Retro Brick Reviews

My thoughts on the station discourse is that Hogsmeade Station is much more likely, since it's an open-air platform with a station building - something that can be replicated with total accuracy AND can exist both with the train and on it's own merit (like the Disney Station). King's Cross/9¾ is an enclosed station and thus would have to be a cross-section, which would be poor form for a near-$500 set.

Oh, I wouldn't go that far. I have yet to see anyone harassing the LEGO social media for a Gringotts set, nor anyone threatening to quit the hobby because they haven't delivered the one very specific object of desire.

The leak says it also comes with the station, which essentially confirms that the set is in scale with minifigures.

Umbridge's head is also new on both sides. The Shack has two exclusive face prints (3 if we count Sirius), both Lupin and Wormtail get new designs.

I just noticed that Lupin in the Shrieking Shack has a new face print without the beard. A fantastic update imo

Nobody's mentioned it yet, but in the Ministry of Magic both Harry and Hermione get a new face expression (the other side being their Polyjuice disguise), while Ron just has a copy of his standard smiling expression. An odd inconsistency.

New heads just leaked on Instagram A Tonks head with a duck bill, meaning that either we get two full headpieces for Tonks in Grimmauld Place or there's another set with OotP Tonks And a laughing Voldemort with his tongue sticking out Imo this basically confirms that the Advent will be a Grimmauld Place expansion, and that this Tonks will feature there Not sure about Voldy tho - unless there's some retail exclusive we have no knowledge of, maybe the accessory pack will be a Death Eaters pack? Or maybe he'll be in the D2C? Thoughts?

No.

Oh boy, I'm so excited to get a Brickheadz of "Professor Mcgonagall teaching at Hogwarts a decade before she was born", and "Dumbledore who is just a guy in a suit"! Nah but in all seriousness I am excited for an HP professors Brickheadz pack. Both of last year's sets were fantastic, so getting more is great.

Hogwarts Chamber of Secrets (76389) Hogwarts Castle (71043) 4 Privet Drive (75968) Hogwarts Icons: Collector's Edition (76391) Hogwarts Astronomy Tower (75969) Hogsmeade Village Visit (76388) Hogwarts Whomping Willow (75953) Hogwarts Express (75955) Attack on the Burrow (75980) Hogwarts Polyjuice Potion Mistake (76386)

Actually, we had 2 in 2021. The "Friends Apartments" set included an unambiguous bottle of beer, and the Marvel "Bro Thor's New Asgard" included a keg of trans-yellow studs, obviously meant to be beer. (Unless it's a piss keg, but beer is more likely.)

Wow, this set is absolutely incredible. The only problems are with Marty. That face just doesn't work: if LEGO couldn't bring back the old print or make a new one, I think the recent Peter Parker head would have been a better option for a reprint, albeit still far from perfect. As for the shoes, they desperately needed to be double-molded to avoid that gap. Or, if that really wasn't possible, they should've chosen white as the base plastic color and just printed on the blue of the pants - LEGO's printers have no issues with that, and they did it fairly regularly in the 2010s before the introduction of double molding. I never modify minifigures, but I'll probably be using a little strip of white tape to cover that up. Other than that figure, though, this might be my favorite LEGO set of all time. I never buy the large CREATOR cars, but this is so detailed and so spot-on that it's an instant day-one purchase for me.

You'd rather have a $470 "microscale oval with square towers" than a $470 "microscale extension to the best non-minifig-scale set ever made"? I mean, I don't think I'd be interested in either, but your preference is legitimately confusing.

This was the point I was trying to make. Yeah, there are 10,000 things that they COULD make for $470, but barely any that both befit a cost and people would actually buy. Nobody's buying a $470 Dobby, nobody's buying a $470 Fawkes when Hedwig (the more iconic HP bird) is $250, and nobody's buying a $470 minifig-scale Hogwarts Express when you can buy one at Walmart for $80. I don't think it's anywhere near guaranteed, I just have yet to see a single other plausible suggestion. A $250 Gringotts with a couple of other buildings to bump the price up is plausible. A Hogwarts Express with six coaches and two stations is not. As for your point about Diagon Alley... you're right about QQS and F&B not being iconic enough to merit their own sets. But I raise you that LEGO still made them BECAUSE they knew that the amount of money they'd make on a giant Diagon Alley would be more than for just selling the iconic parts individually at a more accessible cost. And the same holds true here. They COULD sell a modular Gringotts on it's own for, say, $150 if they skimped on the details. But they could make more money by adding in, say, the Leaky Cauldron, Madam Malkin's, and a displayable Dragon and selling it for $470. And, believe it or don't, but if someone is willing and has enough disposable income to buy a $150 LEGO set for themselves or for their kid, most of the time they can be pushed to buy a $470 one to make the best Christmas ever - just ask all the middle-class kids who got LEGO Death Stars when they were 10 years old.

I could maybe see them doing it the other way - $120 kids play set and a $470 pretentious 18+ display set - but the other way around is unlikely. So... only if they include two stations AND a bridge, meaning that A.) the entire set would have to be elevated to accommodate the viaduct, and B.) the vast majority of parts would go to structures outside the main build? Yeah, no. Include all that at $470 and you wouldn't even have parts left over for the normal HE, much less a motorized UCS. (Not to mention that if it were any wider than the playscale version, it wouldn't fit on track.) The only way I could see them ever doing it is as an isolated display model, in the vein of the Ecto-1 and 007 Aston Martin, of just the engine and tender (no coaches because they wouldn't be minifigure-compatible), but that wouldn't be $470.

To sell it on it's own as a more expensive set later. LEGO knows that people want Gringotts, and they know that most people would be willing to pay a pretty penny for it, and, as a company, why would they go for "affordable" when they could make people pay "premium"? They also know that a modular Gringotts DA expansion would both automatically sell to everyone who owns the successful DA set, and that some of the people who buy Gringotts would end up going back and getting DA: it increases sales of both sets. If you want an example of LEGO choosing to do a premium product of an iconic locale over an affordable and more accessible version, well, just look at the original DA. It's the most iconic area in the Wizarding World aside from Hogwarts itself, and both Ollivander's and WWW can rival Gringotts in popularity. If LEGO wanted to go affordable, they would have sold the buildings individually for $100 a pop. But they didn't, because they know that people would be willing to pay a lot more for Diagon Alley, and so they made a set that costs a lot more. And the same goes for Gringotts. Last time there was a fair amount of argument, and the only evidence was "well, they didn't do it last year". Here, there is actually evidence: namely, the price. LEGO's mot going to make any old set the new HP flagship, it has to be something iconic. Let's compare to LEGO Star Wars for a moment. In the entire history of that theme, there have only been four craft from the movies that LEGO has made as $400+ sets. Those are the Death Star, Millenium Falcon, Imperial Star Destroyer, and AT-AT. All incredibly iconic, important to the story, and instantly recognizable to anyone who's even heard of the franchise. The same goes for HP: Our only two $400 sets are Hogwarts and DA. The $470 set needs to be at least as iconic and important as those, and Gringotts is one of exactly two things that fits that bill. The only other is the Hogwarts Express, which I'll start believing as soon as someone can come up with a realistic way a UCS Hogwarts Express could be done at $470 as an actual LEGO product.

It's not that bizarre. She only appears in one major scene, so her alternate face was based on that scene specifically. It's not the only time it's happened in LEGO HP: Lupin's alternate face in the Hogwarts Express was him transforming, but only now five years later are we seemingly getting a set based on the scene in which he transforms. To answer your question, I don't think there's a specific time that parts go permanently out of use, some stay in the catalogue for years after their last appearance. For example, the new Boba Fett's Throne Room set from Star Wars brought back the Gamorrean Guard body mold and print that hadn't been seen since 2013.

Well, there's no way they won't do a Gringotts that's compatible with DA at some point, so the only question for that is whether it'll be a 16x32 cutoff like WWW or a full 32x32 building meant to go at the end of the Alley. The 2021 AC already covered the interior scenes from the first movie, and, whether the D2C is a modular Gringotts or not, I highly doubt that the unknown $120 set will be an interior rollercoaster set.

The 2008 Death Star was one of the longest-produced and best-selling LEGO sets of all time (not to mention having a much greater cultural impact than any other licensed LEGO set), and the 2016 set was retired after only a couple years and has yet to see any replacement. That speaks to the likely fact that it did poorly, or else it would have lasted as long as the original set.

And the same goes for Gringotts. It has two scenes in the first movie (both of which are depicted in the 2021 Advent Calendar) and one extended sequence in the last movie (which can't really be replicated in a Gringotts with an exterior). It could be a centerpiece to your collection if you can afford it, but the fact that we're on the theme's fifth year and we're still debating if we'll get a Gringotts is testament enough that it isn't strictly necessary.

Not like they released a more affordable variant of the first Diagon Alley set before putting out that $400 behemoth. There's no reason to think that Gringotts would be any different. Just another premium playset to milk wallets.

There are a plethora of reasons that's incredibly unlikely. Firstly, as was stated above, the original Death Star was already a couple years out of print when the new set came out, while the D2C Hogwarts isn't set to retire at all this year. Secondly, that Death Star actually had something major to update- the minifigures, which were very outdated by the time that original version retired. There's nothing in the 2018 set that's outdated like that. Thirdly, the Death Star remake happened for two specific reasons. Firstly, it was released to tie in with Rogue One, a movie all about the Death Star. Secondly, it was one of the most popular and famous LEGO sets ever made, so a rerelease seemed natural. The D2C Hogwarts has neither of these going for it. The last and perhaps most obvious reason, though, is that the 2016 Death Star was a FAILURE. It was met with widespread backlash, sold poorly, and was retired only a few years after it released and has yet to be replaced. LEGO wouldn't want a repeat of that, even if there were any actual reason to remaster a D2C Hogwarts that's only a few years old.

The reason that isn't as likely is because this is the most expensive set yet, meaning it's essentially going to be the new flagship set of LEGO Harry Potter. It has to be something incredibly iconic to fans and casuals alike, which leaves relatively few options, and none that are crazy.

Yeah... Though, thinking about it last year they didn't use the 4x4 shingle half-cone at all, so maybe not. (Or maybe this year we just get a sand green half-cone revolution, which is the ideal situation.)

The new Super Mario Peach's Castle set seems to include a new variant of the 8x8 half-dozen piece, with molded-in shingles. What are the odds we see this piece in sand green for Hogwarts this year?