Seven things LEGO didn’t tell you about the Harry Potter March 2024 sets

From exclusive creatures to hidden features, the LEGO Harry Potter March 2024 sets are full of magical surprises. Here are seven, direct from the designers…

Eight new Wizarding World sets are just days away from landing on shelves, ranging from a new Flying Ford Anglia and Hagrid’s Hut to the debut of a new Hogwarts modular system and the theme’s first talking model. And while we’ve already pored over pictures of the new sets and even had chance to review a couple of them, there are still plenty of things the LEGO Group hasn’t told us about what these builds really have to offer.

Step forward designers George Gilliatt and Atticus Tsai-McCarthy, then, who have both shared illuminating insights into the sets they were responsible for over on Brickset. Just ahead of their release on March 1, here are seven things you didn’t know about the new LEGO Harry Potter 2024 sets.

7 – Hagrid’s Hut is an ode to Hogwarts

Hagrid’s home may just sit in the grounds of Hogwarts Castle, but the latest LEGO version is effectively an ode to the school of witchcraft and wizardry, tipping its hat to Gryffindor, Slytherin, Ravenclaw and Hufflepuff.

“Developing the interior involved analysis of movie clips and figuring out a way to bring in the colours of each Hogwarts house,” says Atticus, who describes 76428 Hagrid’s Hut: An Unexpected Visit’s design process as ‘incredibly collaborative’. Check out our early review to see if you can spot all the ways the set references the four different Hogwarts houses.

6 – The Forbidden Forest was envisaged as a Harry Potter battle pack…

76432 Forbidden Forest: Magical Creatures includes no fewer than five different animals: Buckbeak the Hippogriff, a baby Thestral, a Cornish Pixie, a bat and a glow-in-the-dark spider. It’s essentially to the Wizarding World menagerie what 75372 Clone Trooper & Battle Droid Battle Pack is to LEGO Star Wars’ Clone Wars armies. And it was actually a late addition to the line-up…

“We were deep into developing all of the Harry Potter sets for the March 2024 release when we got a special surprise that we could make one extra set, which is where this set came from!” George explains. “We had produced so many magical creatures over the years and thought it could be fun to include several of them together in one set, like a battle pack.”

5 – …and includes two new creatures

While the set doesn’t boast any new moulds for its magical menagerie, 76432 Forbidden Forest: Magical Creatures wasn’t just about pulling together the LEGO Group’s previous animals in a ‘greatest hits’ collection. In fact, there are two new (or ‘new’) creatures nestled away in there, along with a recoloured element to achieve the forest’s blue colour scheme.

“This set contains two new and exclusive creatures: a winking Cornish Pixie and a glow-in-the-dark spider, plus a light blue spider's web,” George says.

4 – The Ford Anglia was built around one key concept

March sees the LEGO Harry Potter theme finally tackle its first standalone Ford Anglia, more than 20 years after the first one debuted in 4728 Escape from Privet Drive. The new one leaves behind the medium blue tone of its predecessors for bright light blue, but that isn’t the only thing setting 76424 Flying Ford Anglia apart from previous versions of the franchise’s most iconic car.

“Since the Ford Explorer in 76956 T. rex Breakout, it is my goal that every six-wide vehicle I work on can seat minifigures side by side,” Atticus explains. “For 76424, it was almost the most important thing to accomplish since it would be the key detail to differentiate it from its predecessors. This lead to a lot of exploration to find the best plate layering sequence for stability and to match our source material as well as we have before.”

3 – The Sorting Hat is backwards-compatible…

Wondering why 76429 Talking Sorting Hat comes in at that very particular size? There are two good reasons. “The scale of the hat was chosen to align somewhat with the Helmet Collection in Star Wars and Super Heroes,” George says, referencing sets like 75349 Captain Rex Helmet and 76285 Spider-Man’s Mask, “but also so that the hat would be compatible with the giant minifigures in 76393 Harry Potter & Hermione Granger.”

The first person to pop the hat on giant Harry’s head wins.

2 – …and has a hidden phrase

The Sorting Hat’s brand new sound brick includes 31 different phrases, which feels like a number the LEGO designers must have pulled out of a hat (sorry not sorry). But it turns out it might be deliberate after all: there are 30 standard phrases, and one that George teases is ‘hidden’.

“The Sorting Hat has one very special phrase hidden inside it,” he says. “You may hear it the very first time you try it on, and you may not hear it after hundreds of uses. You'll just have to listen closely for yourselves.” We’ve been trying out 76429 Talking Sorting Hat for a few days now and have yet to hear anything that might be construed as a ‘very special phrase’, but we’ll keep going. Hopefully it doesn’t take hundreds of tries…

1 – Harry and his hat are both brand new

76429 Talking Sorting Hat bundles in a Harry Potter minifigure with his own Sorting Hat, and while they don’t necessarily have much pull at first glance, they’re actually both brand new and exclusive to this March 2024 set. The Sorting Hat piece originally appeared in 2018’s 75954 Hogwarts Great Hall but is recoloured here, while Harry gets a scene-specific face print.

“This set contains an exclusive Harry Potter minifigure designed by Peter [Kjærgaard, graphic designer], which features a new face where his eyes are closed ("Not Slytherin! Not Slytherin!") as well as the Sorting Hat element in reddish brown for the first time!” George says.

All seven new LEGO Harry Potter sets are available to pre-order from LEGO.com right now and will begin shipping from March 1.

LEGO Harry Potter sets confirmed for March 2024

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