brickbride

I can't see a hospital, honestly. Hospitals aren't much fun. Especially not for adults who, you'd think, are the main target group. They might work for children playing at doctors and nurses, plus there's a legitimate pedagogical approach there (taking away children's fear of doctors/hospital environments by familiarizing them with those professions and environments through play). So I can see them in City and Friends. But for adults? Many people associate with hospitals memories of pain, sickness, seeing loved ones lying on those hospital beds ... - it's just not something I'd expect a large amount of people would jump at buying. Completionists, sure, who either will get any modular no matter what or who decide that their LEGO city absolutely needs one in order to be as realistic as possible. But many more people will buy what they like, and that's either buildings that evoke fun and pleasant pasttimes (Boutique Hotel, Parisian Restaurant, Book Shop, Pet Shop, Downtown Diner, Palace Cinema, Grand Emporium), or buildings that you tend to feel more neutral about but that at least evoke fun stories (Detective's Office, Brick Bank with the laundromat, Police Station), or have cool architecture (Town Hall). There's probably still people who have negative associations with any of those (say, if your wife had just hired a PI in order to prove your infidelity, or if the bank had refused to give you a loan, or you'd been arrested), but those would be far more uncommon cases. If LEGO did a hospital, they'd have to absolutely knock it out of the park in order to overcome people's negative associations, and why would they saddle themselves with that sort of burden? There's plenty of other opportunities. A college or railway station, for example, would make AFOLs fondly remember their college days or travels, and could still have architecture every bit as cool. I do know that at some competitors offer modular hospitals - but those cater to niche markets compared to LEGO, basically filling in the gaps in LEGO's portfolio. If LEGO has a large, world-wide audience, and gives itself only one shot a year at making an expensive building that people should ideally jump at buying, I cannot see them picking a hospital of all things.

You mean the girl in a wheelchair? It's hard to say from the pic, but the hair looks more medium nougat than dark orange to me. Really cool ravens, though. (Note the small one on the upper right!)

That makes a lot of sense, thanks! Hidden Side's triptych format and the shape of The Rise of Voldemort complement each other nicely. As do the winged statues on either side.

Do you have a picture by any chance? I own both sets and have been meaning to do that, too. Some inspiration would be appreciated!

Just looking at my old Hidden Side sets. I think 70427 would be a perfect parts pack for those who want to beef up their Forbidden Forest scenes.

To me it's not so bad as all that. Granted, GotG 3 along with Spiderman No Way Home was the best. But I also mostly liked Dr Strange 2 and the Marvels, parts of Eternals, Loki was pretty good (especially season 2), and Hawkeye was fun. I think the problem is more that the quality these days is all over the place. Before Endgame, even the not-so-great movies like Thor The Dark World or Ant-Man were at least okay. Now they're cranking out stuff at an alarming rate, Ant-Man 3 was demand-your-money-back terrible, ands so's Secret Invasion from what I hear. It's not the lack of good content, it's the increase of bad content dragging the MCU down.

The entire set is about 1.200 pieces and USD 140, right? Here's the Destiny's Bounty from Ninjago at less than 700 pieces: Plus, several of the older pirate ships like 7029 or 6243 look really cool and only have about 600 pieces. However, I'm not sure how comparable those are because 600 pieces in 2024 gets you a lot less of a footprint than 600 pieces in, say, 2007 or 2009.

Or with today's Marvel prices, one 359 pieces set for EUR 85 and one 420 pieces set for EUR 95.

True, but that doesn't mean they'd want it. (Or the Batcave for that matter.) Especially at the prices LEGO's charging for everything these days. I give you that there's a certain target group of comic book fans who'd go "Daily Planet? Sign me up!" no matter how the movie does or even if there is a movie. But you're talking about the much larger casual audience here. If I don't care for Superman, why would I pay hundreds of Euros for a LEGO model of the place where he works? I guess LEGO feels that there are enough X-Men fans out there to warrant an X-Mansion, the important word being "fans". Similarly there's enough Spiderman fans to warrant a Daily Bugle. But again, you need enough Superman fans for a Daily Planet, not just people with general knowledge about what Superman and the Daily Planet are. A well-received movie can certainly help with that.

Brick Clicker said it's the ceiling. And stickers. He may of course be wrong (I suspect he's wrong about Fudge), but the stickers thing sounds a lot like LEGO, doesn't it?

Brick Clicker's new video gives some more information on the Great Hall and Triwizard Arrival sets. Most of it seems to be taken from the same source as the Polish site's (right down to naming Fudge as a figure in the Triwizard set when previous rumours had named Crouch). The only thing new to me was: The Great Hall's enchanted sky he describes as stickers on the ceiling. I was wondering if they'd come up with a clever way of building that and maybe even allowing you to change it depending on the "weather outside", but apparently not.

Be glad you're not the size of a minifigure, or he'd gobble you right up. Which the new one can't do!

Meh, YMMV. I actually like it quite a bit. Then again, I also prefer the 2001 basilisk to the 2021 one. To each their own is all I'm saying. I've just recently read an article about how "The Marvels" did poorly at the box office but was super successful on streaming services. They also listed a top five of movies, I think, so they definitely have ways of counting individual performances. "Game of Thrones" probably begs to differ. I'm by no means saying that a HP show is bound to be successful - but the potential surely exists. GoT made it to I think eight seasons? With some child actors in major roles, too (though not as many as HP would require). And they did "House of the Dragon" after and I've heard the "Dunk and Egg" stories are in the works, too, so clearly it wasn't a financial bomb. I'm actually kind of bummed that LEGO has chosen to ignore FB to the extent it does. Mind you, the movies were by no means great, I never liked Newt or Tina as characters all that much, and I'm not sure we need any new instalments when the conclusion is a foregone one in many cases and there's barely any characters to really hold our interest. I also don't care much for Newt's various beasties. But the settings alone would have given us something different instead of endless reboots of Hogwarts/Hogsmeade/Diagon Alley. I'd love to see LEGO do Jacob's bakery or MACUSA or Nurmengard or even the Hog's Head with a younger Aberforth for a change. Or the German prison with Newt and his brother and the manticore (or whatever that was). Some of those would make good playsets, I think. EDIT: Or the temple from "Secrets of Dumbledore"! Don't tell me you wouldn't want to see HP/FB go full-on Ninjago. ;-)

It's a troll. It's supposed to be ugly! I actually think the club is worse, since it looks really clumsy - but again, that's kind of the idea.

Nah. They can reboot the castle as many times as they want. Diagon Alley, too. Probably even Hogsmeade, though it has fewer iconic locations than either. And I'm sure there's some creatures or artifacts or things in JK's world we haven't yet had as buildable objects. If not, well, LEGO can just continue adding to their flock of buildable Hedwigs. The thing is, theoretically infinite themes like Friends and City don't really have that much new stuff either. For every Olivia's Space Academy or Botanical Gardens, we get Heartlake City's third near-identical hair salon or its one millionth pet care facility. I"m less familiar with City, but I get the impression that half its population must be either in prison or evading the police right now. With absurdly short shelf lives for individual sets (sometimes only half a year before a set goes EOL), LEGO can repeat themselves as much as they want. And if the show can only offer, say, a more diverse cast - that means different-looking minifigures, and that's a big draw in HP especially, much more so than in a non-licensed theme. Most kids will be happy with any figs, and most adults probably customize their Friends mini-dolls (or give them away and replace them with minifigs), but how many of you here would buy any set as long as it contains, say, Rita Skeeter in an exclusive outfit or an updated version of Narcissa Malfoy?

I'm aware of - and have vocally been complaining about - the fact that for a theme supposedly aimed at children, HP in the recent past has has had next to no sets that were affordable on an allowance, or would have made a somewhat affordable birthday party gift or the like. That said, 2021's Polyjuice Potions Mistake and 2022's Thestral Carriage were MILES better than what they've come up with this year! The Polyjuice Potions Mistake had a fairly decent build AND a whopping FOUR minifigures, including all of the trio AND a golden anniversary Harry! (Yes, the trio all had the same legs and torso, but I honestly don't care about this and I doubt many kids would.) Plus you got extra hairpieces and the great cat head! And all of that was listed at EUR 20. Then, the Carriage gave us two popular figs, one male, one female, AND a fairly decent build, AND a whopping TWO molded animals, one of them being an entire new mould (the baby thestral). It was suitably scary and suitably cute at the same time, it featured a boy and a girl, it ticked a lot of boxes. Sure, we get more quantity in 2024. But the quality sucks! The builable Hedwig doesn't even look nice AND has no minifigs AND any kid on a budget that wants Hedwig probably already has the DOTS pencil-holder. This really is not even a step up from that. And the other two sets BOTH figure Harry and Ron (which surely every HP fan already owns) in settings featuring a) a car and b) a giant spider. Both these sets seem to be solely aimed at boys (no girl characters and typically "male" interests). Why can't girls have nice things, too? Even the polybag with Draco in the forest features a boy again! Would it really have been that impossible to make, say, Hermione and a unicorn for EUR 20? There's actually Canon precedence for this, since Hagrid had a unicorn in his lessons. Or a small set with Ginny buying her first-year books at Flourish & Blott's, or anything really.

So, just to recap, the three affordable-for-kids-on-an-allowance sets of both 2024 waves in terms of minifigs are: Flying Car: Harry and Ron Hedwig: no figs Aragog: Harry and Ron At least there's Draco in the polybag, but did the guys at LEGO talk this over at all? It would have been really easy to give more of a selection (i. e. replace either Harry or Ron in the car with one of the twins, or put Hermione in the Aragog set instead of the random "Hermione and Ron in the Forbidden Forest" set), but they didn't.

An 18+ set with about 500 parts and an electronic voice play function, sure. I cannot see a target audience for this either way. Given that the set has been out for less than a week and is already -35% on Amazon, apparently I'm not the only one.

Thanks for the video! That said, I find the sound super annoying (not your fault oc). No way would I buy something like that for a kid! They already ruined the very good Hidden Side sets with the stupid app, it's like they're actively trying to make their stuff unattractive to parents. Anyone who shells out EUR 100 for LEGO at least wants some peace and quiet to go with it. It's not like households with kids tend to suffer from a lack of electronic noise.

The latter, probably. I doubt that many casual fans care about "Marvel or DC". If superhero movies generate interest, companies have a reason to produce superhero merchandise. LEGO probably won't go "The MCU is on the downward swing, let's double the number of DC sets." They can just pick up more non-superhero licences instead.

They did, it's 76253, with the logo and everything. I'm not saying it's a good set, but then that was a terrible movie. Well that's a self-fulfilling prophecy if ever I've heard one: "I'm worried the set won't sell - let's make it as unattractive to buyers as possible!"

According to StoneWars you can get Marvel's Vision's cape and the Wasp's wings (6453310, same number for both).

There's two figs for the carriage, though if they do Madame Maxime the usual way I'm not sure if she can even be seated. But there's only two figs for the ship, too. This makes me think it won't be much bigger than the carriage (apart from the sails), otherwise it will look empty. Though the old one had only two as well, and nowhere near four sails, so who knows ...

Actually, the more I think about it, the more baffled I am. The 2021 system had a total list price of what, about EUR 500? And it ticked a lot of boxes, covering many of the movie locations. Barely in some cases (such as the Astronomy and Clock towers), and of course there's the lack of common rooms and classrooms, but it did cover most things. The 2018 system before that had a list price of I think about EUR 370 but only covered the above-ground parts with some omissions (i.e. Fluffy's corridor). With the new system (Owlery, Boathouse, Great Hall, and Snape's Classroom) we're already at more than EUR 300 and all we've covered of either system is the Great Hall itself! And Snape's Classroom alone is EUR 40. If they'll go the more detailed route and include more classrooms and common rooms, this is going to need a lot of space, not to mention money. I thought it was going EOL? It's certainly being sold off even by LEGO itself. Plus the existence of a new system makes the old one kind of obsolete. I double they'll be compatible. They both include the Great Hall, too.

I was kinda expecting the Great Hall set to contain the Chamber of Secrets, too, given the price. Instead it seems like they'll go the way of new locations (Hufflepuff Commonwealth room ...). Which is fine, I guess, but there is no way I'll start collecting the new system at this price point. It makes the ridiculously overpriced old Chamber of Secrets set look downright affordable. Also I'm not sure if today's kids will go for such a pricy system focusing more on of books-only locations. But well see.