brickbride

Believe it or not, I did consider writing "HP mechs" on my list of what to expect. Ultimately, however, I could not see how they would make that work with this theme. Not that the Marvel and Star Wars ones work all that well to begin with, thematically, but still - I can see more kids wanting to swoosh around their Marvel and Star Wars action figures than to want to play "Harry vs. Voldemort: Battle of the Mechs". That said, if there WERE mechs, I'd expect them to be priced at $ 15.99 like in the other themes. So I don't see any here. Unless of course we're talking about a two-pack or something. Wow. After I've been ranting about the lack of allowance-friendly sets in a supposed kids' theme for all of last year, can it be that LEGO is finally listening? I'm especially curious about 76425 given the price-to-pieces ratio. I do hope, though, that these are "proper" playsets with minifigures - not buildable objects/figs nor the last death throes of HP DOTS.

Quoting myself from like a dozen pages ago because @BrickBob Studpants asked. ;-) Though most of them probably would be more likely for a second wave than a first. In addition, I've made a couple off-the-wall suggestions for gimmicky sets in the last couple of posts (HP forearm collection, Harry's hair), but the only one I could possibly see them using is a Diagon Alley trunk to keep the trunk collection alive ("Cobble together your own stores, shopkeepers, and customers!"). Also, did they actually use the Dumbledore hair for Aberforth? If so, I'm disappointed. He needed wilder, more flowing hair in my opinion. He looks entirely too polished this way.

If they wanted to include minifigs with those, why wouldn't they have included Lucius and Harry with Dobby? Also I'm not putting a mandrake the size of Dobby on my shelf. But sure, anything goes with LEGO these days.

Yeah, that's why I was confused when Brick Clicker mentioned both these sets as if they were for sure happening in 2024. Of all the leaks, the Sorting Hat was the one where my mind immediately went "Who'd pay for THAT?" I'm not even interested in half the themes covered by the survey (like buildable Disney figures and Zelda), but this was the only one which I could not see appealing to anyone. That said, I thought (and still think) the same about, say, the pricing of the coming The Marvels set, that ridiculous (and frankly insulting to actual artists) Modern Art set, the new Friends Dog Rescue Center with the eye-hurting colour scheme, and the buildable Chewbacca. And those are all actual sets, so clearly LEGO and I are not on the same page as to what appeals.

In case anyone's interested, Brick Clicker has a new video out. It's mostly about Star Wars but it does give us a first look at the new boxes for the CMF series.

Another gimmick idea: We could do hair to go with the Marvel and Star Wars helmet collections. Build yourself a Harry Potter wig out of LEGO! It's a 3-in-1 set. Well, all three models are just Harry's hair, but the alternate instructions for the B and C models (only available online, of course) cover a different head size each so that the wig will fit most customers. I'm onto something here, ain't I? On a more sensible note (referring to my gimmick idea, not Accio Lego, just in case this wasn't clear), apparently Promobricks are currently teasing leaks for Technic, Dreamzzz, and Ninjago. Not HP as of yet, so I doubt we'd get something as early as tomorrow. Brick Clicker in a recent video mentioned both the buildable Sorting Hat and UCS Burrow from the survey as 2024 sets, but I'm not sure if he has any actual information on whether these sets are going to be released at all (let alone when). Personally, when I read about the survey leak, I thought a buildable Sorting Hat was a terrible idea. If nothing else, it's an unattractive colour for a display model and probably hard to get even somewhat organic-looking. But given the awful-looking buildable Chewbacca over at Star Wars, clearly neither of these concerns would discourage LEGO, so yeah.

If you can even call that a courtyard. Most of the excitement seemed to come from the initial description which made the set sound much better than it turned out to be IMO. But to each their own. Meanwhile, I've come up with the perfect new gimmick: a HP buildable forearms collection to go with the Marvel glove collection! For starters, Snape's forearm (black robe sleeve, white used as a skin tone, Dark Mark), and Dumbledore's cursed blackened hand (garish robe sleeve, Horcrux ring). Next wave: various animagi and werewolves caught in mid- transformation. Watch out for James Potter's half-human, half-stag forearm! Who needs decently priced playsets when we all love buildable display objects just that much?

To be fair, that's the same as the current confirmed HP list for 2024. Don't give up hope yet is all I'm saying.

The main draw of this Gringotts is that it is compatible with the 2020 Diagon Alley set, hence the odd decision to balance a baseplate on the lower part (the 2020 Diagon Alley had baseplates). Making Gringotts a shadowbox would have defeated the purpose.

I don't have the set, so I don't care either way, but everywhere it was discussed, people went: "Yay, a DH set! Finally we get a minifigure of Scabior/an updated minifigure of (whoever)!" I didn't notice anyone going "Wow, that build looks great, I'd have to get it no matter what figs came with it!" Nah, not potions bottles. Those don't lend themselves to including enough Gryffindor minifigs. Other than that: Please don't give them ideas! Those wouldn't be compatible with WWW, so I very much doubt they'd give us two new DA series at the same time (plus Gringotts). I mean everyone argued that the Moments books were the reason the modular Hogwarts has next to no classrooms. I could see something like a DA trunk though (to keep the trunk line going) where you can cobble together your own shops.

I strongly disagree. What about the recent Battle of Hogwarts? No-one bought that one for anything but the figs (or completionism). And what about the Fluffy Encounter and the new Sirius' Rescue before that? Or the older Expecto Patronum with like one single tree cut in halves, or the Forbidden Forest set before that? Those were all about the figs, too. Or the Thestral Carriage. At least Grindelwald 's had a roof! (I mean I can see why they'd have traded that in for a baby thestral, but it's still a weak build.)

First of all, there's no need to call people "completely delusional" just because you don't agree with them. Please be civil. Second, as for diversity in terms of skin colour, race, disabilities, and so on - yeah, I might agree with you. That's something that LEGO pays attention to. But it's also plain that LEGO still doesn't like female characters. Or girls for that matter. They've only recently rebooted their only (non-licenced) girls' theme into no longer a girls' theme because of, you know, inclusion. Mind you, the old Friends had boy characters as well, but those weren't the main leads and therefore that's no longer allowed. Wouldn't want those poor underrepresented boys to feel like there's even a single theme without them in the limelight, would we? Also, just for fun, count the girl protagonists of the new Dreamzzz theme. If LEGO's so desperate for "diversity" (referring to gender equality, here) as you say, we should at the very least get a 50:50 split, shouldn't we? I could go on about this for some time but I won't because it's off-topic. But basically, LEGO absolutely does not treat girls as equal to boys, and I cannot really fathom why anyone would argue otherwise. I guess what you refer to is: Sure, LEGO in recent years has become somewhat better about including a token female minifigure in many sets (which is probably why Luna is in so many HP sets despite really not being an important character). But here we are talking about a set with an all-female minifigure line-up (minifigures, mind you, not mini-dolls). In a tradtional "boys'" theme like Superheroes. You really think that if this set fails - which it will, thanks to the pricing if nothing else -, the minifigure selection won't be blamed?

So, like @StudLord said: It wasn't for you. People tend to move in circles that reinforce their perceptions. But that doesn't diminish that Captain Marvel was a huge box office success. For comparison: I absolutely loathed Avatar 2. I sat in the cinema unable to believe that a movie this nonsensical, misogynistic, poorly plotted, needlessly violent, and inconsistent in its morals could have been made today. I was utterly disgusted by how it dealt with many issues reminiscent of the real world (such as the racist bullying of our protagonists by their hosts which was just glossed over). There were barely any sympathetic characters - and those few weren't exactly well-characterised either -, and in fact the movie even made me lose sympathy for characters I'd originally liked. If I hear anyone lauding the movie I privately think they're out of their mind, and if I came across a review titled something like "Cameron Succeeds Again" I'd probably skip it. But I wouldn't argue with the fact that it's a box office success or that many people did like it, even if I absolutely cannot understand why. (Or, for that matter, why LEGO would have made playsets of it.)

True! As I've said, most character's debut movies did worse than their sequels even when the sequels were objectively worse or at least less well-regarded (like Iron Man vs. Iron Man 2 and 3). BUT most of those sequels came during phase 1-3 when the MCU was slowly building up towards Endgame, with Dr Strange 2 and Spiderman 4 so far being the only exception. (And those were both phase 4, so they at least benefitted both from the post-pandemic movie boom and from people's attachment to Infinity War/Endgame. Phase 5 is another cup of tea entirely.) Since then? Thor 4 actually did worse than Thor 3, and Wakanda Forever did worse than the first Black Panther movie. Quantumania did worse than BOTH its predecessors. I fully agree about Black Widow - like I've said, that movie had the deck stacked against it in all kinds of ways. And it STILL outperformed The Hulk (also Captain America 1, but that's only barely and not taking into account inflation). I also agree that between Eternals, Shan-Chi, and Black Widow, LEGO must have gotten pretty badly burned on movie tie-in sets. Wakanda Forever's box office figures were at least decent, but the sets have still ended up on clearance a lot. The same, I suspect, for Thor Love and Thunder. (Despite the inexplicable price increase for the Goat Boat.) Not sure about Dr Strange 2. Still, GotG 3 got three pretty decent (by 2023 LEGO standards) sets - but that might have been decided earlier than the one for The Marvels, meaning it might simply be that LEGO going forward is exercising extreme caution with any MCU movie that doesn't seem like a surefire bet (read: stars Spider-Man), and The Marvels is simply the first one where this new policy shows. We'll see. @squiz18 You're very welcome!

Just for reference, I found a list (by businessinsider https://www.businessinsider.com/marvel-movies-ranked-how-much-money-at-global-box-office-2021-11#4-the-avengers-2012-28) of all the MCU movies ranked by box office total. It doesn't include the third GotG movie, but the others are there. Ranks 1-5 are all the Avengers Movies (with Age of Ultron doing the worst) and Spiderman No Way Home (ranked 3rd). Then comes Black Panther (ranked 6th), various Iron Man, Captain America, and Spider-Man movies - notably all the latest instalments, even when they were not all that popular; I doubt many people would rank Iron Man 3 as their favourite or even second favourite among the Iron Man series. And then Captain Marvel in 10th place as the last one to have grossed one billion dollars. Beating out both Dr Strange movies, the first two GotG movies (the third's not on the list), the first two movies of Spider-Man, Iron Man, and Captain America each, Black Panther Wakanda Forever, all four Thor movies, all three Ant-Man movies, and a bunch of also-rans like Hulk, Shang-Chi, Black Widow, and Eternals. It's also worth noting that in most cases, even a popular character's first movie didn't do all that well. Captain America (2011) is ranked second-to-last with 371 million dollars, Thor (2011) grossed 449 million, Ant-Man (2015) 519 million, Iron-Man 586 million dollars (though that one came out in 2008 and so did pretty well, I think), Dr Strange (2016) 678 million - that honestly amazed me, I mean it's barely a MCU movie -, and GotG (2014) 773 million - pretty good, but the second one did even better. Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017) did fairly well with 880 million - but again, for a character's debut movie, Captain Marvel did fricking amazing! The only debut that did any better was Black Panther. And that one came after Captain America Civil War where the character had already been introduced at length. Whereas Captain Marvel was a complete unknown at the time. Plus, while it's true that Captain Marvel had the bonus of coming before Endgame, it also came right on the heels of Ant-Man and the Wasp. Which is ranked only 22nd on the list with 623 million dollars (still better than the first one, though :-) ) despite itself having the huge bonus of coming right after Infinity War, the second highest grossing MCU movie ever AND the one that left everyone on tenterhooks as to what was going to happen next. Black Panther, meanwhile, came before the much-anticipated Infinity War AND after the not-so-great but still well-performing Thor Ragnarok (15th on the list with 854 million dollars), which is quite a bonus, too. Basically, I cannot fathom how anyone does NOT consider Captain Marvel a success. I sort of get, though, why she's not in as many sets as other characters whose movies did worse. Like Hulk, whose solo movie is ranked last on the list, or Black Widow (though to be fair her character DIED before her solo movie came out; if that's not stacking the deck against her I don't know what is); they may not sell tickets on their own, but they've been around in a group setting for a long time. But Eternals, for example, is ranked 28th on the list yet according to Brickset got four sets for a single movie, none of them a polybag. Captain Marvel will have a whopping four sets for TWO movies, AND two of them are polybags! Ant-Man also has more sets (five, one of them a polybag) - and even if The Marvels absolutely tanks, Captain Marvel will likely have sold more tickets with two movies than Ant-Man with three. Even Thor Love and Thunder got two fricking sets! Black Panther Wakanda Forever clearly got a bunch of sets not based on its great concept (the main character DIED OFF-SCREEN at the start of this so-called sequel), but because the first Black Panther movie did extremely well. And, again, so did Captain Marvel! So I'm really not sure what's going on there; Captain Marvel's prior box office figures are in the league of Black Panther or at the very least Doctor Strange, but LEGO treat her like they treat Ant-Man. Why?

That. And like I've said, I do think the main aim is pushing Ms Marvel. So calling the movie "Captain Marvel 2" would be counterproductive. Marvel's gearing up for some movies with a united cast (the next Avenger movies, due in 2025 and 2026, I think), but that requires movie-goers to actually give a shit about their "new generation" of Avengers, and a bunch of Disney+ series aren't going to do the trick. So they need to use what's left of the "old generation" (Dr Strange, Captain Marvel - Black Panther would have been another, but, well) and use "their" movies in order to transition their new cast into our hearts. That seems like the basic idea, anyway.

More like: "They insisted on shoehorning characters from Disney+ shows into the movie in order to push their streaming series at the movies' expense." Like they've been doing all this time - one reason for me to not watch Dr Strange 2 despite liking the title character was that it relied on having watched WandaVision, which I hadn't. Another was that they gave him a co-lead I had no interest in (Miss America). And the fact that The Marvels relies on having watched Miss Marvel is the reason I'm not going to watch it, either. So in fact, earnings from the sequel will NOT be a good yardstick to test movie-goers' love of the original Captain Marvel movie. Again, I think you're coming at this from the wrong angle. Do you think Dr Strange as played by Benedict Cumberbatch is unpopular enough to need Wanda plus a random teenage girl as co-leads for his second solo movie? 'Cause there's like billions of fangirls who disagree! Yet that's exactly the direction they took. So it's not that they thought Captain Marvel needed the help. It's that they wanted to push Miss Marvel - not by giving her her own movie (which no-one would watch, since she's only known from a single streaming series and wasn't in the MCU phase 1-3 back when the MCU was actually relevant for movie-goers), but by shoehorning her into a movie with an existing character who has already proven she can generate high sales. Kind of like Miss America in Dr Strange 2. Kind of like Wakanda Forever, too, except there the move of pushing Shuri and Ironheart at the expense of the original Black Panther was driven by Real Life Writes the Plot. Don't get me wrong: I wouldn't be surprised if the new movie tanked. If nothing else, then because Marvel's recent output really hasn't been great, and with rising ticket prices many people will go "Ant-Man sucked, let's not spend a fortune on another Marvel movie so soon". But then the same people who now go "Well, of course Captain Marvel made a billion, it came before Endgame" are NOT going to blame Ant-Man, but are going to go "Well, of course it tanked, the characters sucked". Again, I'm pretty sure it's an experiment to see how far they can push things. And it's not the first wildly overpriced Marvel set either. What about the Iron Man Armoury, for example? Less than 500 pieces, 90 EUR. More minifigs, though. But that was a year ago. And given that LEGO has in the meantime increased the price for Marvel mechs from EUR 10 to EUR 15 (and likely EUR 16 next year, which would be a whopping 60% inflation in two years) ...

I'm pretty sure it's an experiment to see how hard they can squeeze the customers. They did some truly nonsensical stuff last year with the City theme. Like the grocery store, which cost EUR 60 for 400 pieces (and apparently it was USD 70 in the US - again, in fricking City!!!) and was only on the shelves for half a year which must be some kind of record. However, like I've said, I'm annoyed they have to pick one of the very few Marvel sets with female minifigures - and in fact the only one I can think of with an all-female line-up - for their experiment, because if this fails - and duh, it will - I bet someone's going to be like "Female superheroes don't sell" regardless of context. Thank you! I don't get the assertion either. Like, I doubt many people are actually fans of Black Panther (the character, not the movie). I don't mean to say he's hated or anything, just kind of boring. Yet he had a high-grossing movie and so he got a bunch of sets and a EUR 350 bust. Meanwhile, a female superhero had a high-grossing movie, so she got - what? A polybag? That she had to share with Nick Fury? The first Captain Marvel movie had its share of plot holes (but that's par for the course with Marvel), plus I personally cannot stand Nick Fury, but I still enjoyed it, and I really liked the character who was something new and fresh for a change. (As well as the Nineties setting.) I probably won't watch The Marvels because I saw the trailer and there's just no way I'm going to endure Kamala's antics for an entire two hours. But Captain Marvel is not the problem here.

... and where is the rest of the set? The really sad thing though? If this won't sell at the price - and it won't -, LEGO will be all like "We knew it! Female superheroes don't sell! Let's make even fewer of them!"

Given what LEGO HP has come up with this year, that's not exactly a high bar. What else is going to be the highlight of the year - buildable Dobby? :-( --- The leaked pic looks pretty cool. I dig it. Not that I'll buy it, EUR 430 is waaaaay above my LEGO set budget. However, I see three immediate problems: 1) The entire structure with the underground section looks very cool, but it doesn't give me any vibes of a bank in a busy shopping street whatsoever. In fact it reminds me most of the Lake Task with the underwater section and then the tower above. Or maybe something fairlylandish like caves full of dark creatures with a human fortress above which, yeah, isn't wholly inaccurate in concept but entirely lacks the mundanity aspect of "Let's go to the bank to withdraw money for return-to-school shopping." 2) All the people who want to display this next to Diagon Alley are forced to scrap the best part of it - they'd probably be happier with just the top section for EUR 200 or so. And even if you add the lower part on, like, a lower shelf or something, the vibes don't mesh for me. The 2020 DA may be full of magic shops but it's still a recognisably mundane shopping street, whereas, again, this (the lower part at least) feels much more fairytale-ish. 3) With the showy underground section and the way this is structured, the dragon on top looks unimpressive size-wise and frankly barely noticable compared to, again, the caverns. I don't know. It's a cool visual but it feels like several missed opportunities at the same time. That's my first impression, anyway.

Sure, but if they want a lot of people to buy merchandise, they might consider sticking to merchandise of characters many people know and care about.

I'm not much into Disney, but as for HP: The difference here is that all HP fans have either seen the movies, or read the books, or both. So if you pick a bunch of more obscure characters like, to give just one example, Griphook, everyone will still know who they are. Marvel, meanwhile, has chosen to paywall most of its recent content behind a streaming service membership. So there are plenty of Marvel fans like myself who enjoyed the MCU right up to Endgame (plus GotG 3) but haven't followed all the Disney+ series and all the more recent movies that are so heavily tied into the Disney+ series content as to barely make sense without it. Therefore, focussing this heavily on Disney+ series characters is doing a disservice to fans of the older movie-based content; that's all I'm saying.

Those of us who don't have Disney+ don't even know who Echo and Agatha ARE. Personally, I totally get why people would have preferred rare versions of popular movie characters, or rare movie characters like Captain Marvel (so we won't have to buy a 420 pieces EUR 90 set for her). Obviously that's not the route they're going, but that doesn't make movie fans wrong for wishing they would.

What's crazy would be expecting everyone to shell out EUR 430 for a single building. Also, the new WWW isn't exactly a low-cost option, since if you bought four sets at that price, you'd have spent about the same as for DA, but for a very scaled-down version of it. Unforunately, both are very LEGO things to do these days.

Some of the shaggy Hobbit and long hair pieces might also work for pirates: And of course this: All are new to PAB according to StoneWars (https://www.stonewars.de/news/neu-bei-lego-pick-a-brick-maerz-2023/), though some might be sold out for now. EDIT TO ADD: Also, these fern pieces (from Rivendell, I think?):