For the 20th year anniversary of LEGO producing Harry Potter themed sets, the company went big. #76391-1: Hogwarts Icons - Collectors Edition contains 3,010 pieces. It was released on 3 September 2021 in the US for $249.99. This works out to $0.083 per piece which isn’t bad for a licensed theme, but should be expected when you have a set at such a high price point.
I suspect those familiar with the Potter world will recognize the items you build. If you are not familiar, hopefully you are impressed by the large snowy owl named Hedwig from the series. Set #75979-1: Hedwig was the last larger (than minifigure scale) Hedwig, but this one took larger to a whole new level. It will be interesting to see if LEGO designers decide to add more larger animal creations to the lineup. Any interest in a theme like that?
Back to this set… the box is quite large as you’d expect. The front shows the full set built and contains the 18+ branding. The back shows the back view of the set and some details of the set. It also points out that you get more of the golden minifigures along with a stand. I threw in a picture of an edge that has some potion bottles on it and part of the printed piece that becomes the “welcome to Hogwarts” letter..
Once you open the set there are a bunch of parts bags and a white box with more parts bags inside. In total, you get 22 numbered bags, the three large tiles for the letter, and the instruction book wrapped up.
Here are the instructions. The inside has a write up in the beginning and then throughout the build, there are different notes about the items you are building related to the movie filming or the set itself.
There are stickers in this set. They all go to the potion bottles. I guess it would be tough to print on the curved, clear pieces. Thankfully, this is it which is great considering the scale of the set and how many stickers they could have provided.
The first bag builds three different items. These include Harry’s glasses, a wand, and a potion bottle. The glasses have a new Technic piece for the lens holder (no lens of course) and you can actually (try) to wear them. They don’t stay on quite well, but they aren’t designed to either. The wand looks fairly realistic. I’ve seen some complaints that LEGO could have done better and some builders who have updated it. I’m good with how it is built. Some have complained about the ball joint that sticks out. That is so you can connect it to the rest of the build and could be replaced with a piece from your collection if you don’t want it there. The potion bottle is from book/movie number 6 - “Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince.” It is “Liquid Luck.” The small bottle/flask is a cool shape and the pieces glow in the dark. I don’t recall that happening in the movie, but cool to have the pieces do that with the set.
Bags two and three start to build the base of the set and the first book. The base and the stand that will hold up Hedwig are constructed with a bunch of Technic pieces. This keeps it pretty sturdy to handle the weight. For those not into Technic builds, I didn’t find this portion overly complicated and you mix in enough System elements to keep it interesting. The designers used different colored pieces on the insides so you could keep track of where everything goes versus using the same colors and getting lost on the direction sheets.
Bags four and five wrap up the first book on the bottom of the stand. The book is open and has a few pieces to connect the next book sticking up. To me, the most impressive part of this build was the page edges. I had never seen the technique before, but the designers slid 1x3x1 and 1x4x1 “wall” pieces into a slot on top of each other to create the effect. I had to stare at it a bit before moving on to take in the awesomeness of the idea.
Bags six and seven build the next book. Bag six does the outer shell of the book and bag seven finishes it up so you can place it on top. 1x2 bricks with texture are used to achieve the look of the pages. The only challenge is that the texture is only on two sides of the brick. When you get to a corner, the page effect goes flat. Not a major issue here, but the challenge with building with LEGO bricks I guess.
Bags eight and nine build another book for the stack. This one is dark red in color.
Build ten builds a small basket like item on top of the books. You can place some of the potions built later in there. Perhaps there is an actual Potter reference to this build?
Build eleven adds Hedwig’s claws and the bottom portion of her legs. The build is set up so you can clip the welcome letter in and then wrap the claws around it as if she is holding the letter for you.
Bags 11 and 12 start to build Hedwig. This was a really cool build. Lots of interesting techniques and not just stacking bricks and plates on top of each other. You start with the tail section. I like how some different black plates and tiles were sprinkled in to achieve the color scheme of a snowy white owl. The designers captured the curves pretty well and there aren’t a ton of gaps in the build.
Bag 14 adds parts of both wings. The wings aren’t moveable in that you can’t adjust them so they are at Hedwig’s side as if she’s perched somewhere. You can see from this picture that many of the feathers to be added are hooked in with ball joints and Technic axles so you can adjust them slightly, but not by much.
Bag 15 builds the head minus the face. I didn’t take any pictures of the bottom part, but it connects via a piece that allows you to rotate the head so you can pose which way Hedwig is looking.
Bag 16 has multiple parts. The first one is building the face and attaching it. The face section attaches as one piece and then you connect the head to the body. The eyes have a print so thankfully you do not have to try and put a sticker on a curved piece.
The rest of bag 16 is more wing feathers. If I knew enough about birds, I could tell you what they are, but I don’t so for now, I’ll just say you add four sections to each wing.
The last part of bag 16 is adding Hedwig to the stand. I took pictures on and off the stand. The instructions have you attach the wing pieces after you hook on Hedwig, but I removed her to try and get some better pictures.
Bag 17 adds more feathers and you are close to finishing Hedwig.
Bag 18 finishes Hedwig and she looks awesome! The size is just impressive to me and it really looks like she is coming in for a landing. Props to the design team on this one. It’s definitely something LEGO hasn’t done before and I think it came out great for a first iteration.
The last part of bag 18 is a golden snitch. For being a small object and round, I think the designers did a good job capturing it in brick form. I’m not sure how else I would have tried to make a round, golden object. It’s not perfectly round, but pretty close. The wings are large pieces that were in… a Friends set? I think maybe as a hot air balloon or something, but in different colors.
The snitch attaches to the stand via a Technic axle. If you get in close, you can see it and it looks odd, but when you step back, it fits right into the build.
Bag 19 builds the various potions. Each small jar is built the same. They have different stickers which my NLS put on as she was helping me build. She did a great job and much better than I ever would have. After building the lower section of each jar, you dump in various pieces. Not hard except some of the 1x1 round plates are mixed in with other colors. You just have to separate before you dump.
As I recall, the designers added in a bunch of personal references here with the various numbers and letters on the stickers. You’ll have to do some searching to find the meanings.
Bag 20 builds a scarf to attach to the book. The build comes with enough pieces to build the scarf in the colors of each of the four houses at Hogwarts. We picked Gryffindor for no real reason and assembled the plate built scarf. My complaint is on the coloring and the use of the brighter red versus the brick red. If you look at the movies, they wear more of a darker red or maroon color. The color doesn’t seem to match and could have been switched to the brick red to more closely resemble the house colors.
Bag 20 also builds one of the stands for the golden minifigures. This one has a printed plate on the front (yay no stickers!). It also comes with the golden minifigure for Professor McGonagall.
Bag 21 has the build for the chocolate frog. The frog build is pretty creative and I think the designers accurately represented what a chocolate frog would look like in brick form. There is some interesting use of pieces in this build and you can move the legs around due to the various hinges and joints installed.
We found an error in the instructions with our set. Between steps 12 and 13, there are extra parts shown on the model, but there are no instructions to connect those pieces. There are two plates that are not shown in steps 11 and 12, but magically appear in step 13 without a call out to attach them. After looking at the instructions for a bit, we figured it out and added the two pieces in. If your instructions match ours, keep that in mind. Otherwise, you may have a weird looking frog and a few extra pieces at the end.
Bag 22 finishes up the set. You finish off the minifigure stands, build a Hagrid, built a Dumbledore, and build the Dumbledore “card” that he fits into. The card can then be placed on the stand.
I didn’t take a separate picture of it until the end, but you add in the “Welcome to Hogwarts” letter here as well. You connect the large plates with various connector pieces in angles that work out nicely when it connects to the set. The letter is attached where Hedwig’s claws are so it looks like Hedwig is carrying the letter to you.
Here’s what the stand looks like with all of the golden minifigures. It stinks that you have to buy all the sets or buy the minifigures on places like Bricklink. LEGO is a business so I understand they want to make money, but it’s a pretty big spend if you want all the anniversary golden minifigs.
On the plus side, I do think it’s good that they included this stand so you have a way to display your minifigures. $250 is a bit pricy for a minifigure stand, but you do get a lot more in this set so no complaints there I guess.
Here’s the final set. As a casual Potter fan, I was very impressed. I enjoyed the build, some of the creative techniques the designers used, and look forward to having this as a display piece. Despite the piece count, this set is very pricy at $250. I used a gift card I had received and then VIP points so it didn’t hurt as much. If you can stomach it or have some VIP points I highly recommend this set for Potter fans. If you are not a Potter fan, but enjoy building, the Hedwig build is very impressive and worth it in my opinion. Lots of great pieces for future MOCs as well and you can always sell the golden minifigures to people to help recoup some of your spend. Not sure if we’ll ever see this set go on sale, but keep your eyes open for opportunities to get it at a discount.
Happy building!
