This year sees the 20th anniversary of LEGO Harry Potter sets, and there is an extra special set for those who have wished they were the right size to go with their LEGO Harry Potter sets: Icons of Hogwarts: Hedwig, Spelel Books, Potions and herbology samples; Chocolate frogs, Scarves, a Wand, the Golden Snitch, and of course the Letter of Acceptance.
With 3010 pieces, 73691 LEGO Harry Potter Hogwarts Icons Collector’s Edition Set will be available from 2nd September 2021 from LEGO Stores and www.lego.com/harrypotter at a recommended price of 249.99 EUR / 249.99 USD / 229.99 GBP / 1999 DKK / 399.99 AUD / 29980 JPY / 449.99 NZD / 349.99 CAD.
Most of the images leaked into the wild a few days ago, but I’ll present them here for completeness.
Brickheadz dominated the LEGO® Collector landscape a few years ago, and then seemed to all but vanish from the landscape. the truth is we have sill seen around 15 figures per year. This year has seen a resurgence, with 21 figures revealed to date in 2021. I would not be surprised if we see more announced over the next few months.
This year, most figures have been released as two packs, particularly animals and their young (so cute!). But now we are re-embracing character builds, with 2 new sets of Harry Potter Wizarding World Brickheadz coming in June. They will cost $39.99 each and are likely to be exclusive to LEGO branded stores. Be sure to check out my review of 40495 now.
After a quiet couple of years, it would appear that we are seeing a resurgence in new BrickHeadz sets this year. Today I would like to present 40495 Harry, Hermione, Ron and Hagrid. This set focuses on our first/second-year trio of young heroes, along with their sympathetic ally, Hagrid. Ron Harry and Hermione are depicted as 3 stud wide figures, as we have seen with some smaller characters over the past years. The other Harry Potter Brickheadz unveiled today, 40496, brings us Voldemort, Nagini and Bellatrix Lestrange and you can read my review here.
I feel honored that the LEGO Group have sent me a copy of this set for early review. It will be released on June 1st, at a cost of $AUD39.99.
This is not a post specifically about LEGO® Harry Potter™. This is a post regarding the way in which the LEGO Group have chosen to represent female characters over time. I have chosen to use this theme, as it has had 2 distinct phases of release: first in 2001-2012, a period that ran in parallel with the release of the Harry Potter movies, while the second began in 2018, and continues to this day.
This my the second article is a series, looking at gender distribution of minifigures in licensed themes – themes where the LEGO Group has little say over the content of the source material. The first, relating to such trends in LEGO Star Wars sets can be found here
I thought it would be so simple to predict where this year’s run of Harry Potter sets was going: 2018 – Films 1&2; 2019: 2&4; 2020 5&6. I had been feeling pretty confident believing that this year we would be seeing sets relating the Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Parts 1&2. It turns out I was wrong. Life’s like that sometimes!
The LEGO Group have just officially announced the sets for the northern Summer 2021
To celebrate the 20th Anniversary of LEGO Harry Potter, we see some settings not visited in the current series of sets, as well as a couple of conceptually new sets:
In the collection of sets announced today, we have scenarios from the Philosopher’s Stone; Chamber of Secrets and The Prisoner of Azkaban. We also meet some characters, not previously seen in minifigure form. We also have some ‘off minifigure theme’ sets in the form of Wizards Chess, Giant buildable Harry and Hermione and, embracing the spirit of last year’s kinetic Hedwig: a sculpture of Fawkes, Dumbledore’s pet phoenix.
We also see that the six golden minifigures which were revealed on the LEGO Groups social media feeds last weekend in included in some of these sets.
Let’s take a browse through them, and see what we know…
This year is the 20th Anniversary of LEGO® Harry Potter, and like the 10th anniversary of Ninjago, there will be a selection of golden minifigures included. these were revealed on the Wizarding World Instagram Page this evening. Golden figures include: Young Harry Potter, Ron and Hermione, as well as Professor Snape, Lord Voldemort and … Professor Quirrel!
A couple of months ago, I put together the 31201 LEGO Art Harry Potter Hogwarts Crests (HPHC) mosaic, and I felt a little underwhelmed. But I think this was more a ‘me thing’ rather than an issue with the set: I personally didn’t feel a strong affinity with the source material, not really identifying with any particular Hogwarts House. I have heard from plenty of people who really enjoy the build, and want to build the set of crests, as well as the larger combination crest. So, as I said, it’s a Me thing. Perhaps I should have looked at a crest other than Hufflepuff’s?
That said, one positive point that I do appreciate is a large number of left over parts.
Of course, one of the stated goals for the LEGO ART range is not just to produce a mosaic which you could hang on your wall, but to also give adults an activity to focus on. You don’t need to hang your final result. you can dismantle it, and rebuild it as one of the other options, or even rebuild it as another image.
Despite personally feeling a little deflated by the HPHC building experience, I find the idea of building a LEGO Mosaic/Art set appealing. If you have followed my posts around the time of the range being announced, you will have seen my analysis of the value for money building the LEGO Art Andy Warhol’s Marilyn Monroe, either through the set or purchasing the individual elements (Spoiler – they sets are good value for the elements you receive).
I’ll have to admit, the notion of a mass marketed LEGO Set based on the mass produced screen print of Marilyn Monroe amuses me as a further extension of the pop-art movement. So, I thought I would set out to investigate whether I could rebuild the Hogwarts Crest as Marilyn. Therefore using a mass produced LEGO Artwork to produce a different mass produced artwork. Now, along with virtually all Building instructions, you can download them from the LEGO customer support website, OR you can access them from Building Instructions App.
Since the LEGO Group sent over some pre-release copies for me to review, I have spenty a little bit of time looking at LEGO® Harry Potter Hogwarts™ Moments Sets. These four sets each encompass activities in a single Hogwarts classroom, and come with an interesting collection of fittings and Furniture for the different classrooms. They also come with one teacher, as well as a couple of students. And if that’s not enough, they all get bundled up into book form! Last time, we reviewed the built in scenery, some of which could be great for your own Hogwarts MOC. Today, I would like to look at the individual items of furniture, as well as any interesting accessories, as well as the minifigures.
Earlier in the week, I previewed the Hogwarts Moment sets: playsets, each depicting a class from the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. Today, I would like to take a look at the artwork included in the sticker sheets, as well as the fixtures within these neat little sets.
Today, we are looking at the internal artwork, as well as the fittings. Next time we will take a look at the furniture and the figures.
Amongst the sets forthcoming in 2021 are the Harry Potter Hogwarts Moments. These four sets each tuck away into a brick built book and are based on seminal scenes at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry: Transfiguration Class, Potions Class, Herbology Class and Charms Class.
Each set comes with a book case, with requisite scenery; additional furniture builds, and finally three mini figures: a teacher and two students. Rather than focus on each of these sets individually at first, I will look at each of these aspects of the sets over several articles.
Ultimately, they all provide locations unseen at minifigure scale in the ‘2018 relaunch’ of Harry Potter range. In this article, we shall have a quick précise of each set, you can see the elements all knolled out together. The sets are priced at $USD29.99/ $AUD39.99.
The Rambling Brick 
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