Ferder

You're right! I forgot about those. I never owned those sets. I did have a motorized train with lights though.

The sound brick seems to have made the sorting hat a pretty expensive set, so it's for the best that it's left out to keep the price down. Besides, there are enough noisy electronic toys out there. We don't need LEGO to join. Lego has gotten by just fine on people using their imagination to make the sound effects.

Just saw this Brickset designer note on the Talking Sorting Hat If anyone buys the hat and already as the Buildable figures I'd love to see how they look combined.

Staff looks great! Now Lego just needs to design a mold with his hair and hat combined.

Thanks, I’ve been trying to recall that name. All I could find was the style guide with his pictures. It really explains so much about those original HP minifigures like Snape’s green face, Dumbledore’s pink robes, Ron’s hair…

The green roofs perhaps came from the 2001 Harry Potter Style Guide which governed all the designs for Harry Potter merchandise (since the designs from the films were still in-progress and top-secret). Check out this toy of Hogwarts from that time. Here's another quote from Mark Stafford: "Of course it's a subject tackled before by some of the best LEGO Designers so I had to find a way to be fresh and try to find a new visual language. The first thing I argued for was the grey roof. The sand green roof only ever existed in the LEGO versions, the books and movie both have grey slate roofs and that's what I wanted." Basically, Lego Hogwarts first had green roofs because early-merchandise Hogwarts had green roofs. The model in the film has slate grey roofs which can appear blush-ish on screen and in person. The 2020 Hogwarts went back to green because it was remaking the 2001 sets for the 20th anniversary.

I've posted this before, but Lego had mocked-up designs for a complete Hogwarts as far back as before 2018.

76435 Hogwarts Great Hall, 1732 pieces, $219.99 This is the fourth version of the Great Hall and from the teaser in the booklet this is promising to be the best version yet. I know many love the 2018 one but it always looked a bit too squat. This one seems like it will have better portions and a courtyard. Will the Grand Tower be included too? Guess we'll just have to wait and see. 76440 Durmstrang Ship & Beauxbatons Carriage 1229 pieces, $139.99 People have been clamoring for a Durmstrang remake for ages. Will be interesting to see how the Beauxbatons carriage compares to the last one, considering it hasn't been too long. 76439 Ollivanders & Madam Malkins, 744 pieces, $99.99 I assume these will be to the scale of last year's Weasley Wizards Wheezes shop. Does this mean Gringott's is the last shop we'll see at the bigger scale with cobblestone baseplates? Regardless, it will nice to finally have a shop from the other side of the alley. Hopefully we'll see Potages, Eeylops and Wiseacre's in the future. 76427 Buckbeak, 723 pieces, $59.99 Will this be like the Hortail, Owl and Phoenix sets, with flappable wings? 76433 Buildable Mandrake, 579 pieces, $59.99 Yay, an ugly screaming plant baby doomed to be sliced up into medicine. Just what every person wants displayed in their home. 76431 Hogwarts Potions Class, 397 pieces, $37.99 It's possible that this will be the rocky base to go under the Great Hall (like how it was way back in 2001). Not counting the collectable book, we haven't seen a playset of this classroom since 2018's Whomping Willow set. 76434 Aragog Forbidden Forest, 195 pieces, $14.99 This is the third iteration of this set and the fourth appearance of Aragog. It will likely be a lot like the 2018 version but with a tree matching the new Forbidden Forest creature set and snaps to connect the two.

I mean, technically it's at least round five if we count 2001-2007 as all one Castle collection and 2010-11 as the second.

And the Philosopher's Stone trials and the Potions Classroom and the Slytherin Common Room and the One-eyed Witch passage to Hogsmead--- many possibilities for a subterrain level.

If the teaser is truly a sneak peak at the design of the new Castle, it looks like the same sections of buildings as the 2018 Micro-scale set though the interior will be Minifig scale this time. If the brown roof piece on the Boathouse is the same as the central tower on the Great Hall we can extrapolate the scale. An even though they are not pictured, hopefully we will see the Long Gallery, Bell Towers, Astronomy Tower, Courtyards and Clock Tower in this castle in the next few years. Not even the 2018 castle had those. 2023 Microscale is the closet we've come to the entire castle, but that left out the Clock Tower.

I was curious about where the Owl Statue came from since I don't remember seeing it in the films or the video games, but then I found this piece of concept art featuring it.

Time for a new 2024 Rumor and Discussion Thread?

It’s possible that a new Great Hall would include the Grand staircase Tower, like the 2018 set. This time it would be nice to use the pieces saved from not having the Chamber of Secrets to have an extra large, extra detailed tower. No sets have ever done the Great Staircase Tower justice and its such an iconic part of the Hogwarts silhouette.

Once they made the decision to represent the classrooms and common rooms with the collectable books and banners it seems they were stuck leaving them out of the modular castle sets, since then there would be overlap. Hopefully we'll be seeing less of those kind of gimmicky playsets sets going forward.

Looks like the connections are on the sides where the stump and one of the pumpkins are connected. I don't see connection points on those small bits, so I think they would have to be removed to attach the Forbidden Forest parts.

The Forbidden Forest set reminds me of the Avatar sets, even the way you can connect them in a string. Missed opportunity to include a centaur or a unicorn. Though recreating the unicorn scene would be a bit morbid.

Just saw the Boat House. It also has grey roofs and no pins. However there are two "claws" at the back that look like a connection point. Don't see them on the Owlery, but that tower stood by itself anyway. Looks like the beginning of a whole new Castle system next year, which is exciting! The modular system was very fun and it came together well enough in the end but it was too restrictive and boxy. This looks like a return to the more movie-accurate designs of 2018-2020.

The hut is straight out the first two films. Turns out the the side building that was mentioned is Fang's doghouse, not the extra room added in Prisoner of Azakaban. The Owlery is a surprise. Doesn't look like it's supposed to match the modular line. No connector pins and it has grey roofs!

If you look at pictures of the back you can even see a micro-scale version of the Council Chamber that they ended up going with.

If we're going by film accuracy it actually fits perfectly if you line up all the sets in one line (with Gringotts on the end), since the Diagon Alley set technically only contains shops from one side of the street and the Gringotts building is already at a diagonal angle on the baseplate. However, if one wanted it to see it with buildings on both sides (which, as you mentioned has somehow not been properly demoed in vidoes yet), the left side buildings would either need to sit loose, unconnected to the other baseplates, or be connected with a new 90 degree corner baseplate that attached to the left side of Gringotts.

The box art shows the movie-accurate placement of the set, attached to Olivanders. There's a connection point on its own by the teetering cauldrons (which, by the way is such a quintessential Diagon Alley detail) which lines up perfectly with the single connection pin on the left side of Olivanders.

It was closer to a third of the castle, if that. This is what the whole castle would have looked like at that scale. Lego's model was just the bottom left corner. No Quad, Clocktower, Long Gallery, Courtyard, Green houses, Clocktowers, or Astronomy Tower. I can understand why Lego didn't introduce the other sections as stand-alone sets since they are less iconic than the front part they chose (which is basically the facade from the Wizarding World theme parks) though for one of 3D puzzle versions of Hogwarts it was done as three different sets that could fit together and even then it didn't include all the courtyards and stuff.

If they had made the base an exact square it could have fit the the Clock Tower and Owlery, like the Noble Collection sculpture. As it is now, the backside looks more like Hogwarts from Philosopher's Stone/Chamber of Secrets

Yes, I can't see the Clocktower either. Hopefully it's just hidden in the back. Nice choice with the Advent Calendar to make it a companion to the play sets again, as opposed to more microscale builds. I like how this can be combined with the Hogsmeade Village set, the Shrieking Shack and the new train station to make a nice little Hogsmeade Christmas town.