Accio Lego

The Quidditch Match set from when the theme rebooted back in 2018 featured a stud shooter and black studs for the bludgers. Likewise, the First Flying Lesson set from 2021, the Quidditch Trunk, and even the just released Flying Lessons set also represented the bludgers with studs. So it’s interesting that the polybag switches to a round 1x1 tile.

Literally any of the portraits in fancy outfits would fit at Malfoy Manor. Have you not seen the interior shots? The dining room features giant sticker portraits of Malfoy ancestors. If there’s any set not part of the actual castle that featured portraits it should have been this one. This year’s polybag seems to want to compete with last year’s on how underwhelming it can be. The only sort of interesting thing is that they’ve switched from a stud shooter to a tile shooter for bludgers and it includes the crossed swords statue that didn’t make the cut in the Flying Lessons set.

A portrait of Slytherin would also look rather out of place in Hagrid’s Hut or the Burrow, but both of those sets included two portraits. The thing is, you can hand wave away the possibility of the random portrait subject not fitting the setting (swapping out portraits as you please is kinda expected – when both my Owlery and Boathouse came with the same portrait I immediately switched one for the second in Hagrid’s Hut, which is supposed to get stashed in a cabinet where it couldn’t be seen anyway), but I personally feel it’s far more anachronistic to have fancy oil paintings in gilded frames in settings where no such thing would be hung – which is why it annoys me that Hagrid’s Hut and the Burrow get some but Malfoy Manor doesn’t.

It is really a shame they discontinued the blister pack style sets for all themes. They gave us some great parts – for Harry Potter the first one was basically a house jumper army builder and the second provided a rather nice little selection of magical shop wares including an owl, and they both had great unique tile prints (I keep the DA sign up sheet from the second one tacked up on the wall of the 2020 Room of Requirement). They could have been a great opportunity for Death Eater army building and the like, but I suppose the product format must not have sold well or been cost effective or something. On a completely different note, is anyone else peeved that we don’t get any collectible portraits in the Malfoy Manor set? We got 2 in the D2C Burrow despite oil paintings not fitting that setting at all, but Malfoy Manor - which canonically has big oil painting portraits - nothing? Seriously?

The big issue with Pokemon as a theme is that they’ve already got a contract with Megablocks, but then again, that was also supposed to be what prevented us from getting Star Trek sets and now *gestures at current rumors* The more specific issue of Pokemon as a CMF is that obviously you want several of your characters to come with smaller companion Pokemon. Simpsons, Loony Toons, and Muppets have proven that the budget can tackle each of the characters having a new larger mold with complex printing, but the issue is that you can probably count on one hand the number of molds made for those three series that aren’t new heads, which would make the budget tight for a Pokemon series – where most of the desirable characters would feature a companion Pokemon and new hair. You’d have to roll out the CMF alongside a new theme introduction like Harry Potter did and get similarly creative for which parts used what budget in order to get it to work.

You’d think if nothing else they’d use it for its original purpose and give a suburban house some lawn flamingos.

I do like the artist’s torso. And the painting tile is nice too. Some much needed variety in the wall art category.

Maybe I’m wrong and it’s the color balance of the photos, but the rat looks like it might be a new color too.

I’d love these animals to be the actual CMF mouse and the cobra for good measure. But I’m not holding my breath. Fingers crossed though.

I don’t think there are any actual rumors about the Bloody Baron. It’s all just speculation based on logic – the Bloody Baron is the only Hogwarts ghost we haven’t gotten as a minifigure, therefore the designers might be planning on including him in the main tower set this summer. There’s a new Quidditch themed polybag coming out just two years after one featuring a Seeker and Snitch, at the same time a Quidditch shop is coming out in a Diagon Alley series that has devoted a decent amount of budget to new elements to stock the store shelves – therefore the designers might be planning on introducing a new Qudditcj equipment mold that can be featured in both products. Neither observation has any basis in rumor or concrete information – just educated guesswork. We haven’t got anything on the summer sets yet except numbers, names, prices, and piece counts. Now when we find out what movie/scenes the Main Tower is based on, that will get me excited.

Honestly, the question of which character will come in the Quidditch Training polybag is baffling me. I thought it might be Oliver Wood, in reference to the fact that he teaches Harry Quidditch and it would pair nicely with the Flying Lessons set, but Oliver actually managed to make the cut for the set itself, so that seems a lot less likely now. I suppose Draco would be a possibility, provided they changed him up from the 2018 CMF version by giving him a different broom and/or legs (although getting him two years in a row for the polybag probably wouldn’t be well received with most fans), and while we’ve talked about being all Harry’d out in the past, I do think there’d be good reception for a mid-legs version of Harry based off of PoA. Ron and Ginny are also possible, but less likely currently because Chasers and Keepers don’t handle any equipment represented by a unique Lego mold at this time. That said – Quality Quidditch Supplies is one of the shops in this year’s Diagon Alley playset. WWW introduced spectacular new prints for Fanged Frisbees and Pygmy Puffs, and the next year Ollivander’s featured a brand new wand multipack in two different colors. With the included ice cream parlor not really having any opportunities for any groundbreaking new elements, it doesn’t seem crazy to speculate that we might be getting a proper quaffle mold. And if that’s the case, there’s already a precedent to include a newly introduced mold in the polybag (flying Hedwig appeared in the Owl Post polybag in 2020, the year that mold was introduced). I’m kinda really hoping that QQS & Fortescue’s Ice Cream does introduce a new Quaffle part now. A Quidditch keeper guarding some mini goal hoops would make a decent polybag that fits the name we have – and Ron is the only member of the golden trio who hasn’t featured in one yet.

Well that will almost certainly make buying a set of them on bricklink a lot easier for those of us interested in the micro figures but not the full set.

Great luck for you! And great news for all of us that the apps are up to date and working for this series already! I’ve got plans to go to my local Lego store on January second (there’s a gift card under the Christmas tree with my name on it and I’ve got over 18000 saved up), so it’s nice to know the apps already work now (whether there will be any beastmasters left once I get there is another matter entirely).

Realistically, we don’t need a completely new mandrake mold. They could use the preexisting baby body and just make a new head/leaves part (like the space baby head). It would just need a proper, larger flower pot instead of a recolored cauldron (which, frankly, is overdue).

We literally just saw the designers pull out all the stops regarding clear panels for the Ideas botanical garden, I’d be shocked if the Harry Potter designers weren’t planning to make full use of those preexisting panels to make a proper greenhouse. Although if you look at actual pictures of the set there’s plenty of muntins on the greenhouse, which means we might be looking at printed panels, and that would certainly explain the price to piece ratio.

Next year’s advent calendar should be interesting, since the designers seem to finally have gotten the message that basing them mostly around a specific scene does better. With this year covering the first movie with its adult characters and some of the builds, that means next year’s will have to be a later film. It also can’t be PoA based, since last year’s advent calendar pretty thoroughly cover the only Christmas scene from that movie. That leave CoS (never had an advent calendar and not a bad option, since I’m pretty sure Polyjuice Mistake is off shelves and this would give them a chance to reissue cat Hermione. And they could also recreate the sleeping draught cupcake scene and give us the real Crabbe and Goyle too. The problem being that none of the characters wear anything other than school robes in those scenes), another GoF (if this year’s been long enough for a SS repeat, then next year will be long enough for a Yule Ball repeat, and all those dress robes mean there’s plenty of content they haven’t made before), OotP (we’re vastly overdue for Christmas at Grimmauld imho), HBP (which has both Slughorn’s Christmas party AND Christmas at the Burrow as options - and the collector’s edition Burrow will still be on shelves at that point), or DH1 (wildly unlikely, since the Christmas scene from that movie involves Nagini using Bathilda Bagshot’s corpse as a sock puppet, which isn’t very festive).

Lego didn’t used to have any theme where they could conceivably fit – but isn’t the point of Dreamzzz that anything can happen in the dreamworld? And while a lot of animals in the theme aren’t particularly realistic, I’m pretty sure the main reason we got the red panda this year is because the Dreamzzz team wanted to include one as an animal companion. If the theme continues on long enough I could absolutely see one of the characters getting in to prehistoric animals, or a new character with a specific interest in history of all sorts being introduced.

It’s interesting how so many people are here debating the inclusion of the shrunken head in the Knight Bus while forgetting something significant: the Knight Bus’s release has been delayed. Normally delayed releases have to do with build issues that need adjusting, but the pics of the set show no obvious candidates for something like that. What if it’s related to the shrunken head? It could be that Lego originally included him but someone at Warner Bros. said ‘no you can’t because [insert reason here]’, so now Lego is delaying the set to edit him out. Or it could be that the designers left him out for unknown reasons but then someone higher up said ‘no, you have to include him, he’s the best part!’, and now they’re delaying the set to add a sticker or print on the windshield.

Licensed series that have sold well in the past have had their series 2 show up just two years later before. So we could easily see D&D series 2 as soon as 2026.

Definitely a glyptodon fan, but there’s little real chance of them sneaking in to an arctic set (they were native to South America) – at least with the saber toothed cat and woolly mammoth there’s the precedent for them having been in arctic sets before.

Fingers crossed for a return of the saber tooth cat! But, realistically, we’re likely looking at returns of the polar bears, seals, orca, and perhaps penguin if they decide one of the sets is Antarctic instead of arctic. As far as new arctic animals go, the only clear contenders I can think of would be a narwhal or a walrus.

No. I don’t find it annoying. Lego has made a public commitment to be more ecologically friendly and switching to packaging that can be recycled or at least biodegrades is an important part of that. Sure, we can’t feel the bags anymore, but Lego reportedly tried paper bags and found they weren’t durable enough to take that kind of handling. They quickly figured out how to compensate for that with the data matrix codes that can be read with a simple phone app - which makes fans’ search for specific figs even faster and less error prone. They didn’t have to do that, but they did to keep the fans happy. There are plenty of truly blind box/bag/capsule toys out there, but Lego has never been one of them – it’s just that now you can scan the box with your phone instead palpitating germ covered bags. Frankly, the days of being able to feel bags at your leisure were already dying thanks to the pandemic – many secondary retailers where I live started storing them exclusively behind the counter. I for one will not be mourning the end of awkward interactions where I’d ask to search through the case only for the cashier to get more and more peeved at me as I took 10+ minutes to feel all the bags. Scanning them with my phone looks far less unhinged. And I know that last bit about paper bricks was supposed to be a petty dig, but Lego started integrating plant-based plastic parts into their sets years ago. They made a big deal about announcing it when it started (the only time a Lego store employee has given me multiple promo items because I went X times over the threshold was the ‘Plants from Plants’ pack - I was quite giddy). You probably have some plant derived Lego already. And they’ve also been vocal about developing bricks from recycled plastics too (although I haven’t heard anything about those being used in sets yet).

Draco was in Hagrid’s Hut and the polybag this year

I think the really interesting thing about those Cupid wings, now that the reviews are out, is that their attachment point is an anti-stud. Having them attach to a neck bracket instead of the neck bracket being built in makes them much more versatile than previous wings. You could combine those with the white foal from a couple of years ago to make your own baby Pegasus, or literally have pigs fly! It will be very interesting to see where they show up in the future – I suspect we’ll be seeing an army of small flying animals in Dreamzzz someday.

There’s also the fact that it’s magenta (pinkish purple) and giant purple toads are an established thing in the Harry Potter universe. They’re mentioned as being in the Magical Menagerie in the PoA book and several video games have subsequently included them.