accio brick - the lego harry potter comm

There's a new DK book announced for 2022:

"Go on a spellbinding visual journey through the Hogwarts Houses!

Delve into the world of the four Hogwarts school houses – Gryffindor, Slytherin, Hufflepuff, and Ravenclaw – in this enchanting guide featuring recent LEGO® Harry Potter™ sets and minifigures. Learn all about the Sorting Ceremony, when each young witch and wizard is put in the house they naturally belong to.

Find out about the four founders of Hogwarts and the personality traits associated with each house’s students. From Ron Weasley to Draco Malfoy, learn which house your favorite LEGO Harry Potter minifigures are in, and discover fun facts about students, teachers, creatures, and locations.

Explore the school’s magical classrooms, cozy common rooms, and the Great Hall with its house tables. Join students for flying lessons and a game of Quidditch, and see who wins the House Cup."

Some countries are hearing confirmations that the HP GWP will happen next week, unfortunately there's no word yet on the US. There's some consolation, however, in the event it shouldn't happen where you are: lego has announced another VIP weekend in November from the 20th to the 21st. The GWPs and specials are scheduled to be announced on the 15th. So if there isn't incentive to make your purchases next week, maybe that will help make up for it. 😊



Thanks to stonewars for the heads up.

Looks like bad news, I'm afraid. The Gryffindor Dorm GWP is no longer appearing on the store calendars... The German one is generally not as informative, so no worries there, but US, UK and Canadian calendars have pulled the mention of the GWP. 😢 (The Aussie version presently has no calendar at all... 😐) Previous version where it's listed can be found here.

We do, however, have a first look at the interior of the set, so I'm taking some consolation in that.

From midnight this morning onwards for a week you can get double VIP points at the lego store. (Registering as a VIP is free and gets you a cute keychain, too. 😉 Even if you never use the points, you might, so it's worth a shot either way.) They changed the VIP system a while back making it non-trivially more complicated, but I checked it at the time and calculated the standard VIP rebate for the leading currencies all as upwards of five percent of what you spend now off your next purchase (so double means upwards of 10%), but it can be difficult to follow the base maths so 1) I'll spare you and 2) I'm not revisiting that determination regularly; exchange rates are a pain in my backside. Additionally, these rebate systems are always a little problematic. They're designed to keep you coming back, there's always a minimum amount to get that rebate, the points eventually expire... Yada yada. As systems go, lego's is far from the worst, but a straight forward discount would obviously be better. For someone who used to buy the Creator Modular sets and / or the Winter Village sets every year, it still worked out advantageously for me, and it's certainly proved even more worthwhile since the rekindling of the HP series. 😃 Mileage varies obviously. ( Read more... )

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In other news: Target is offering the Harry and Hermione bundled maxifigure set for half price, and I'm positively green with envy. 😢 If you're in the US and these were on your shopping radar, I'd say get them now.

Promobricks has a lovely new leak for us on the Harry Potter lego sets due this winter, and I'm chuffed already, just from the descriptions alone. 😃 We can expect four new sets, two more of the Hogwarts Moment sets (Divination and Moody's DADA classroom), an extension to the 2021 Hogwarts modular castle system for the Infirmary (!) and a buildable trunk. (And yes, I'm afraid that does indeed confirm what I've been saying: we won't be seeing a return to the popular 2018/20 style.) That last item is a little more difficult to explain than the others - off Promobricks' description, they seem to be struggling, too 😆 - so I think we'll need to wait for pictures on that one to judge. But basically the overall takeaway should be this: lego is evidently fairly serious about the HP line, which is awesome! For one thing we're seeing what is only our second winter wave since the series' reboot in 2018, which even if the sets themselves perhaps aren't quite your cup of tea is great news. (Think of it this way, as long as the series is in production and the more sets there are, the greater the chances of one day seeing that set you'd love to have. So, win! 😃) And in addition to expanding on last year's "gimmick" with the Hogwarts Moment "book" sets, they're giving us a regular set for the first time in a winter wave, and an all new format in the form of the buildable suitcase. Creativity at work! Always a good sign, it's not merely production by rote, and they really do seem willing to try out a bunch of things with this series. So without further ado, on to the leaks... ( Read more... )

And that would be all they've said about the sets at this time. I'll be sure to keep you posted when there's more.

A note as to our source: the promobricks video with all the info. While it's unlikely to be of much interest to you as it's in German, you can still give them an upvote for providing us with this preview, so maybe click through and show them a little love? ❤️

(And a cheery thanks to lego_guyon02 and GF for their respective heads up. Much appreciated.)

The first ever lego Con has been announced, scheduled for 26 June, a 90 minute live event starting at 5PM in London, 12PM New York, and 9AM Los Angeles. You can participate by clicking the link at that point in time, more (sketchy) details on what to expect beneath the fold.



(dodgy official advert / promo for the Con that makes me wonder if I'm truly going to "love it" 😆 or if I'm remotely the target audience...)


There are also a couple of new Advent Calendar pictures, here the box art:



and beneath the fold, a potential spoiler of how the game contained might be played:( Read more... )

So final release photos of the first wave we've known about for a couple of months have finally hit the interwebs, and goodness are they lovely. (Apparently they went live a bit early on the Spanish amazon store, and we have stonewars.de to thank for archiving many of these plus a bunch of Instagram users (special thanks to YetiZombie for collecting the pictures), and basically the net went wild capturing away (I have no idea where the pictures of Fawkes and the buildable figs came from, for example), and here we are. Oodles of eye candy!) But that's not enough, oh no, we've got pix of four more sets from the summer series, both from the 20th anniversary collection and regular edition, and it's safe to say the Harry Potter / Wizarding World line has received a boatload of love. Lego is trying some new things and a decent variety of builds, and I'll be eager to see what sticks moving forward.

There's so much to absorb, I'm highlighting the very new stuff in red. Most of the pics are available in larger form if you click on them.

We're getting the first peek at the new "collectible" Chocolate Frog cards, and I think it's a lovely idea! In much the same way they're including random tiles in the Vidiyo series (I'll do a report on that in the near future) we'll find a few "cards" in a couple of the sets, so far four in the Hogsmeade set, and six in the Chamber of Secrets set. More to follow? We'll have to wait and see.

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ETA: The sets have gone live for preorder a good two weeks earlier than expected on the German lego.com site!

That's presumably the case in other countries as well, so check your local S@H (Shop at Home -> lego.com). (Accordingly, I'll upload better pictures later, but it takes a while. Done.) If you are thinking of pre-ordering, would you consider using the affiliate links at stonewars for all the amazing work they do for the lego community? You'll probably need to change the store's country, but the links should still work. (And in case it needs saying, no, I don't earn a cent off advertising here or there, but I do appreciate people who contribute to the HP lego fan community and like to support them. ❤️)

There are double VIP points in the S@H through the 20th of this month. Be sure to ask if that applies to pre-orders as well.

People, my people, stuff has been happening.

Photos of the brand spanking new minifig for the first ever Cornish Pixie have been released and it’s adorable. Want! Worse: need!

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An HP LEGO CHESSBOARD!

In light of the success of the Queen’s Gambit and the indisputable iconicness (how is that not a word?) of the scene in PS, I suppose it was practically inevitable. Honestly for me as a non-chess player with limited space, it’s almost a relief as it will free up more of my budget towards the eventual purchase of the D2C Diagon Alley, but I do look forward to seeing how it was designed. (The pawns in particular...)