Also! The 2023 Harry Potter theme Advent Calendar ... REVEALED!
SPOILERS, and therefore spoilered. DO NOT CLICK THROUGH UNLESS YOU WANT TO SEE THE CONTENTS OF THE CALENDAR!!!! Be smart about this. Know yourself and don't inadvertently ruin your fun; I'll survive without the extra views, trust me. 😉
As you can see, lego's 2023 Harry Potter theme Advent Calendar (set 76418, expected to hit the shelves 01 September or thereabouts) is definitely the third year Hogsmeade Visit, which we'd guessed from the minifigs that leaked last winter, and the box art had confirmed.
Madam Rosmerta and Aberforth Dumbledore both put in an appearance for the shopkeepers. Hermione and Draco are adorable, Harry has the cool new hood piece, and Ron really needs that hat that my gran used to knit for me, just sayin'. Also? Aberforth! Did I mention him? Aberforth rocks! (Too cool, I love, love, LOVE!!! all the characters we're getting. Lego, please keep that up. This is awesome! ❤️)
The Three Broomsticks is further represented by a fireplace (with the antlers we've already seen on the Hogsmeade build), a small table (with Chrimbo deco) and chair. The Hog's Head has a cask, a table, and what I'm assuming is the bar, as there's no need for a table to have a solid build. Further we have two builds each for Honeydukes' Madam Puddifoot's (with sweets) and Zonko's (with Whizzbangs! and wands). That's nine things, with the six minifigs, if they're each a single day, the count is up to fifteen.
Outside is represented by a snowy bench (that we could probably convert to a toboggan), a sign directing us to Hogwarts, two snow covered pine trees (with stars), a snowman, a street lamp, a wanted poster of Sirius, some kind of frozen fountain (that probably makes more sense if you've played the video games), and a mailbox with owl representing the Owl Post. That's nine more things, so although they may get divided up differently, that puts us squarely where we should be in terms of the count.
My humble observations... I wish the mailbox were red, but I probably need to go back to check the source material, because I doubt they would use the wrong colour. I also wish they'd printed the piece with the Owl Post logo, but alas... All in all, the number of prints seems down this year. There's an envelope, Bertie Botts' Beans, the Hogwarts sign, and the wanted poster, of which only the last two are new. It's possible one of the pieces represents a cash register and has a print, but at this angle, I can't say (pretty sure it doesn't, though). Either way, I doubt I'm overlooking a bunch of pieces. Knowing this set represented stores and shopping, I have to say I'd hoped for some of the new Galleon pieces, and once I saw the Honeydukes inclusion, I'd hoped for their new minifig sized chocolate frog cards. There's no trace of them in the art, so if they're included, it will come as a surprise. (Correction: as we now have pictures from the inside of the box (added above), it's apparent that it's Madam Puddifoot's caff instead and they've used the light green tone from Honeydukes' in its interior as well. Good to know, and that gives us a THIRD! previously unseen location. Wicked chuffed. It does, however, make it even less likely we'll see more chocolate frog 1x1 round tiles.)
Although the printing budget has clearly gone down, and the other quibbles aside, I have to say this set is SOOOOOOOOOOOoooooo much better than last year's. Wow. What an improvement. I really welcome the return to story telling builds where you can build and play a scene. And not a single nanobuild in sight!!! Not even the awesome 2019 and 2020 sets could claim that. When I first looked at the box, I assumed they were hiding a bunch of nanobuilds in there in the things we couldn't see, but no. Pure minifig scale satisfaction. What a joy. And they've listened to our other complaints and addressed the issues, adding the things many of us were looking for in Advent Calendars. Exclusive outfits! We get five, most of which wouldn't fit easily in a regular set, or at least none we've seen yet. New characters! Aberforth, take a bow! New piece prints! I don't even care if they all remain exclusive, but we now have a street sign and printed wanted poster, so we can go back and improve the Hogsmeade Visit build. And the cherry on top, it's properly wintery. For source material that offered plenty of winter scenes, it feels like such a missed trick when they ignore the lot, especially in back to back years. It's alright if you want to stretch the material some (2021 *cough*), but last year's set is hard to justify, especially when you basically proceed to recycle most of the characters either shortly before or after, and their presence in the set wasn't dictated by scene or story being told. So kudos to the team on putting this together.
Now that we can see the artwork from the inside of the box, it's super cute. I love the way the fireplace slots in at the base of the chimney, and the way the art helps make sense of the little builds. (And I guess that second table goes in the Three Broomsticks instead, especially as it won't fit in the Hog's Head space.) It's so well done, and reminds me a lot of the paper inserts from the original Harry Potter lego sets twenty-one years ago. And I will never not love the little square minifig footprints in the snow, where you can see where the feet dragged through the snow, or where it crumbled and fell off their feet only to disappear into the deeper snow.
Also? In light of the Hog's Head, Zonko's and Madam Puddifoot's inclusions? I'm hoping we'll see a continuation to the Hogsmeade sets next summer with a set representing at least some of those three stores. It would have fit nicely with a younger Aberforth timed with the release of the Fantastic Beasts film, but the Shrieking Shack was lovely, and the new Hogsmeade Station and Hogwarts Express are cute additions (even if the latter could do with more snow lol).
So what do you think?
As you can see, lego's 2023 Harry Potter theme Advent Calendar (set 76418, expected to hit the shelves 01 September or thereabouts) is definitely the third year Hogsmeade Visit, which we'd guessed from the minifigs that leaked last winter, and the box art had confirmed.
Madam Rosmerta and Aberforth Dumbledore both put in an appearance for the shopkeepers. Hermione and Draco are adorable, Harry has the cool new hood piece, and Ron really needs that hat that my gran used to knit for me, just sayin'. Also? Aberforth! Did I mention him? Aberforth rocks! (Too cool, I love, love, LOVE!!! all the characters we're getting. Lego, please keep that up. This is awesome! ❤️)
The Three Broomsticks is further represented by a fireplace (with the antlers we've already seen on the Hogsmeade build), a small table (with Chrimbo deco) and chair. The Hog's Head has a cask, a table, and what I'm assuming is the bar, as there's no need for a table to have a solid build. Further we have two builds each for Honeydukes' Madam Puddifoot's (with sweets) and Zonko's (with Whizzbangs! and wands). That's nine things, with the six minifigs, if they're each a single day, the count is up to fifteen.
Outside is represented by a snowy bench (that we could probably convert to a toboggan), a sign directing us to Hogwarts, two snow covered pine trees (with stars), a snowman, a street lamp, a wanted poster of Sirius, some kind of frozen fountain (that probably makes more sense if you've played the video games), and a mailbox with owl representing the Owl Post. That's nine more things, so although they may get divided up differently, that puts us squarely where we should be in terms of the count.
My humble observations... I wish the mailbox were red, but I probably need to go back to check the source material, because I doubt they would use the wrong colour. I also wish they'd printed the piece with the Owl Post logo, but alas... All in all, the number of prints seems down this year. There's an envelope, Bertie Botts' Beans, the Hogwarts sign, and the wanted poster, of which only the last two are new. It's possible one of the pieces represents a cash register and has a print, but at this angle, I can't say (pretty sure it doesn't, though). Either way, I doubt I'm overlooking a bunch of pieces. Knowing this set represented stores and shopping, I have to say I'd hoped for some of the new Galleon pieces, and once I saw the Honeydukes inclusion, I'd hoped for their new minifig sized chocolate frog cards. There's no trace of them in the art, so if they're included, it will come as a surprise. (Correction: as we now have pictures from the inside of the box (added above), it's apparent that it's Madam Puddifoot's caff instead and they've used the light green tone from Honeydukes' in its interior as well. Good to know, and that gives us a THIRD! previously unseen location. Wicked chuffed. It does, however, make it even less likely we'll see more chocolate frog 1x1 round tiles.)
Although the printing budget has clearly gone down, and the other quibbles aside, I have to say this set is SOOOOOOOOOOOoooooo much better than last year's. Wow. What an improvement. I really welcome the return to story telling builds where you can build and play a scene. And not a single nanobuild in sight!!! Not even the awesome 2019 and 2020 sets could claim that. When I first looked at the box, I assumed they were hiding a bunch of nanobuilds in there in the things we couldn't see, but no. Pure minifig scale satisfaction. What a joy. And they've listened to our other complaints and addressed the issues, adding the things many of us were looking for in Advent Calendars. Exclusive outfits! We get five, most of which wouldn't fit easily in a regular set, or at least none we've seen yet. New characters! Aberforth, take a bow! New piece prints! I don't even care if they all remain exclusive, but we now have a street sign and printed wanted poster, so we can go back and improve the Hogsmeade Visit build. And the cherry on top, it's properly wintery. For source material that offered plenty of winter scenes, it feels like such a missed trick when they ignore the lot, especially in back to back years. It's alright if you want to stretch the material some (2021 *cough*), but last year's set is hard to justify, especially when you basically proceed to recycle most of the characters either shortly before or after, and their presence in the set wasn't dictated by scene or story being told. So kudos to the team on putting this together.
Now that we can see the artwork from the inside of the box, it's super cute. I love the way the fireplace slots in at the base of the chimney, and the way the art helps make sense of the little builds. (And I guess that second table goes in the Three Broomsticks instead, especially as it won't fit in the Hog's Head space.) It's so well done, and reminds me a lot of the paper inserts from the original Harry Potter lego sets twenty-one years ago. And I will never not love the little square minifig footprints in the snow, where you can see where the feet dragged through the snow, or where it crumbled and fell off their feet only to disappear into the deeper snow.
Also? In light of the Hog's Head, Zonko's and Madam Puddifoot's inclusions? I'm hoping we'll see a continuation to the Hogsmeade sets next summer with a set representing at least some of those three stores. It would have fit nicely with a younger Aberforth timed with the release of the Fantastic Beasts film, but the Shrieking Shack was lovely, and the new Hogsmeade Station and Hogwarts Express are cute additions (even if the latter could do with more snow lol).
So what do you think?