
Finally getting around to looking at the 6th of the Harry Potter sets that came out in October and it's almost time for the Diagon Alley set to come out. Hogwarts Castle 4842 is the biggest HP set so far at 1290 pieces with 11 minifigs included. The first set 4709 had 692 parts, the second was 4757 and it had 928 parts, the third is 5378 and it was 943 parts. All the three first sets had a price tag of 90 bucks and each set included 9 minifigs. The new Hogwarts comes in at $130 or just over 10 cents a piece. That's not too bad when compared to the other new HP sets or some of the licenced theme sets like Star Wars. I didn't pick up any of the first batch of Harry Potter sets when they came out. I bought a few of the early Star Wars sets, but I wasn't building anything of my own then, and the attraction of displaying finished sets faded pretty quickly. When the Harry Potter sets started coming out I wasn't interested in them or the books yet. Of course once the addiction set in I had to buy them. A few were still available from LEGO, their sales were slipping then, and the rest I picked up on eBay and Bricklink. The early sets had the yellow minifigs and old grays and brown. The change to the new colors was a curse and a blessing both. I look at the new colors as part of an ever increasing pallet. Since the post is pretty long I'm leaving the minifigs off and doing a second post about them.
4709 Hogwarts Castle 1st Edition

4709 came out in 2001. It's made up of 4 connected units. There's a gate where Hagrid brings the first year students up to the castle in a boat. For Harry's first year class you'd need at least 8 if we followed Hagrid's request of "No more'n four in a boat." At $90 for just under 700 pieces it didn't have a very good price per piece count. It had a nice bunch of minifigs, but only one of the 9 is unique to the set, the Gryffindor Knight. There were lots of great tan and gray parts. Some of the parts were larger than average, things like a couple of lurps, some large wall pieces and a couple of large columns, but there are only about a dozen of the largish pieces. There were 18 printed pieces, not counting the minifigs, and some of them were pretty nice.

There are 4 books in this set and I'm just a sucker for those books. I picked up some extras when they were usually around a quarter on Bricklink. That was ages ago, now that black book with the hinges and the ghost face ranges between $3.50 and $9 on Bricklink. The printing on three of the books is nice and the illustrations are generic enough that it could be used for many different themes. I think that the black book is supposed to be Tom Riddle's Diary but it could be the screaming book in the library. You know when Harry sneaks into there in the middle of the night looking for some info on Nicolas Flamel. The other two are more your school books, say Herbology and Potions. The last is book is a medium blue one that has nothing printed on it. There's a really nice banner with the Gryffindor Lion on one side and the Slytherin Snake on the other side. That was so that the house cup could be taken from Slytherin and awarded to
Gryffindor. There are 4 owls in different colors, white and gray rats, and two black bats. I don't remember any bats in the Harry Potter series but I do like that bat. It's one of my favorite LEGO animals. Ironically the set has no spiders, which Ron would like. It was a good set, especially for the Castle builder. Besides the tan and gray there are some nice sand green cones and roof pieces, including one of the large Belville roof pieces. Now in a useful color. That sand green is one of my favorite colors. I like most of the sand colors. There's a good assortment of parts in small quantities, all good for building up your stock. There's a nice trans treasure chest, though I haven't ever used the ones I have.
4757 Hogwarts Castle 2nd Edition

You can see that they changed the look of the boxes for the 2004 Harry Potter sets. It's Harry's blue period. 4757 was another 90 dollar set but this time there were 929 parts including the 9 minifigs. That's a much better price per piece than the previous edition. Since LEGO was doing poorly at the time these sets came out you could occasionally find good sales on them. They were great part packs even if you weren't
interested in Harry Potter. Most of this set is the front entrance hall and clock tower module. It's made up of three separate towers that click together with technic pins. The clock face turns and a pendulum moves with some technic gearing and a wind up motor. It looks pretty good. There's a gate to Hogwarts that would have been made better if they would have had those pigs to place on the columns on each side of the gate.
Big warty hogs would be better but I can't have everything. There's another tower that attaches to the main entrance hall module. The towers are 4 stories tall and the rooms are tiny and pretty sparely decorated. They mostly hint at their reason for being. There are 9 printed parts and a sticker. Here's a few of them below. They look pretty good and some of them have other uses. I like that blackboard and the white 2x2 dish with the red printing is really pretty. There was another bat in this set, one black owl, a frog, a rat, and finally, a couple of spiders. Trans red and neon green spiders. What the... There aren't any trans spiders in the Harry Potter books or movie that I remember. Many of the 2001-2005 sets have them as an accessory, and about a third of the sets with spiders have the black ones. Weird, huh.
This set had a good bit of the light and dark blay, a bit of reddish brown, a nice amount of tan, a bit
of sand green, some black parts, and some odd bits and pieces. A good mix for the Castle builder or someone interested in building buildings. There's a lot of light blay arches and 67 of the 1x2 light blay logs. There's a dozen of the 1x2x5 dark blay wall panels and a nice 1x8x12 dark
blay door flame with reddish brown doors. I like wall panels, they can come in handy, for quick building. Those doors and frames have been around in the Belville sets but not in a color for the castle guy, unless a hot pink castle is your goal. Having one of those large doors in reddish brown in your building stock just makes sense. What castle doesn't look better with a nice big door, besides how are you going to get the large trolls through some of those small doors, make them crawl? I don't think so. This set only had two books, one a blank green one, and a tan one that's printed to turn it into the Monster Book. A book that bites you! Who wouldn't want that? That Hagrid! He's the best! So a good set by most measures. Of course, I found all the HP sets to be good sets for the most part, but you know what a sap I am for Harry and his pals.
5378 Hogwarts Castle 3rd Edition


Three years would pass before LEGO revisited the castle in set 5378. It was the only HP set in 2007 and it was a scarce one. I'm lucky to live near a LEGO store and they had some. The price to buy one now is high on Bricklink. If you have a box it's 2-4 times the original price of 90 bucks. With 943 parts in the set that's a better price per part. There's a scaled down entrance hall with a small award display area and a bit of the astronomy tower on top of that. There are towers on each side of that central piece with a bedroom and a bit of Umbridge's
office on top of another small room. The separate castle segment opens revealing some more vague rooms. All the walls are even more open than usual and only the small greenhouse is nearly a finished piece. The thestral is pretty nice, using a 1x1 plate with a clip to hold a black set of the dragon wings in place. Luckily for us we don't need to have seen someone die to see them.

That openness of the walls bugs me, the awards are kind of goofy, Umbridge's office has two huge stickers, a sad little desk and a purple lamp shade. Ron seems to be asleep in astronomy class. It was the only new Harry Potter set in 2 years and the only HP set that year. No new HP sets would follow until 2010. 5378 seems thrown together to me. It's one of the
worst sets to display but it still was a nice parts pack. There's lot's of tan and blay parts, with some nice sand green and a nice mix of other bits and pieces. There are only 5 printed parts, a sticker, and one red unprinted book. I do like the face of the mandrake. Make sure you have your earmuffs on tight or you'll be passing out on us. There's 6 animals including the thestrals, a rat, a bat and two owls. No spiders, even of the trans variety, but still the bat. At least they are consistant, huh. I'm not as happy with this set as the other editions but I still bought a couple.
4842 Hogwarts Castle - 4th Edition

Three years later and the theme is red and we see Harry, Ron and Hermione on the box of 4842. It's the biggest HP set with 1290 pieces for $130. That includes 11 minifigs and 9 animals. There's a cooked turkey but I didn't count that. They added a black bat, again. All three of the gorgeous new owls, a rat, and a new color, medium dark flesh, for the 6251 crouching cat, painted up to be Mrs. Norris. I wish they had made a cat for Hermione but this one is nice. Her cat's a ginger cat and this is close enough. The castle is made up of four modules that are mostly tan pieces. As a tan fancier I can tell you that is one nice parts pack for some happy brickster. Trouble is right about now they are hard to find. Maybe after the holidays they'll start turning up again. Seems there was some more thought in putting this set together than the last one. It looks better from the outside, especially all that sand green for the roof.
Inside there are some small rooms with a feature or two. Here's a nice pic from From Bricks To Bothans showing that off. There's a vanishing cabinet in the bottom room of the astronomy tower. It's the square tower with crenellated top and a hidden bookcase in the middle. There are three reddish brown books in there and a 4th black one somewhere else. None of them are printed on. Kind of sad. The tallest tower next to it has the owlery on top with white 1x1 round plates for poop. There are some small rooms, starting with a
tiny bit of the Gryffindor common room. There's a moving part that pops a plate with a sticker of Sirius Black's head out of fireplace so he can talk to Harry. You can see the big sticker up above. It's nearly 6 inches across. Lots of texture for the tan corner wall pieces of the tower and a couple of odd portraits. Even though I don't use them often I have to point out the ever increasing quality of the sticker in the current sets. There's a bit of corridor in the middle of the tower, and below, a bit of the Slytherin common room. I guessed that because of the green snakes. Those are nice to have. The largest
module is the school's great hall. It's a nice bit of work but skimpy to say the least. There's only two student tables and only three teacher's chairs so you know it's been scaled back a tad. There is one huge cake and some other good accessories, like red and green cherries, and pearl gold goblets. The last module has one of those new doors in a nice facade, a knight in armour, and a circular stairway up to a bit of Dumbledore's office. Above that there's the silver sword of Gryffindor and fire on a stick. I don't know what that fire is all about. There are some good printed pieces. I liked the sorting hat in reddish brown, and the Quibbler and Daily Prophet 2x2 tiles are really fun. I was happy to see the return of Harry Potter. I find the sets mostly pretty entertaining. I wouldn't play with them but I'm going to leave mine built for a while. Maybe dust them.