The 2022 wave of Harry Potter themed sets have been out for a while and I finally purchased a few as the sales have started to occur and prices have gone down. #76399-1: Hogwarts™ Magical Trunk was released in the US on 1 March 2022. It contains 603 pieces and retails for $64.99 in the US. This works out to $0.108 per piece. I picked it up on sale for $52 and I will say up front that for the overall size and amount of pieces that you get, it still seems expensive.
This set is a little different from some of the past sets. Many of the Harry Potter themed sets focus on a specific scene in a movie that you can re-create in brick form. This one has you build a trunk that you can customize the outside and then you can re-create multiple scenes from the movies as listed in the instructions or you can free play/build as desired.
Let’s dig into the set… The front of the box shows the trunk, some minifigures, how you have options for switching up the minifigures and an example of how you can set up the trunk. The back shows the three different scenes you can make using the examples in the instructions.
The set comes with five numbered parts bags, a larger plate/tile piece, and two sticker sheets. One sticker sheet is the standard sheet you’d expect in a set where you place the stickers where the instructions tell you to. The other is for you to place stickers where you want around the set. I chose to put the bare minimum stickers on in the event I decide to break the set down and use it for parts at a later date.
The first bag assembles a fire place, a… I’m not sure what it is… some sort of colored thing with tubes/cups… and a small stand for the sorting hat. You also get an owl that can deliver a printed tile letter, and a 2x2 collectible tile started in 2021. There are six minifigures. One is Professor McGonagall who comes with a wand. The others are various students that you can assemble as desired. You can create them to be the characters you recognize or make them into whatever random students you want. My 5-year old assembled the students. I like the use of the bright blue hair. Especially with the student with blue hands. Given the recent push into diversity and inclusion in the US and the world, I suspect this is one of LEGO’s responses. You can build whatever student you want and that student doesn’t have to be a white person like many of the characters in the movies. Not a bad thing in my opinion. Plus you get some great minifigure heads and hair pieces to use. I’m sure this will be useful for those looking to create Harry Potter themed MOCs who have a ton of minifigures of Harry Potter, but not a lot of the others.
The second bag starts to build the trunk. The build itself is actually pretty interesting with the use of SNOT techniques to help get the shape. This section of the build also puts together the locking mechanism which you’ll see later.
The third bag assembles the other half of the trunk so you can now open and close the trunk as the hinge pieces are in place. The mostly tiled surface on the inside is where you can assemble your various scenes from the movies.
The fourth bag assembles some of the outer decorations on the trunk. You are given a number of pieces to add color to it so it will look like a student from one of the houses. I chose to use all of the colors so my trunk doesn’t represent just one. Feel free to mix and match as you want.
The trunk doesn’t have a bottom/back side yet. It does have some decorations on the side to include the locking mechanism cover, some trunk “clips,” and some handles to help carry the trunk.
The fifth bag wraps up the build. You add in some tables with food items (which can be converted into a bed), a couch that can be turned into chairs and a table to play chess, some banners to attach to the sides of the trunk to show the house colors, 2 small closets to store items with candles on the back, and some other accessories like a cauldron, a smaller chest/trunk, a newspaper, and some candy items.
For this set you assemble a key on a key chain for the lock. I’m not exactly sure where each of the pieces came from for the key, but I like how it looks and you can actually use it to lock and unlock the trunk. Both of my kids enjoyed playing with that mechanism and then figuring how how it works. The lock holds pretty well considering it is plastic LEGO pieces. Eventually you would break the set apart if you applied enough force, but it holds with the gentle force that you would use to open the trunk assuming the lock wasn’t engaged.
Overall, I wasn’t super impressed with this set. For how much the set costs and for what you get, I thought it was a bit underwhelming. The six minifigures and the ability to change them around are useful to MOC builders so that is a benefit, but the rest wasn’t all that thrilling. There are some good pieces to use so that helps. My recommendation would be to not get this set.
On the other hand, my 5-year old had a blast with this set. He enjoyed setting up random scenes even though he’s never read the books or watched the movies. We spent quite a while putting different foods on the tables and then we did the modification of the tables into a bed. He also enjoyed seeing what he could fit into the cabinets. He wasn’t as thrilled about adjusting the minifigures to have different heads or hair pieces, but that’s okay. His biggest complaint was that you build a bunch of tables and chairs, but then the minifigures in the set have the short legs so they can’t actually sit in any of the seats that you build. They all have to stand on the tables, the couch, and the chairs.
So not a great set for adults in my opinion, but a good set for at least one younger kid (so much for the 8+ age range). The price is a bit high, even with the sale, but it does contain a lot of play features and customization options. What are your thoughts? Have you built this one?
Happy building!
