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Aren't the advent calendars supposed to be primarily for kids? I know that many adult minifig collectors buy them, but still they tend to be marketed towards kids. And I kind of doubt that kids would be excited about those last two ones. Or even Bill, who plays very little of a role in the books and movies. Basically, I'd expect them to stick with easily recognisable figures for the advent calendars - mostly students with the odd well-known professor or other adult, like Aberforth, thrown in.

EDITED because I did initially write and post several long paragraphs in answer to @Mandalorianknight, but frankly I'm tired of being attacked, and need a break. My interest in LEGO Marvel is mostly academic anyway, I don't own any of the sets, so I'll take a leave of absence for now. @Everybody who's waiting for the Avengers Tower: Good luck, and may the set end up being what you wish for!

Just read a rumour that The Marvels is going to have a running time of only 1 h 38 min (1h 33 min without credits), making it the shortest MCU movie EVER. The budget was apparently a paltry (for a MCU movie in 2023) USD 130 million. Even though it's set in space, which you'd think would warrant some CGI ... Fun fact: Even the absolutely worst performing MCU movie ever, The Incredible Hulk, had a longer running time of about 1 h 52 min and a higher budget of about USD 150 million - IN 2008! Ant-Man 3 even had a budget of around USD 200! But hey, if/when The Marvels flops, I'm sure it's going to "prove" that people don't want female superheroes, and that Captain Marvel's phenomenal Box office performance was just a fluke./s In all seriousness: Like with the Hoopty's pricing, I'm starting to wonder if everyone involved WANTS this to fail. And I just don't get why. Like, Ant-Man has NEVER performed well, but gets treated much better than the only MCU character whose debut movie made the top 10?

The US price should be USD 525 according to leakers. Rivendell was USD 500 and GBP 430, so something around GBP 450 sounds plausible.

I would not get anywhere near that number regardless, but I still was annoyed to find that something like half my manuals don't even qualify. Most because the sets are too old, or don't have QR codes for whatever reason (Duplo doesn't, the storybooks don't, and so on ...). One has a slight smudge on the QR code so it doesn't get recognised either. At the very least there should be an option to take a pic and send it in if the last thing happens, but I couldn't even find that.

Honestly? I've gotten pretty tired of the gimmicky play sets (as opposed to normal play sets that aren't basically just backdrops), but a) these days even normal playsets have so little depth that they may as well count as backdrops, so the difference is hardly significant; and b) I dislike buildable creatures/objects without any play value and without even a minifig included far more. If you give me the choice between a Moments book for EUR 30 with three figs and at least some semblance of a play set or a buildable Dobby for EUR 30, then Moments book it is. So yeah, I'm not sure what there is to celebrate. Sure we won't get gimmicky foldout sets, but I'd rather have them than ANOTHER buildable Hedwig.

Yes. We absolutely need more cars in HP./s How about a Death Eater bust? Since the Black Panther one sells so well. 😉

Honestly? I'd expect the "forest" part to be something along the lines of the sad little tree build in the Thestral Carriage. Or even worse, Expecto Patronum.

I think it is mainly because we haven't had one for so long, to be honest. The modular Hogwarts plus the banners, trunks, and Moments books covered most other Hogwarts locations (poorly, in some cases) but not that one. Also we've somehow come to the point where an actual playset consisting of a recognisable location (not: half a tree means the Forbidden Forest) is the exception, not the norm.

Affordable (around EUR 15) sets with minifigs (don't even care which ones, just not buildable objects without any) that don't contain fricking cars.

So - worse than Avatar 2, then? I'm just saying. ;-)

That, exactly. I'm all for cheap, accessible HP sets, in fact I spent most of last year complaining about the lack of them. But as a kid I'd have been so disappointed if someone had given me a small HP set because they knew I liked HP, and instead of like a bit of the castle or the forest or Diagon Alley or anything else magical it contained a CAR. Like I've said, Lego already has a lot of cars at kid-friendly price points (most of City, a fair amount of Friends, not to even mention car-specific themes like Speed Racers) - why couldn't they use the cheapest HP set for something different? I think both the Thestral Carriage and the Polyjuice Potion Mistake were much more on point in terms of what the target audience would like. Plus, speaking of the target audience: HP used to be one of the few themes that appealed to girls as well. Again, previous smaller sets did a much better job of including both genders. Harry and Luna with a Thestral carriage? That's one popular male character, one popular female character, a scary carnivorous skeletal horse and a cute baby version of it - it ticks a lot of boxes. But this? Two male characters in a car - don't tell me anyone thought "Girls will love this!" when they okayed it. Give us the Beauxbatons winged horses (which have been paywalled behind one pretty pricey set), a glittery patronus, or at least animals more exciting than Hedwig who has even been included in polybags before.

That's exactly what I am worried about with the Hoopty: the set not selling well at that price, and Lego blaming it on the all-female minifigure selection (in a Superhero theme, too).

I'm glad you enjoy it, but I genuinely have no idea what they were thinking - not only in terms of not including any new characters, or the giant turd that is the Sorting Hat. Like, does anyone genuinely want a set consisting only of the Ford Anglia? I mean I can see why a car stuck up a tree would make a fun addition to a castle set (like the Whomping Willow one in 2018 or the Microscale Hogwarts and Grounds), but just the car? Lego already has tons of cars in their catalogue, and most of them are nicer cars that actually appeal to a car-loving audience. Somehow I doubt that the people who enjoy stories about kids attending a magic school and battling an evil wizard dream about Lego sets of rather ordinary-looking cars. Or: So far we've had a buildable Hedwig that can flap her wings, a giant buildable Hedwig on top of the Hogwarts Icons sets, another buildable Hedwig as a pencil holder (from the HP Dots line) - so what do they give us this year? Buildable Hedwig. Yay.

What do you mean that ship has sailed? We're talking about the third highest grossing MCU movie ever, and the only one in the top five that wasn't an ensemble cast Avengers movie! Even more importantly, this was after Endgame when most MCU movies' ticket sales (and corresponding merch sales) must have been somewhat of a disappointment. And with the current strikes and future movies being delayed, what else is Lego supposed to base its Marvel sets on in the meantime - Ant-Man 3? (Which did even worse at the box office than BOTH Ant-Man 1 and 2, and that's REALLY saying something.) Mind you, I haven't seen any Spider-Man movie since the one where Willem Dafoe played the Green Goblin in like the 90s, so I don't care either way. But if you ask me, between what I've written above and the fact that Spider-Man is probably the most successful Marvel Lego character, we could be seeing NWH sets for a LOOONG time.

Yes, that's kind of my point. We know she isn't at the Boathouse when the new students arrive, because Hagrid takes the firsties up to the Castle and then she takes over from there. Nearly any other staff member could be at the Boathouse at nearly any other time, so why would they pick the one person at the one time when we know she's not there? It's just baffling to me, and the recent false rumour of McGonagall appearing in the Battle of Hogwarts set makes it even weirder.

Just got back from holiday, caught up on the 2024 rumours, and I have to say I'm not at all excited. Harry this, Ron and Hermione that, meh. I can't believe they're actually making the buildable Sorting Hat - as others have pointed out, it basically looks like a dark brown turd, and who wants that on their shelf? And just how many buildable Hedwigs do we need? No Snape or Slytherin stuff to tempt me with, either. ;-) Also, what would McGonagall even be doing at the Boathouse, especially at a time when new students arrive? Shouldn't that be Hagrid there? I guess they didn't want to have too many Hagrids in this wave, but still. To me that's weird especially because the Battle of Hogwarts set this year was rumoured to include McGonagall but then didn't. Could there have been a mix-up of some sort?

Quoting myself because HP mechs? Yikes. Quoting myself again because someone asked about possible remakes in the March wave.

@Alas_EarwaxIf the current WWW set sells well, I expect them to do more Diagon Alley buildings in that style, and there aren't actually that many options to chose from. Gringotts is way more iconic than most, so I think we will definitely get it sooner or later. I doubt it would have an underground section, though. Maybe just a lower level (at street level but made to look like a basement from the inside) with like a slide and a vault or two.

Just out of curiosity, do we actually know that? I mean both the Bugle and the Sanctum seem to be popular with fans, but the Sanctum at least also seems to be on sale a lot.

Sure, but why that one? To put things in perspective: 1) MOM did decently at the box office, and that's it. On BusinessInsider's list of MCU movie box office takes it's ranked 11th with a little less than a billion dollars. Not bad, but you have to keep in mind that most movies on the list are older, so you'd need to account for inflation. Given that, I'm not sure how MOM's take would hold up to, say, both the first and second GotG movies or even the first Iron Man. 2) Even in absolute terms, disregarding inflation, MOM did not do as well as the first Captain Marvel and Black Panther movies. Given that Wakanda Forever's sets seem to all be warming the shelves (and the movie itself is ranked 14th, not so far below MOM) and given that LEGO has no confidence whatsever in The Marvels as evidenced by its single, massively overpriced set, why would they count on MOM's appeal to buyers? 3) Also to put things in perspective: MOM and No Way Home came out almost simultaneously, and No Way Home made roughly TWICE what MOM made. Plus, it's the more kid-friendly film. If LEGO are looking at those two side by side, they aren't going to lose sleep wondering which movie they're going to be making sets about for the next couple of years. If nothing else, the figures prove that while Dr Strange may be popular, he's MUCH more popular in a kid-friendly, Spiderman-y context, especially with Spiderman to back him up, than in an almost-horror MOM context. So again, if they decide on revisiting Strange, why would they pick his MOM appearance as opposed to his No Way Home appearance? So basically, if they decide to revisit the older movies, I'd expect a) more No Way Home sets (these might figure Dr Strange, as they have before), b) more sets with old favourites like Iron Man, Captain America, Thor, etc. from the MCU's heyday (these might possibly include Dr Strange especially if Inifinity War-focussed), and c) certainly no Ant-Man sets. ;-)

@NoOneOfImportanceThe Fantastic Beast movies were rated PG-13, the set was 7+. Most likely, therefore, the target audience would not have known the scene. And between the title and the fact that the entire set was focused on Grindelwald, it made him out to be the viewpoint character. Look at all of those City sets with law enforcement vs. crooks for comparison. They could easily have called the set "Chasing Grindelwald" and given Serafina at least a side build to keep some focus on her. Instead, they made it entirely about the guy in the cool carriage trying to escape. The official description even invited kids to "role-play a mighty battle" and "flap the Thestral's wings to make a flying escape". Not to, you know, stop the villain from escaping. You as the kid were Grindelwald! Why is anyone expecting more MOM sets to begin with? The movie did decently at the box office (especially for phase 4), but nowhere near as well as, say, the first Captain Marvel or Black Panther or the phenomenon that was No Way Home. I can see them doing additional No Way Home sets given that Spiderman is their most beloved character AND given that No Way Home is in the top three of the MCU movies earnings-wise, the only none-Avengers film to make it into the top five (and in phase 4, too, though the post-pandemic release certainly helped). Dr Strange and MOM are nowhere near that, the MCU on the whole is on the decline, and one set per movie seems to be the new standard (see: The Marvels).

To be fair, though, LEGO also seems to have thought that kids would want to be Grindelwald. See: 75951.

Brick Clicker's latest video, at 3:39, has pictures of the new CMF boxes (including the back). There's going to be a six-pack as well.

The closest HP had to a battle pack was 40419 Hogwarts Students Accessory Set (there were others of that kind as well). This one's from 2021 with a list price of EUR 15 and far fewer pieces (53 according to Brickset), so, sure, only three instead of four figures and some more pieces for roughly the same price seems doable. Those sets had 40xxx set numbers, though. Which is why I don't think 76424 is one of them. Other than that, the 76400 Thestral Carriage had 121 pieces, 2 figs, and two thestrals (with the baby being a new mold I think) for EUR 20 list price. Which is why I said I expect 76425 to have about 1-2 figures and maybe an animal or two (probably not as large as the thestrals, and possibly no new molds either), keeping LEGOflation in mind. The Forbidden Forest detention might actually be a good fit if you downsize it - say: Hagrid, Harry, Fang, and half a tree or so. Though that doesn't add up given the piece count, so I'm leaning towards maybe only 1 fig and 1 animal or 2 figs and no animal. A remake of 4750 (Draco's Encounter with Buckbeak)? Or 4751 (Harry and the Marauders' Map), since that one lends itself to sizing it however you wish (amount of corridor and statues ...)? The Chamber of Winged Keys might also be a possibility. Or maybe a remake of Aragog's Lair: Harry, Ron, a bunch of spiders (those are cheap), and the giant buildable spider might explain the piece count (though the previous iterations weren't as elaborate). For 76424 I'd expect something REALLY small. The Final Challenge seems doable if barely (Harry, Quirrell, the Mirror, and not much else). Or the Sorting Hat (based off the original 4701 set, though I wouldn't expect them to do that if they're doing a buildable Sorting Hat as well). Of course, I wouldn't rule out something entirely useless like , say, a buildable, customizable (DOTS style) wand with no minifigs, either.