I am not sure why they are only announcing this a few hours before it becomes available but here we are…
Introducing 75978 Diagon Alley
This massive set features 5,544 pieces and when built measures over a metre long.
Based on the first appearance of Diagon Alley in the first Harry Potter film, the set includes an impressive lineup of 14 minifigures: Harry, Ron, Hermione, Draco, Ginny, Molly Weasley, Ollivander, Fred and George, Gilderoy Lockhart, Lucius Malfoy, Hagrid, Florean Fortescue, the Daily Prophet photographer.
The set includes the following shops: Ollivanders™ Wand Shop, Scribbulus™ Writing Implements, Quality Quidditch™ Supplies, the Daily Prophet™, Florean Fortescue’s Ice Cream Parlor, Flourish & Blotts™ bookseller and Weasleys’ Wizard Wheezes™. This is a modular design so each shop is separate.
There are so many details to this so you really need to check out the images below.
This set will be available here [affiliate link] on September 1st, for an Australian price of $599.99. I don’t know if this will go live exactly at midnight but I’d probably be staying up to check if you really want this one.
I received one of these just a few days ago so stay tuned for my review soon.
Gallery and official set description below.
Gallery
Official Set Description
THE MAGICAL WORLDS OF LEGO AND HARRY POTTER COME TOGETHER AGAIN WITH NEW LEGO DIAGON ALLEY SET
1st September 2020: Launching today, the spectacular new LEGO® Harry Potter® set allows fans to be transported to the most magical shopping street in the world, now in brick form!
Diagon Alley™ is one of the most iconic locations in the Wizarding World. It’s where Harry Potter gets his first glimpse of the exciting new world he is about to join, as he’s guided through the magical shopping street by Hagrid. And now LEGO and Harry Potter fans alike can build and create the iconic street in their own homes.
The set brings the two worlds together in a magical hybrid: a rich and versatile display model, with a modularity aspect that allows fans to choose how to display the shops (all in a row, swapping them around, or even placing individual shops on different shelves!).
Measuring more than a meter wide and made up of over 5,000 pieces, LEGO Diagon Alley features the famed wizarding world shops packed with authentic details from the movies to truly capture the ambience of the street.
Behind magnificent and detailed storefronts lie intriguing interiors, fascinating features and familiar characters. Fans can recreate some of their favourite moments from the Harry Potter film series including; discovering the wands at Ollivanders™ from Harry Potter and the Philosophers / Sorcerer’s Stone dropping in on Gilderoy Lockhart™’s book-signing event at Flourish & Blotts™ bookstore from Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets; or obtaining a love potion from Weasleys’ Wizard Wheezes™ from Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince.
Marcos Bessa, LEGO Harry Potter Design Lead commented: “I love how faithful the final design is to the architectural details in the film. You can barely see some of these buildings zooming past your screen, but we tracked down different photographs from the sets – some of them from nearly 20 years ago – to make sure everything is spot on. Diagon Alley is the biggest set I’ve designed to-date and I am really proud of how it has come together.”
The set also includes 14 minifigures, including new versions of lead characters Harry, Ron, Hermione and of course George and Fred Weasley who have their own joke shop in Diagon Alley. There are also minifigures of Florean Fortescue and the Daily Prophet photographer, who have never been seen in LEGO form before.
With Christmas just around the corner, the LEGO Diagon Alley set makes an impressive and inspiring gift for Harry Potter and LEGO enthusiasts alike.
LEGO® Harry Potter® Diagon Alley™ set is available directly from LEGO Stores and www.LEGO.com/EnterTheMagic from 1st September, 2020
FURTHER PRODUCT INFO: LEGO® Harry Potter™ Diagon Alley™ (75978)
- Age – 16 and up
- Model measures:
- Height: 29cm
- Width: 102.4cm
- Depth: 13cm
- 5,544 pieces
- Includes 14 minifigures: Harry, Ron, Hermione, Draco, Ginny, Molly Weasley, Ollivander, Fred and George, Gilderoy Lockhart, Lucius Malfoy, Hagrid, Florean Fortescue, the Daily Prophet photographer
- Diagon Alley Set includes the following shops: Ollivanders™ Wand Shop, Scribbulus™ Writing Implements, Quality Quidditch™ Supplies, the Daily Prophet™, Florean Fortescue’s Ice Cream Parlor, Flourish & Blotts™ bookseller and Weasleys’ Wizard Wheezes™
- The set brings the two worlds together in a magical hybrid: a rich and versatile display model, with a modularity aspect that allows fans to choose how to display the shops (all in a row, swapping them around, or even placing individual shops on different shelves!)
- Measuring more than a meter wide and made up of over 5,000 pieces, LEGO Diagon Alley features the iconic stores packed with authentic details from the movies to truly capture the ambience of the street.
It’s live and I knew there was a reason I was stockpiling my VIP points… Oh, and there’s a Gift with Purchase if a BrickHeadz Hagrid and Buckbeak.
It went live at midnight – crazy to think they announced it so close to launch, but I guess it’s been a pretty poorly kept secret over the last couple weeks anyway.
Nabbed one – can’t wait for it to arrive.
Grabbed one too. I was umming and arghing, but it;s my birthday next week so I decided this would be my covid friendly self gift. I hope it arrives on time – coffee and LEGO for breakfast on my birthday would be great!
An awesome set, great old buildings, would look fine next to the modulars and has lots of old fashioned clothes and an old camera!
But $600 AU? Peeves must have been at work… $500 I could consider it long term (two modular buildings which it more or less is) but $600, I cant afford that and I doubt others can either. I know that POBB, which I intend to get, is half that but $600 is a LOT of money to spend in one hit on Lego especially in a recession. And Im not a HP fan so…
Question though, where does anyone think we could get some sort of discount for this? The best I could do with VIP points is $30. Sadly even with a 50% discount which would likely never happen it would still be $300, which remains a large amounts of money.
Would Myers or DJs maybe have discounts for this in the future?
Always hard to tell. A few sets never see stores at all and others do get a more general release but are often excluded from sales (Myer especially). Hogwarts did eventually get a general release but is usually at RRP, even on Amazon. My guess is that yeah you’ll see it in shops but the discounts may not be huge.
The other possibility is that Lego itself has a Black Friday special on it. Last year they did 30% off the Disney Train which made that more attractive.
PS already out of stock, along with the September Hagrid Brickheadz GWP. Tough being a Lego fan at the moment.
It is real? $599???? Are you kidding?
I think this set would be amazing for a lego city – but the Australia TAX is real.
ie. Lego Canada has it for CAD$499 which when converted is AUD$520. Why are Aussies always paying so much more 🙁
I think overall we do OK now on the price parity – there are some outliers but some get very close (eg the Sian is $US380, or $A543 at 0.7 – add the GST, which isn’t included in the US price – and you get close to $A600, against an RRP here of $A570).
My beef is the inconsistencies. Bowser’s Castle and the Crocodile both retail for $US100 (or around $A160 at 0.7 plus GST). The former sells here for $A150 and the latter for $A170 (or at least they would if either was in stock). Go figure.
^Ray Absolutely agree, Id love to have this in my city, its like an entire street of modular buildings in one set (yes they’re not closed in at the back but thats okay)
I prefer to call it ANZAC – Australia and New Zealand Auxiliary Cost, which as you say, is most certainly real.
I hate it when armchair accountants Professors of Everything (we call em know it alls) work out the exchange rates, inflation etc. to the nearest cent and whinge about how its actually not that bad.
I implore my fellow Australians and foreign Lego fans to step back, ignore the set and economics and just look at the price. Do I want to spend say roughly a month’s groceries for a single person in one hit, in the middle of a global recession and pandemic on a bunch of plastic?
Yes the stores are nice but they are open backed and for at least me personally the high presence of pink, violet and orange turns one off the set a bit as it looks out of place when next to the modular buildings (apart from DD which I changed to red anyway). I completely understand that that’s the source material but it does stand out and if standing out is not what you want in your city then its a drawback.
For a HP fan too, Diagon Alley is certainly an important and interesting location but is it THAT important that I want to pay $600 for it? Particularly as there is no Gringotts or Borgen and Burkes. I guess putting on a wizard hat of a HP fan I could justify Hogwarts castle for $500 but $600 for a less important location? I dont know… And lets face it, the Wheezly shop is not THAT detailed, its mostly just brightly coloured regular bricks. The ice cream shop is tiny and the quidditch shop is not that detailed either. Plus all the staircases stick out awkwardly, particularly for those wishing to display this on a shelf.
Im not trying to be, as certain youtubers would say, Just2Negative but lets be realistic. How much money does the average Lego fan, particularly as many AFOLs have families to support (and convince) want to spend on lego, especially on one set AND with at least 14% of Australians on Jobkeeper allowances, not to mention the thousands of others struggling financially.
I thought about this set, since I do like it, as okay, its basically two modular buildings if placed back to back so yeah I guess I could see $500 here. But that’s still a grand on Lego, yes we all probably spend that often enough but not in one shopping spree or on one set. As its not a speical anniversary set or a modular building (in my case of a non HP fan), why waste money on this? Its not a terrible set its just really really expensive. We all have financial priorities over our hobby and in this case, as I said before, I could basically buy two modular buildings or POBB and a modular building for less then this and have far more useful stuff (again at least in my case as a non HP fan).