Countdown to new Harry Potter set reveal

Cool hat/hair piece for the photographer minifigure. I think it’s new in that colour combo.

@Lego34s said:
"Another Lego dilemma, I own the original Alley, do I really need to get a rehash...... almost certainly....... Lego you..... Temptress..."

Same. Own the old one, getting this anyway

Looking forward to this one.

I hope somebody will sell individual houses on bricklink, as I would like to buy 1 or 2 of them, but not the whole street

^ My guess is that it will be parted out on BL, and LEGO will put instructions on its site, so you will know which parts to order on BL for which buildings.

The problem may be that the buildings aren't modular, so you may need extra parts and some modding to separate them.

Oh I can't wait to add the set reveal on the Brickset blog post.

Expect to pay 2.5 times the RRP of the original. (I think I paid either €149.99 or €159.99 for the original Diagon Alley.) A bigger and more impressive set to be sure, but massive difference in price, so prepare your wallets if you want it...

So, I'm going to wait for the reveal (even if the film actors "leak" it), but Diagon Alley has always struck me as something that is not easily implemented in Lego. Why? The books talk about how all the buildings are leaning at acute angles to each other, but angles in Lego are almost always 90 degrees. As a result, we have something aesthetically pleasing, but unfaithful to the source material.

^ Could you not order it from Germany or France? If you couldn't directly, could you not do it indirectly with the help of someone in one of those countries?

I believe this will be a perfect fit for the series: reasonable price, great detail, wonderful minifigs. HP is probably the best theme out there in the moment and it feels weird that some other themes don't get the attention (anymore).

Actually due to EU legislation than bans geo blocking within the EU you can order on any EU lego site and have it delivered to that country (so not to the BeNeLux unfortunately)
I did the same with the UK legohouse sets and had them delivered to a friend in the UK who send them on (so only had to bother him with the sending on instead of also ordering it)

@essel said:
" @Zander:
No, the website only allows orders within your country. Though I know a few people living in Germany, I'm not friends with them to the point of burdening them to order expensive toys with their credit card, to have them sent to me afterwards (even if I refund them). That's why I occasionally go to Germany to buy sets at a discount — and I get to eat delicious German specialties, to booth. I'd be more eco-friendly if Lego allowed shopping on any site, just like Amazon does."

Not really a set I'm into!! Bring on the Razor Crest!! Or the Bounty Hunters Transport Ship!! Lol!!

Wow! Can't wait! Maybe it is Diagon Alley of some sort?

For the sake of....!
I'm already over budget this year, and I haven't even bought the 2H Technically sets yet.
May have to reconsider collecting Technic, Ideas, Modulars, Amusement Sets and other specials...

@essel said:
" @Zander:
That's why I occasionally go to Germany to buy sets at a discount — and I get to eat delicious German specialties, to boot. I'd be more eco-friendly if Lego allowed shopping on any site, just like Amazon does."

Smart!

An expert modular version of https://brickset.com/sets/40289-1/Diagon-Alley would look great, but at 5544 pieces this would make it similar in size to https://brickset.com/sets/71043-1/Hogwarts-Castle
and price!

{link removed}

Has someone jumped the gun?

I don't see how it is a leak if they are using the official pictures lego provided?

@Metanoios said:
"Oliver Phelps (actor of one of the Weasley twins) has posted an official promotional clip he and his brother shot for the reveal of this set on his Instagram. You can see a short clip of the set on there. It is an officially released promo video, so not a leak"

Looks like it's gone, he probably got a firm scolding when they told him to remove it.

@guachi said:
"Man, Lego does such a terrible job "revealing" their sets. Their marketing is so cringe-worthy. If you follow this kind of stuff you probably already know what it is. If you don't you'll see it at the store/in your next catalog.

Teasers and stuff are fine for things like a video game or movie that aren't complete yet or aren't coming out for months. But this kind of ridiculous teasing for what's one of hundreds of Lego sets coming out this year is just silly.

Show the set. Show its play features. That's what makes me want to buy it."

The teasers are important to build hype on social media. Remember, the goal is not just to sell to AFOLs, it's also to sell to Harry Potter fans, who may not receive catalogues or follow Lego news.

Am I the only one in love with that vintage camera? I'm already searching in my extra parts to build it!

I couldn't care less if the pics I saw are 'leaked' or 'official reveal'. The set looks like an awesome expansion of my current Diagon Alley and it made it to my Christmas wishlist instantly. Here's hoping there will be a decent discount or grand GWP by then.

The set will be phenomenal, but only 4 new figures for a set this size?

@Sethro3 said:
"The set will be phenomenal, but only 4 new figures for a set this size?"

There are more figures - 4 are exclusive to this set, but other, non-exclusive figures are also included.

If its Diagon alley its already on Instagram its been up 3 days... its enormous too!

The Brickset set entry for me shows eBay rover links at its foot which show the leaked images. The eBay asking price is £800 plus £9.99 postage.

The buildings are open back design, not exactly modular. IMO the set is too big (over twice the pieces of the original one), for over 5500 pieces it's gonna be very expensive. Should have make it smaller or separate into individual sets so that people don't have to spend so much money for all of them. And for that price at least I would expect it to be fully modular instead of open back which make it seem like regular city sets.

@CopperTablet;
One of the guys in my LUG built a minifig-scale version of the microscale Hogwarts set (which he determined is based on the one at the Harry Potter theme park in Florida), and a Diagon Alley block. His major complaint is that it's supposed to be an alley, but nobody ever builds it as one. So he did. The only problem, of course, is that you can't look at any of the details in the stores within, because it's just a few inches away from another building facing back at it. But it's definitely a unique take on it.

@TimotheusFlavii:
The reveal date hasn't arrived yet. It's very simple to just plug in a redirect link that sends you back to the start, and when you're ready to make the announcement you just switch the link to the reveal page. As for the countdown clock, they've announced when they're going to reveal the set, so it should be pretty easy to calculate whether the countdown points to any time within that date, or if it's a day or more after the reveal date.

@Astrobricks:
That depends. Are you working these days, or are you finding yourself spending inordinate amounts of time watching plants grow just because it's something to do?

@dobar:
It's serviceable, but the bellows looks awkward due to the limitations of available parts. To get the taper right, at that scale, you'd pretty much need a dedicated part. I've got Marty McFly somewhere with Doc Brown's 80's style video camera, which I believe I copied from the Dimensions game. That turned out a lot better just because the era is more suited to LEGO recreation in that scale.

There's an ongoing discussion about open-backed buildings. For a theme like HP, fans may want to re-enact the scenes inside the stores of Diagon Alley. But, for displays, closed-back buildings are often superior, although they raise an important question: why construct such elaborate interiors if nobody is going to see them? Why do we have these play features in sets like 10246 if most AFOLs are going to just build the set and then immediately stick it on their Modular display, with the only play occurring on the exterior? Originally, Modulars did not have interiors, but AFOLs claimed they wanted them, so for Green Grocer onwards, interiors were implemented.

75827 attempts to address this with hinges for its incredibly elaborate interior. It is a closed-back building, but the back clashes with the other three sides, and it's challenging to put something on the other side of the back to hide it. 75827 is typically viewed as a pseudo-Modular building that is fit for incorporation into Modular displays but does not meet the Modular building standard in and of itself. You have to display 75827 facing the wall, or maybe you could take a 16x32 baseplate and repurpose one of the two buildings from 76108 on the obverse of 75827.

This is why Ninjago City is the best set of all time: it's a closed-back building, but yet it is filled with visual interest from every single angle you view it from and the windows of the storefronts allow you to see inside. It's also a Lego-original design: they didn't have to work around the constraints of any individual IP.

I saw full pictures of this set on Facebook, so much for the Lego Spanish Inquisition... haha

I love that old camera!

@CopperTablet:
Many AFOLS design interiors in their own MOCs, which often only ever see the light of day for as long as it takes to photograph them. The point is often nothing more than simply knowing there's something inside. One of the guys in my LUG was using one of the map sites where you can get a street-level view to look at details on the ground floor of Detroit's Fisher Building, and he noticed an arrow pointed at the building itself. He followed it, being curious, and it turns out you can "drive" through the lobby of the building. Since he suddenly had reference material available, he built the interior of the lobby. Now, this building occupies 20 regular baseplates, forms an L shape, and weighs a couple hundred pounds. Nobody is going to be playing in the interior of this building, and the best way to see it is to be present when he's either setting it up or taking it down (the whole thing is built in manageable sections that just stack together). But he built it because he could.

Vader11 - I believe the sections are supposed to connect back-to-back (Olivanders with Flourish and Quiddich with Weasly's) so they form complete buildings. But I agree they've should have split this into two or four sets, so you don't have to spend as much at once.

Mario and Hidden Side have been distracting me from Harry Potter for a while now, this might pull me back in...

Finally! A UCS Mirror of Erised!!!!!

it looks pretty bad and boring...

This could've been great but it looks really bad.

It looks so cheap for its 400 something price. Really disappointed, I liked the old one better.

Lego Harry Potter sets always welcome. Especially the huge ones! I have feeling that this one will be really serious and also a beautiful set.

The set suffers badly from how they've just omitted the upper floors and sloping roofs from several of the buildings, the flat roofs makes it look more like some American small-town main street. Also one of the facades has a very bright color and too much blank wall, at the very least it needs one or two more windows.

The addition of a substantial set was definitely imminent especially given we are seeing the second collectable figure series released to coincide with this.

The timing is surprisingly late and close to the release of this set (assuming it’s the first), although it may be on the assumption it sells out quickly.

The 1st of September is actually the day Harry first goes to Hogwarts.

Not spotted anyone mentioning this, but the countdown will reach 0 at 11:00am (London) on Monday 31st August. I'll be refreshing my browser a lot then.

@TheBrickshipyard said:
"When I was a younger man in the 2000s, I distinctly remember reports of hooligans driving cars next to the bookstores upon release of each new HP novel and they would shout out plot reveals to the horrified fans! A cruel thing indeed, but silly as well. This reveal business reminds of that somehow, except twisted. Both the in line fans and car driving hooligans are on the same page (pun intended) such that they know the "secret" while hanging around the lego store. Yet for some reason, the lego store wants to pretend it's all a big secret. Nobody knows! :)"

Yeah, someone did this when we were in line for "The Half-Blood Prince."

Got mine today - it's bloody heavy!