Welcome back to our continuing journey through the decades of the history of the LEGO Group, as we approach the 90th anniversary of the company on August 10, 2022.
Today, we enter the 1990s, the so called System Era, where we started to see playthemes diverge from the standard Town, Castle and Space. The company also starts to introduce new technologies, as well as embarking onto the World Wide Web.
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Welcome back to Builder’s Journeys, our throwback Thursday feature where we talk to AFOLs and find out about the LEGO Set that put them on the path to make them the AFOL they are today.
Today we hear from Holly from Sydney, Australia. Holly is on Youtube, talking about LEGO Harry Potter, Super Heroes and More at HollyOnFilm
Besides the CLASSIC boxes, my first LEGO set was Hogwarts Castle (5378). I remember opening it on Christmas Day in 2007 and the box was completely crushed as my Grandparents had shipped it from the UK after buying it from LEGOLAND Windsor. I built it instantly and played with it all day. It was my first and only LEGO Harry Potter set for years and those minifigures and pieces went on several adventures being rebuilt into so many different things. Somehow it’s still 98% complete despite all the play, a house move and being thrown into random bins, and now sits on my shelf with my Harry Potter books. I don’t know where I’d be today without it.”
The Harry Potter Castle 5378 was released in 2007, in conjunction with the film ‘Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix.’ It has 9 minifigures and 942 pieces. I love the way the Holly has set it up with her books, soft Harry Doll, as well as one of the 2021 sets.
Thanks for sharing this story Holly. And be sure to check out her channel on youtube and instagram.
I’ll be sharing more stories of different Builders’ Journeys over the next few months – Hopefully every week. Recently, life has been interfering a bit too much!.
If you have a story that you would like to submit, based on the LEGO set that set you on your path to AFOLdom, why not drop me a note.
Until next time,
Play Well.
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.
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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
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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…
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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!
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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.
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The LEGO Group and Warner Bros have just revealed the next in the LEGO Art range to be released: 31201 Hogwarts Crests. With 4249 elements, and priced at 119.99 EUR – 199.99 AUD – 1099 DKK – 114.99 GBP – 119.99 USD – 149.99 CAD, this set allows you to build any one of the crests of the houses at Hogwarts. If you have four copies,you can combine them to make a 96 stud square mosaic, incorporating the crest of the school itself. We will have our full review later in the week…at the moment its just caught up in customs.
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