brickbride

Also the Death Star is probably the most iconic thing about Star Wars next to the Millenium Falcon. It makes sense for those two to be the uber-pricey flagship sets because for many people, if they only buy one Star Wars set in their lives it's either of these. Minas Tirith isn't in the same category IMO. It's an iconic location, sure, but not the most iconic, and not the most plot-relevant or the most beloved either. If I remember correctly, several of the most important characters like Frodo and Sam never even set foot there. People want it for reasons of completionism and they want a large version because the architecture requires it but I don't know. Who's really going to be satisfied with having Minas Tirith as their only LotR set? I don't think anywhere near as many people would buy it at the EUR 850-1.000 price point as would buy the Falcon or the Death Star.

If LEGO wanted to do traditional Castle as a theme (other than throwing people the occasional bone with nostalgia bait like Eldorado or with Creator sets) they'd be doing so already. Adding magic would barely change anything since traditional Castle had witches, wizards, and the like anyway. It would also overlap too much with both D&D and HP, I think. Again, the only way I could consider them doing anything castle related for a new in-house theme is if they could modernize and update it, and they've already tried that with Nexo Knights. Sorry if I wasn't clear enough about my meaning before.

Looks like a pretty full and detailed greenhouse to me. There's the lack of doors (and with the way the trees seem to grow through the roof it might not have a full glass roof either), but then the Owlery was like a quarter of a tower and the Boathouse didn't have doors either. It's par for the course. I wouldn't pay EUR 50-60 for this, though, but that's LEGO pricing for you. If you got into the new system with its very unfinished EUR 200 Great Hall and EUR 80 Flying Lesson followed by a EUR 250 Tower, presumably you can afford it. The Monster Book looks really neat but not like something I'd want or need, it's kind of an outlier that doesn't fit with anything else. I wouldn't spend EUR 60 on something like that. I still wonder if you can store stuff inside like in the trunks, though. Neville is also a very random choice of minifig to go with it and at the same time a boring one, seehing how often we've already had him. Why not Hagrid (as the teacher) or Draco (like in the old 4750 set)?

I do understand your point. I think you're missing mine. :-) Sure a set with Cap, Hulk, Iron Man, Black Panther and the likes would sell the best. But most of those characters are dead or retired by now. So they have a choice of, like you've said a) going with their second-tier New Avengers, b) going with plot-relevant characters that seem to be well-received by adults like the Thunderbolts, or c) going with cameos of genuinely popular characters like the X-Men. All I said was that for kids, the best option out of those three would be whichever characters have fun looks and powers regardless of their sympathetic portrayal or their importance to the plot. It's not like many kids would probably even see or understand Doomsday, and the popular classics like Cap and Iron Man are no longer an option for tie-in sets.

I'm sure they get "named" characters in the sense of movie extras that have a name slapped on them like Daphne Greengrass, Leanne, and Terry Boots. LEGO know that named characters sell because some people need to collect'em all. The layout for the Main Tower is plain ridiculous with all the challenges in the underground section and the payoff being over Dumbledore's Office. So you enter the Forbidden Corridor, get past Fluffy, fight your way through the underground section, then take the perfectly regular and accessible stairs, then enter Dumbledore's office, and through it access the Mirror of Erised? WTF? What's even the point of the challenges then? Also if we go by the previous track record, all the challenges are going to look bad since those slide-out modules are designed to be replaced. (Not that they didn't look bad in the Fluffy Encounter but that was the low point, or one of the lowest points, of the previous system instead of the norm.) Quirrell not being in this set where he's really needed but instead being in the previous one where he wasn't is not great, either. I wonder if that's going to become a pattern, LEGO putting characters in sets where they don't belong just so you'll have to buy more sets. Like maybe later on we get a Quidditch set with players from three Houses but not from Slytherin so you'll have to complete it with the Slytherin player from this one. Also three storeys spent on nothing but stairs sounds boring (though I'd expect us to get the portrait of the Fat Lady at the very least) and Dumbledore's office looks like the underwhelming version from the 2018 and 2021 systems rather than the cool, elaborate 2001 version. An easy pass for me. I wouldn't expect more than two, going by the Thestral Carriage some years back. Actually a Thestral in the style of Hedwig, Fawkes, and the Horntail (with moveable wings) could be a pretty neat idea but I'm pretty sure that's not what we'll get. And all of LEGO HP's recent efforts to portray buildable creatures (Buckbeak, Hedwig at Privet Drive, and the sorry excuse for Hedwig in the motorcycle set) looked like crap. So I'm kinda dreading this one. I'd expect those interior-only sets to be mainly focused on the classes, as more or less a successor to the Moments books. There's still Trelawney's class, Moody's class (and possibly Lupin's and/or Lockhart's as well), and that's if they stick to the ones that have been done before instead of making up new ones. I could also see them doing such modules as an update for the smallest sets of the past like, say, Freeing Dobby.

The usual place has a breakdown of recent rumours by whether they're expected to be real. The Disney Princess advent calendar goes under "previously mentioned". Colour me surprised that they'd chance another one; the last one was heavily discounted by LEGO on their own website (as was the Spider-Man one but those were the only ones I can recall, and it's already been rumoured that Marvel won't get one this year). Also, Disney has a target group that overlaps a lot with that of Friends, and several stores in my area had 2023's Friends AC on the shelves next to the 2024 one last year so I'm not sure why LEGO would want to cannibalize their sales even further. But we'll see.

The usual place has new rumours around April's Fool Day sorted by whether they're considered real or not. There's one called "Luffy Brickheadz" which is filed under "definitely coming, no info though". HP has had packs of five brickheads (one for Prisoner of Azkaban comes to mind), how about the Straw Hat Crew? Though the fact that it's called Luffy Brickheadz as opposed to something else makes me think it's maybe just a two-pack of Luffy and someone else like Shanks or Buggy the Clown. Then they could do Zoro paired with Mihawk next, and Nami with Arlong or Nojiko, and Usopp with Kaya or Yasopp, and Sanji with Zeff.

That's what I suspect, too. Must be the wings. Someone recently pointed out that the Fell Beast GWP for LotR is so expensive on the secondary market not because of its exclusive minifig but because of the beast's exclusive fabric wings, and that the new Smeagol GWP isn't expected to fetch the same sorts of prices despite having two exclusive minifigs. Then again, the Horntail had fabric wings, too, and that doesn't seem to have increased the price that much (it was a EUR 10 increase from Hedwig and Fawkes if I remember correctly, but still well below .10 per piece). But that was a couple of years ago and set prices have become more and more ludicrous lately. The GoF Brickheadz is 671 pieces according to the usual place. The Luna one is 292. (Most HP two-packs had around 260 though the closest comparison I can find, 40631 Gandalf and the Balrog, had 348 pieces.) 40677, the PoA Brickheadz, was 697 pieces for a five-pack, roughly the piece count of the GoF one, so I'm expecting five there again. Might be the Triwizard champions and someone/something else. Or if they want to go really dark, Harry, Cedric, Mad-Eye Moody, Pettigrew, and baby Voldy. :-)

But everyone knows who Iron Man, Cap, Hulk, and Thor are. Now the MCU's down to mostly unknowns however you spin it. How many kids are even going to see Doomsday? If some popular characters have a sufficiently large role in it, great. If not, I bet kids would be happy with whatever visually cool figs LEGO can come up with as an alternative. (Not moviegoers which is why I worry that the planned Marvel mash-up might make for cool sets but not necessarily for a watchable movie.) How many kids care about Harrison Ford's president character and its complexities in BNW, and how many want the jet because it has a cool-looking red version of the Hulk?

So? Just make it swappable with the charms class which in turn is swappable with the transfiguration class from the Flying Lesson. That location does technically count as "on top of a tower" and I don't think LEGO will care any further. Again, their last RoR was on the ground floor with a rock base when it's on the seventh floor in the books. (It was also twice the height of their last "Great" Hall.) And the 2018 system had a so-called Hospital "Wing" that definitely wasn't a wing of any description (and also had the bar for the clock play function smack dab across the middle for patients to trip over). LEGO tend to be very enamored of Gryffindor House, much like the books and movies themselves, so if we get the Gryffindor Common Room I'd expect Gryffindors galore. I'd definitely expect Angelina and/or Dean Thomas as some of the few named characters of colour. Oliver Wood or Percy might be another option for a partial reuse (Percy in the Burrow was in his pajamas but they could at least reuse the face, plus there's the older prefect minifig from the book; Wood was in the Flying Lesson so they'd just have to replace the torso with a generic Gryffindor one).

Interesting analysis, and I agree for the most part about Marvel's position. But LEGO is in a different position IMO. LEGO doesn't need a new crop of characters people care about in order to sell sets. They need either sets that are good on their own notwithstanding the figs (such as the Daily Bugle), or variants of popular figs, or just new figs that are either visually appealing or just appeal to collectors because of their uniqueness. Sure there's a certain amount of people who want the Thunderbolts as minifigs, and LEGO might pick up on that now already and plan for them to appear in a Doomsday set (your option two). Less so the FF since they already get their own set, unless Doomsday provides us with notable variations. But kids won't care whether a character's important for Doomsday, whether he's portrayed sympathetically, or anything like that. They want cool-looking figs with cool powers that can be translated into LEGO visuals (shooting multicoloured beams out of their hands, having a cool gagdet like Green Goblin's glider, and so on) and the X-Men should be able to deliver here, moreso than the Thunderbolts. Many adults will collect any new variant of a popular character so that's option three, again. I'd think that LEGO might focus on both of those options and only sprinkle the new Avengers throughout the sets, and then focus on the ones that have cool looks and have never been made before (such as Wiccan).

I wouldn't expect the DH version to be an interior-only set (if only because of the Fiendfyre snake), though that could work for the OotP version which is more likely IMO since we haven't had that for some time. I wouldn't expect us to get it now either way. Also LEGO seem to think that the RoR is located on the ground floor as per the latest iteration. 😉

Sounds like it, though we can't know for sure at this point. To be honest, I loved Hidden Side (the sets - couldn't care less about the app) but Dreamzzz never did anything for me. And I'm still not sure who's it meant for; I have a hard time imagining the same kids who'd coo over the cute dream creatures to watch a series that includes stuff like the Sharkship. Also the series seems to be heavily marketed at boys yet the villainous colour scheme for the first waves was black and trans-pink (wasn't everyone up in arms about how the old Friends sets, before the reboot, were excluding boys because they contained *gasp* shades of pink?). And the better-looking sets like the Sharkship and the pegasus are also the ones I've most often seen on clearance in our local stores (though they were still overpriced imo), so apparently what really sells are the mechs and stuff. Like LEGO doesn't have a metric ton of those already, Ninjago mechs, Star Wars mechs, City space mechs, Marvel mechs, mechs all around. By now, I'm no longer even excited for the next in-house theme if all we're going to get at an affordable price point is mechs mechs mechs. Again, Hidden Side was so much better - we had actual buildings, cool vehicles with character (like the Wrecked Shrimp Boat and the submarine), locations with character at affordable price points (like the cementary or subway station), and not a mech in sight. It's a shame they had to ruin it with the packaging and apps. I think they already tried this with Nexo Knights (a modernized take on knighthood) and the results seem to have been underwhelming, so I doubt they'd go for it again. Also there's not insignificant competition here by now. Bluebrixx has a lot of castle sets, including some for kids. (Which might actually work in your favour since LEGO's new mission seems to be to take everything useful their competitors have come up with and put it in their portfolio. But even Bluebrixx' castle sets are mostly for adults, with kids being a secondary target group at best.) And LEGO's been pretty obsessed with apps and video gaming throughout the last few inhouse themes: We had Hidden Side (a cool vintage vibe ruined by the reliance on an app), Vidiyo (LEGO "sets" you can "build" in like five minutes and then you're supposed to play with them using an app), and now actual buildable video game controllers and the like. Not to mention LEGO's many other properties based on video gaming (Minecraft, Fortnite, Sonic, Super Mario, Animal Crossing, Zelda, ...). I kind of feel like they regard Castle as something exclusively for nostalgic AFOLs the way they do LotR. They might still throw parents a bone sometimes (allegedly Creator 3-in-1 will have two different castle sets in the Summer), but for a new in-house theme I'd expect them to want to come up with something different again.

I would expect us to get Lockhart's classroom with the pixies next year, since Lockhart's just too good of a character and the pixies scene is pretty iconic. But yes, I do expect Lupin's class in some shape or form since the Snape boggart seems like exactly the kind of thing they want to revisit with this system.

I think that heavily depends on the success of the next few movies. Brave New World bombed but if FF and Thunderbolts turn out to be smash hits, four to six sets could easily be in the cards. (Though FF might be released a little too late for LEGO to change much based on it, so it might depend more heavily on Thunderbolts.) Otherwise they might play it safe with no more than three at first since if the movie's a success they can always revisit it tlater.

There's supposed to be a Sherlock Holmes booknook with minifigs and the LotR one supposedly uses the new Gandalf face from the Shire. At this point minifigs seem to be a booknook staple.

According to fateful on instagram, Dreamzzz will get some new sets in the first half of 2026 but none in the second half. Set numbers are 71508 and 71512-5. Summer 2025 sets to be revealed on May 2, 2025.

According to fateful on instagram, the Dreamzzz and Ninjago Summer 2025 sets as well as those from "many other themes" will be revealed on May 2, 2025.

I'd be laughing at the notion of a EUR 270 set being meant for kids if HP didn't already have a EUR 200 Hogwarts Great Hall to be followed by a EUR 250 Main Tower. That said, realistically you'd probably be able to count on one hand the number of kids who'd prefer the Shire to Hogwarts/Ninjago City/Heartlake City or who'd even know who Bilbo Baggins is.

Oh. I still think of sets from 2022-2023 as fairly recent. And given that the new system only started last year, it makes perfect sense to me that they gave us mainly sets based on the first books first. I have no doubt that we'll get a clock tower (or at least a clock like the one with the Hospital Wing), and probably a Hospital Wing and Sirius Black's Rescue, with the new system as well. Other than that, a large amount of PoA's plot takes place either on the grounds (Hagrid & Buckbeak, stag Patronus, Dementor attack during Quidditch) or beyond them (Hogsmeade & Shrieking Shack, Dementor attack on the train) so it makes sense that we won't get as many castle sets as for PS.

Hospital Wing. Sirius Black's Rescue. Just saying. The new Great Hall also features a secret entrance which might be supposed to symbolize the one from PoA (which should not start there but eh, details).

Didn't they already do this with the Hogwarts student in a wheelchair (from Madam Malkin's) and the Owl Post employee (from WWW)? There was also an unnamed passenger on the Knight Bus. If the Main Tower is PS-themed that means we'd have had flagship sets for PS twice in a row. I'm pretty sure this won't set a precedent where we have to go through all seven years at that rate, though, since a) we'd be looking at fourteen years then and b) as has been pointed out before, the earlier books and especially PS are much Hogwarts-heavier than the latter ones in terms of introducing locations and the like. I could see next year's flagship set being the Chamber of Secrets (including the Slytherin Common Room, Myrtle's bathroom, and/or Lockhart's office and class). PoA has Trelawney's class, Lupin's class, Sirius Black's rescue, and the Hospital Wing. GoF has the Prefects' bathroom and Moody's class (but how many DADA rooms do we need?) with most of the relevant action taking place outside. OotP has Umbridge's class and office and that swamp corridor, HP has Slughorn's class (but we already have a Potions class) and of course the Astronomy Tower, DH has the Room of Requirement and Snape's office as well as the battle locations. Allegedly the new Hogsmeade set will fit in with the D2C DA. As I've said before, I'm sure they're not currently planning an expansion for the yet-to-be-released Hogsmeade set. And I wouldn't expect us to get one, period. The D2C DA seems to have been a huge success but even so it took us several years until they made Gringotts, which is extremely iconic in its own right, and yet I don't feel Gringotts has created anywhere near the buzz of the original D2C DA (despite people having been clamoring for it for years). Nothing in Hogsmeade is anywhere near as iconic as Gringotts in terms of plot-relevance or architecture. The overall quaint village vibe coupled with its theme park popularity has apparently been enough to get us one D2C but I really cannot see the designers deliberately holding something back (like they allegedly did with Gringotts) or people clamoring for a D2C Shrieking Shack they way the did with Gringotts (and again I'm not sure if even Gringotts has hit its sales targets).

Yes, that's why I said he'd probably come with this set. But I don't see any way he'll fit - there won't be his office or any magical creatures for him to care for (except for Fluffy, probably, and he had nothing to do with that). Sinistra was pretty random in the 2021 Chamber of Secrets but at least they included her tower. It looks to me to be just another choice by LEGO that screams "You want minifigs of all the characters? You have to buy our most expensive sets, then!"

Yeah, I'm not sure how that would work either. I'd imagine the tower to fit no more than two small modules (or a single large module) next to each other and to have no more than four of five storeys at the most. We'd already need: Gryffindor Common Room (one large module and that's if they forego the dorms), Fluffy Encounter (one large module to fit Fluffy), Devil's Snare, Mirror, Chess, Potions challenges (could probably all be done with a small module each if necessary), Winged Keys (a small module at a pinch though a larger one would be better), and that's already five storeys without even budgeting any room for stairs! I could possibly seem the leaving off the Potions Challenge and doing the Winged Keys instead which would free up one storey but I don't know. Likely additional figures in this case would be: chess figure(s), new Gryffindor students for the Common Room, Fluffy of course, Quirrell, probably McGonagall, possibly Neville. Not sure how Kettleburn fits in here but he pretty much has to come with this set since I don't see him coming with any of the others either. He'd sort of fit with the Monster Book but not really since by the time that was mentioned, Hagrid had taken over his teaching post.

For those interested, the entire list of fig leaks is: - Mandrake (Herbology Class) - Harry and Ron in first year Hogwarts Express clothes (booknook?) - Nearly Headless Nick (presumably Main Tower) - Professor Kettleburn (?) - Harry (with Stone), Hermione (with golden key), and Ron all in first year challenges clothes plus Hedwig flying over them (presumably Main Tower) (Hermione is wearing a green or teal jacket which I'm not sure about, but the shirt underneath seems to fit and the key's a dead giveaway) If the Tower is based on PoS we should also get Quirrell. Furthermore this means we likely won't get the Slytherin Common Room or any part of the Chamber of Secrets with it. If they're using an entire flagship set slot for basically just stairs, the Gryffindor Common Room, and the challenges (likely including Fluffy) from PoS, again this will please completionists but it leaves so many important locations still to be covered.