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LEGO Harry Potter Hogwarts Castle (71043) Official Product Description Released

Just a few minutes ago, LEGO Shop@Home servers uploaded several official images of the LEGO Harry Potter Hogwarts Castle (71043) – a very impressive brick rendition of the most famous landmark in all of Harry Potter universe. Thankfully, it didn’t take long before LEGO updated its respective product page to include the set’s official product description.

Coming in at an impressive 6,020 pieces, this highly detailed LEGO Harry Potter Hogwarts Castle (71043) highlights some of the most memorable scenes from the Harry Potter movies. Read on through its official press release and product description to have a better grasp of the set’s play features.

The LEGO Harry Potter Hogwarts Castle (71043) will retail for $400 and will be available for LEGO VIP members beginning August 15, and the general public on September 1, exclusively at all LEGO Stores and shop.LEGO.com.

71043 Hogwarts™ Castle

Ages 16+. 6,020 pieces

US $399.99 – CA $499.99 – DE 399.99€ – UK £349.99 – FR 419.99€ – DK 3499DK
*Euro pricing varies by country. Please visit shop.LEGO.com for regional pricing.

Explore the magic of Hogwarts™ Castle!

Make the magic come alive at the LEGO® Harry Potter™ 71043 Hogwarts™ Castle! This highly detailed LEGO Harry Potter collectible has over 6,000 pieces and offers a rewarding build experience. It comes packed with highlights from the Harry Potter series, where you will discover towers, turrets, chambers, classrooms, creatures, the Whomping Willow™ and Hagrid´s hut, plus many more iconic features. And with 4 minifigures, 27 microfigures featuring students, professors and statues, plus 5 Dementors, this advanced building set makes the perfect Harry Potter gift.

Includes 4 minifigures: Godric Gryffindor, Helga Hufflepuff, Salazar Slytherin and Rowena Ravenclaw, with a buildable minifigure display stand.
Also features 27 microfigures: Harry Potter™, Ron Weasley™, Hermione Granger™, Draco Malfoy™, Albus Dumbledore™, Professor Snape™, Professor McGonagall™, Remus Lupin, Professor Dolores Umbridge™, Argus Filch, Lord Voldemort™, Bellatrix Lestrange, 3 students from each of the 4 houses, 2 chess pieces and the Architect of Hogwarts™ statue and 5 Dementors, plus Aragog the spider and the Basilisk figures, and a buildable Hungarian Horntail dragon.
Features a buildable microscale model of Hogwarts™ Castle, hut of Hagrid™, Whomping Willow™ tree and 5 boats.
Hogwarts™ Castle features the Great Hall with buildable ‘stained glass windows’, house banners, benches, tables, flaming torches and moving staircases; potions classroom with racks of jar elements; Defence Against the Dark Arts classroom with assorted potion jars, gramophone and a closet containing a boggart; Chessboard Chamber with chess piece elements; Room of Requirement with assorted elements, including the Goblet of Fire and the vanishing cabinet; Chamber of Secrets™ with the Basilisk and Tom Riddle’s Diary; hidden Devils Snare room with vine elements; Gryffindor™ common room with fireplace and seating; Professor Dolores Umbridge’s office with desk, chair and pink furnishings; library with bookcase and desks; and Professor Dumbledore’s office with the Griffin statue entrance and Memory cabinet.
Hagrid’s hut features Aragog the spider and buildable pumpkins.
The Whomping Willow™ includes the buildable blue Flying Ford Anglia car in its spinning branches.
Also includes 5 buildable boats.
Take a seat in the Great Hall and feast with the Hogwarts™ professors and students!
Sneak your way into the Chamber of Secrets™ through the secret entrance and face the Basilisk!
Attend a Defence Against the Dark Arts class to learn how to protect yourself from dark magic!
Climb the moving staircase!
• Study for your Ordinary Wizarding Level exams in the library.
• Accessory elements include the Sword of Gryffindor™, Helga Hufflepuff´s cup, wands, potions, house banners, flames, a cauldron and 2 magnifying glasses.
• Microfigure accessories include 2 chess statues and the Architect of Hogwarts™ statue.
• Hogwarts™ Castle measures over 22” (58cm) high, 27” (69cm) wide and 16” (43cm) deep.

Available directly from LEGO Stores & shop.lego.com from 15th August, 2018

LEGO Harry Potter Hogwarts Castle (71043) Officially Revealed – And It’s Massive!

It’s finally here! LEGO Harry Potter fans rejoice, for LEGO has now updated their servers to include a huge stash of high res images of the much awaited LEGO Harry Potter Hogwarts Castle (71043). Rumors were up in the air since last month on what we can possibly expect from this set, most noticeable is the speculation that the set will weigh in at more than 6,000 pieces making it possibly the largest LEGO HP set to date. However, the speculations can finally end since the Hogwarts Castle (71043), as predicted, indeed comes in a mammoth size of 6,020 pieces.

What is also interesting in this LEGO Harry Potter Hogwarts Castle (71043) set is the fact that this is also the very first LEGO HP set to contain all of Hogwarts’ Founding Fathers (or parents for that matter in the case of Helga Hufflepuff and Rowena Ravenclaw) in their respective minifigure forms.

I guess the downside of such a huge set is on how to keep the build in scale with regards to its characters. I think this is the reason why LEGO opted to have it scaled to nanofigs instead. Based on the images below, it seems that each part of the castle portrays a memorable scene from Harry Potter films, much like how LEGO did it before with the Disney Castle (71040)

The Hogwarts Castle (71043) is not yet officially listed in shop.LEGO.com or any of its regional portals. But we can be rest assured that they will be updated very soon to include their official product description so that we can have a better grasp at the set’s play features. For the mean time, let’s enjoy these images.

Build Your Own LEGO Hedwig Target Exclusive Via LEGO Digital Designer

If you missed out on Target’s exclusive LEGO Harry Potter Hedwig giveaway, then this is your chance to build one of your own. Thanks to the kind efforts of mc_survival_man (via Brickfinder), we now have a LEGO Digital Designer (LDD) file that can provide us with the details on how to build this cool LEGO Hedwig Harry Potter giveaway.

We must take note that this brick-built LEGO statue of Hedwig is given away to winners as assembled and glued all together, with no building instructions whatsoever which means trying to somehow reverse engineer it using LEGO Digital Designer is not an easy feat. Reportedly consisting of 1,202 pieces, this set may take around $134 worth of LEGO parts and pieces in order to build.

LEGO Hedwig target exclusive owl — Photo credits by the Brickfinder.

In may not look exactly like the original LEGO Hedwig statue, but considering how much effort was needed to figure out its design, a shout out and a word of thanks to mc_survival_man should be in order.

If you want to go ahead and make your own LEGO Hedwig, then you can download the LDD file which Matt (aka mc_survival_man) freely shares to the community. Many thanks to everyone who made this LEGO Hedwig model and LDD possible.

LEGO Ideas M&M’s Chocolate Candy Dispenser Project Gets 10K Thumbs Up

Here’s something that chocolate lovers and LEGO fans may want to watch out for. We now have our fifth LEGO Ideas project proposal to join this year’s LEGO Ideas Second Review Stage. The LEGO Ideas Ideas M&M’s Chocolate Candy Dispenser project by EDxAS is a virtual color feast of sweet proportions, which won the hearts of 10,000 LEGO Ideas supporters. This brick-built contraption from ElectryDragonite and Astonishing Studios began its 10K climb in 2016, and has now been officially recognized as the next qualifier for the 2018 Second Review Stage.

The M&M’s Chocolate Dispenser project features an innovative candy dispensing machine that uses a simple but very effective lever mechanism made of Technic elements. It is also launched in connection with M&M’s 75^th anniversary.

Here’s a video demo of how the dispenser works which is really neat actually.

The LEGO Ideas M&M’s Chocolate Candy Dispenser project joins the ranks of other 10K supported ideas that qualified for the next Review Stage such as the Space X Falcon Heavy, Space X – The Ultimate Collection, International Space Station and Steamboat Willie.

LEGO Chief Of Emerging Platforms Talks About Company’s Direction In Developing Content For Amazon Alexa And Beyond

Way back in May, we covered a unique new product service by LEGO that was developed in cooperation with the massive online marketplace platform Amazon. This was LEGO Duplo Stories, which works as a downloadable Skill for the Amazon Alexa smart speaker to narrate interactive stories based on recently released LEGO Duplo educational building sets.

This is merely one of several significant collaborations between LEGO and Amazon, and it apparently runs against the grain of what other companies on the online retail giant are doing which is plastering search advertisements. Instead, LEGO’s keener on content production for consumers on Amazon.

The LEGO Group’s Head of Emerging Platforms, James Poulter, is seeing the rising trend of Amazon Alexa owners using the smart speaker for online purchases; it’s telling over 80% of 2017 online sales combined for LEGO, Hasbro, Mattel and Nintendo were done courtesy of Amazon, according to a Jumpshot analytics study.

According to Poulter, other companies could do well to follow LEGO’s example of looking at Amazon as more than “just a retail platform”. While he does concede that there are risks to companies cooperating with Amazon to such an extent, one can’t discount the potential to be capitalized on, now that the retail giant is steadily increasing its variety of content services like Freetime Unlimited subscriptions and of course, Alexa.

To this, LEGO’s emerging platforms boss is seeing possibilities: in the vein of Amazon Alexa and its LEGO Duplo Stories, there would come a time when a customer’s LEGO order done on Amazon, for example, would have new Skills being downloaded onto the user’s Amazon Alexa speaker, which will then ask the customer if they were satisfied with their delivered service.

In addition to Alexa Skills, LEGO is also looking on developing AR options with Amazon as innovative means to sell more products, letting consumers preview their online purchases before committing to buy them, for example.

Check Out This Impressive LEGO Bahamut MOC From Final Fantasy X

We at The Brick Show try our best to bring to your attention not just news on official LEGO sets (or the aspiring ones from LEGO Ideas), but also to some of the awe-inspiring MOCs from the hands of some of the most skilled brick builders anywhere they may be. Lately we’ve focused on some really neat LEGO scale-model MOCs of certain sporting venues. This one we’re featuring on the other hand will go into the realms of fantasy. A Final Fantasy, that is. Builder Marius Herrmann has just completed an odd-year anniversary tribute to the hit Square-Enix RPG franchise with this gigantic LEGO Bahamut MOC.

His subject is one of Final Fantasy’s famous “summoned monsters”, entities from a mix of mythologies and fictions that can be called on to battle on behalf of the player’s party. This is Bahamut, King of Dragons, as rendered in Final Fantasy X for the PS2 released back in 2001.

And the statistics on Herrmann’s Bahamut LEGO Bahamut MOC are no less impressive: its wingspan is a whole meter wide (3.2 feet), for instance. Even more incredible is its construction; not only did he use more than 10,000 LEGO pieces, most his materials are not orthodox brick shapes but more of the frilly elements. There are shield shapes, a LEGO car grill part, even plant stem parts.

According to Marius Herrmann via his Flickr page, this massive LEGO Bahamut MOC took him six months to assemble the model, and its respective platform stand. He finished and uploaded the photos on July 19, 17 years to the day when Square Enix released Final Fantasy X for PS2 in Japan. That’s a fantastic tribute (no pun intended).

Manchester LEGOLAND Discovery Centre Welcomes Newly-Opened Great LEGO Race VR Experience

LEGO must have hit a gold mine in terms of fun fusions when they decided to develop and build a virtual reality roller coaster ride for their LEGOLAND theme parks. Well, to be precise, only two of them have the Great LEGO Race VR Coaster right now: Malaysia and Florida.

LEGO also offers a smaller-scale version of this attraction, the Great LEGO Race VR Experience which debuted at the Boston LEGOLAND Discovery Center. Not wishing to have one location hog such cool stuff, a second VR Experience has since been opened across the Atlantic at the Discovery Centre in Manchester.

The VR Experience version, for those not in the know, is a race sequence with LEGO vehicles and minifigures reminiscent of the Wacky Races shorts, running about two minutes and thirty seconds, viewed in the first person via VR goggles. All that’s lacking is the exhilaration of seeing that, while seated on a roller coaster.

Nevertheless, the Manchester LEGOLAND Discovery Centre is thrilled to finally have the VR Experience as part of their attractions. “We were the first LEGOLAND Discovery Centre in the UK, and remain the largest,” says their general manager, Jenn. “So it is fitting that we are spearheading this entirely new concept.”

For those who wish to check out the UK’s first Great Lego Race VR Experience in Manchester, do note that it’s priced separately from the entry tickets to the LDC, with £5 for each “passenger”. Normally reserved to children accompanied by adults, grown-ups can avail of the LDC’s “AFOL Night” every first Wednesday of the month to enjoy the VR themselves, at the same prices.

VR fiends interested in going to Manchester to try this out can book their tickets at the LEGOLAND Discovery Centre – Manchester’s official website right here.

Upcoming London Film and Comic Con to Feature LEGO Star Wars Diorama of Endor

That was an awesome San Diego Comic Con which just took place over the weekend, full of great reveals and previews. In the case of LEGO, they boasted impressive displays, great collectible exclusives and even an early chance to get the latest Ideas set; all in all, a fun time. While the SDCC has wound down, in the UK, a whole continent and ocean to the East, there’s another – similar – event set to begin. This is the London Film and Comic Con, a comparable British counterpart to the stateside cons. This means another fun-filled fandom weekend, but in the UK.

Like SDCC, the LFCC has large exhibition areas for particular fandoms within its venue at London’s Olympia Centre. One of these is the Star Wars Fan Zone, organized by Fantha Tracks, and part of their various displays is an impressive LEGO Star Wars diorama depicting the Forest Moon of Endor.

There are no teaser images for this diorama, and fans in the UK will have to wait until LFCC starts to actually see it, but this LEGO Star Wars rendition of Endor will be said to include all the iconic locations and set pieces from Return of the Jedi: Ewok village, Imperial shield station, perhaps even the speeder bike course.

Aside from the Endor diorama, Fantha Tracks promises that their Star Wars Fan Zone will include cosplay groups, licensed merchandise, fan exhibits, and even several guest actors from the films like Peter “original Chewbacca” Mayhew and Ray “Darth Maul” Park.

The London Film and Comic Con will start this Friday, July 27 and ends on the following Sunday, July 29.

LEGO DC Comics Super Heroes Knightmare Batman Accessory Set (853744) Coming In September

It seems that LEGO still has something in store for DC and Justice League fans. The LEGO DC Comics Super Heroes Knightmare Batman Accessory Set (853744) has now been listed at shop.LEGO.com, and is scheduled to be available in September. It features another rendition of the Dark Knight based on the scene where Batman had an apocalyptic vision of a world ruled by fear from a raging Superman, as seen from the DCEU film Batman vs Superman: Dawn of Justice. This particular Batman minifigure sports the sand brown trench coat he is seen wearing in that particular scene. Here’s a closer look at the said minifig.

The LEGO DC Comics Super Heroes Knightmare Batman Accessory Set (853744) has 46 pieces, including two Parademons and some pieces to build a turret, and will retail for $12.99. Here’s the official product description for your reference. I reckon that this accessory set will be a hit for Batman minifig collectors once it is made available in September 1. To be honest, I lost count already on how many LEGO Batman minifig variants are out there to the extent that I feel the LEGO DC Super Heroes theme is quite over saturated of it already. But I guess having a LEGO Knightmare Batman minifig can be a forgivable exception.

LEGO DC Comics Super Heroes Knightmare Batman Accessory Set (853744)

46 pieces; $12.99

Prepare for a fright with Knightmare Batman™!

Let the battle commence against the Parademons with this LEGO® DC Super Heroes 853744 Knightmare Batman™ Accessory Set. This cool toy for kids features Batman’s turret with 2 stud shooters and 3 minifigures with assorted weapons, including the new-for-September-2018 Knightmare Batman minifigure and his rifle with an attachable LEGO tile of The Joker’s face.

Includes a new-for-September-2018 Knightmare Batman™ and 2 Parademon™ minifigures with detachable wings.
Batman’s turret features 2 stud shooters.
Weapons include Batman’s rifle (with an attachable decorated LEGO® tile of The Joker’s face) and the Parademons’ 2 stud shooters.
Recreate the famous Knightmare scene from the Batman™ v Superman™: Dawn of Justice movie.
Turret measures over 1” (3cm) high and 1” (5cm) wide.

LEGO BrickHeadz Jack Skellington and Sally (41630) Now Listed At LEGO Shop@Home

LEGO Shop@Home has finally rolled out a bunch of official images and product description for another pair of LEGO BrickHeadz set that fans of Tim Burton’s witty, gothic animated masterpiece A Nightmare Before Christmas have been watching out for since its ‘unintentional’ Walmart listing (aka leak) . The LEGO BrickHeadz Jack Skellington and Sally (41630) dual set is now listed at shop.LEGO.com, and is slated to be available to the public starting August 1. The dual set marks the 25^th year anniversary of the of the original Disney blockbuster film, featuring Jack in his famous monochromatic color scheme, and Sally with her ragdoll patchwork clothing.

The LEGO BrickHeadz Jack Skellington and Sally (41630) set comes in at 193 pieces and will retail for $19.99. Check out the rest of their images and product description below.

LEGO BrickHeadz Jack Skellington and Sally (41630)

193 pieces; $19.99

Spook your friends with LEGO® BrickHeadz construction characters featuring Jack and Sally!

These LEGO® BrickHeadz™ construction characters featuring Jack Skellington & Sally are fun to build using LEGO bricks that recreate all their iconic details, including Jack’s frightful smile and black pin-striped suit, plus Sally’s decorated eyes and scruffy rag doll look. They also stand on buildable collector’s baseplates with BrickHeadz logo for easy display in your home, office or anywhere you like.

Buildable Jack Skellington and Sally LEGO® BrickHeadz™ construction characters feature authentic details from the original Disney blockbuster, Tim Burton’s The Nightmare Before Christmas movie, including Jack’s creepy mouth and black pin-striped suit, plus Sally’s decorated eyes and scruffy rag doll look.
Each LEGO® BrickHeadz™ construction character comes with its own buildable collector’s baseplate.
Have fun growing your LEGO® BrickHeadz™ collection with other characters from your favorite TV series, games and comics.
Disney Tim Burton’s The Nightmare Before Christmas toys stand over 2” (7cm) tall without baseplate.
Baseplates measure over 1” (4cm) square.