in her teacher role, and while Professor Sinestra has a canon appearance in the movies she’s never addressed by name in them, she’s just a cool looking character filling a seat at the head table. Not that I wouldn’t like Lego to give us a better McGonagall variation, but a teachers pack wouldn’t have any army building appeal and who would be the exclusive character?

Ginny did indeed get a yellow version in the Chamber of Secrets set, in addition to the two versions from the 2010 (who both used repeat torsos). You’re right, she does get the short end of the stick, in merchandising in general and not just lego. I think the problem is that she’s got a very passive role in CoS, and then she basically becomes a background character for the next three books/movies. OotP is where she starts really coming into her own, but unfortunately, Neville does as well and that’s also when Luna is introduced - and for a variety of reasons those two seem to have more fans than Ginny. She definitely has less representation in Harry Potter merchandise than any other member of them sacred seven’.

Yeah, Aragog’s lair, the Whomping Willow and even the new Privet drive set don’t have anything in the way of characters that are exclusive to CoS unless you count Dobby. And when you look at the figures that we’re known and rumored to get in the CMF I think the only ones that don’t absolutely have to have new molds are the polyjuiced Harry and Ron (and theoretically Lockhart, although I’d argue that he at least needs a new hairpiece), so while not everyone might be happy that one movie gets so much more representation, you can’t argue that those minifigs don’t need the CMF budget.

So I was just going through the comments on kingnono’s posts to check for more clues, and on the ‘two from each house’ post he said: “teachers and previous [Hogwarts attendees] are included, but no ghosts” Guys, I’ve been counting Myrtle as a a Ravenclaw this entire time, but apparently kingnono isn’t counting ghosts. That means our two last mystery slots aren’t a Hufflepuff and anything, they’re a Hufflepuff and a Ravenclaw. (My money is on OotP Tonks and Lockhart)

Kingnono later elaborated that the two per house hint was based off facts and fan theories. Which I suspect means that the ‘second Slytherin’ is Rita Skeeter. Since there’s no need to bring up fan theories if there are at least two canon characters from each house I’d say that means that that’s it for Slytherin, although if we’re right about getting the polyjuiced trio then we’ll still get some nice Slytherin robes out of this series and that’s what people really care about. As for Hufflepuff, and can’t find any characters without canon houses that fans consistently sort there (likewise, fans don’t consistently sort Madame Pomfrey and Kingsley usually gets put in Gryffindor in fanfics). That means that our unknown Hufflepuff is canon confirmed from that house - possibly OotP Tonks but we can’t rule out a random student like Dean and Cho from series 1. The only flaw with this line of reasoning is that a lot of people have pointed out that the Dumbledore from the leaked package is wearing an outfit from PS/SS, even if his accessory is from CoS. If kingnono follows that line of reasoning, then the one from each book rule is covered almost entirely by the leaked package, with Rita Skeeter from GoF being the only character needed to fulfill that requirement.

It all fits with the other hints he’s given us. As for the other two question marks, one of them has to be a Hufflepuff. Kingnono has given a lot of hints, most of them not specifically about the CMF (for instance, he’s hinted several time that we’ll get Fred and George, but they will almost certainly be in the D2C instead, and he leaked that Molly, Ginny, and Tonks would be in the Burrow before the set pics were released). If you want a full list of the hints they’re all on his Instagram page. As for hints on characters that we know will be in the CMF: - Rita Skeeter: one of his earliest hints was a quote from her, and he’s called her out by name twice as of his latest hint. The most recent one seems to outright say she’ll be appearing in the CMF, which is what many people had guessed since she wouldn’t really fit into a set - Poppy Pomfrey: first suspected when kingnono mentioned an new hood/hatpiece for the CMF’ since her headdress is rather unique, later bolstered by the name ‘Gemma’ appearing in a list of G names that were posted, since that’s the name of the actress who played her in the movies. Her name appears alongside Rita’s in the newest hint, which would seem to confirm her presence once and for all. - The Polyjuiced Trio: several of kingnono’s hints could point to this. He’s mentioned us getting both sides of polyjuice and ‘the gang is growing’ which most people took to mean Malfoy’s gang, hence Crabbe and Goyle. Goyle’s name also appeared on the aforementioned list of G’s, and the latest ‘masked singer’ hint could refer to Cat Hermione. This would suggest we’re getting two variants of Harry, but since that’s what happened in series 1 it’s not too surprising. - Sirius Black: Gary (as in Gary Oldman) Is also on the list of G names, but since kingnono has also stated that the advent calendar is OotP based it’s likely that’s where he will appear. - the Weasley Twins: George’s name appears upon the G list as well, and the cryptic ‘Thorsten and Torben’ clue probably refers to them (based off their names in a comedic fandub). However, it’s suspected that they’ll be in the Diagon Alley D2C and not the CMF. Lucius Malfoy: specifically mentioned by kingnono a couple of times both directly and cryptically. Will likely appear appear in Diagon Alley (or perhaps 75978 if it turns out to be the Ministry battle), but probably not the CMF. Gilderoy Lockhart: mentioned by name multiple times. Could appear in the D2C, CMF, or both considering the number of different outfits he has. Garrick Ollivander: another name on the list of G’s, pretty much guaranteed to be from the D2C. Another clue to keep in mind is that kingnono specifically stated that there will at least two members of each house in the CMF - and later clarified that this was based off facts and fan theories. We already know that Gryffindor and Ravenclaw are good for this from the leaked package, but Hufflepuff and Slytherin only had one character each in that leak. Rita Skeeter is pretty consistently theorized to be a Slytherin by fans, so that just leaves us with one of the currently unknown slots being a Hufflepuff.