[REVIEW] 76418 Harry Potter Advent Calendar 2023

[Clone OPatra]

December is here, which means Advent season! Is this year's Harry Potter Advent Calendar worth your money and/or time? Let's find out!

SET INFORMATION
Number: 76418
Name: LEGO Harry Potter Advent Calendar
Theme: Harry Potter / Wizarding World
Released: 2023
Part Count: 227 + ~40 extras
Minifigures: 6
Set Price (RRP): 37.99 EUR / 29.99 GBP / 59.99 AUD / 44.99 USD / 59.99 CAD
Links: Brickset Bricklink Flickr set

 

INTRODUCTION
I don't really understand LEGO's business model for advent calendars. Presumably the primary market for them uses them as intended: parents buy them to have ready for December 1st, and kids open the designated flap each day leading up to Christmas Eve. If that's the case, why does LEGO release these sets in September, and start discounting them in November, before the time they're most in demand? At the time of writing this review, this set is 30% off in Europe directly from LEGO, and sold out entirely in North America. Doesn't LEGO know that lots of people, including parents, aren't organised enough to buy these in advance? Wouldn't LEGO want to capitalize on that?

Anyway... this is my second ever foray into LEGO's advent calendars, after last year's Marvel calendar, which I picked up on big discount because six Guardians in one cheap-ish set was too good to pass by.

For this review, I'll try to get into the mindset of someone opening the gifts each day, as well as share my thoughts on the set as a whole, including for us adult fans. Let's see how it goes.

Thank you to LEGO for providing this set at Eurobricks' request.

 

BOX
When preparing this review I noticed that the back of the box has a picture of itself, which struck me as amusing. Here it is. Anyone who has ever picked up an Advent Calendar will know how relatively light they feel for the size of the box; there aren't a lot of parts, and a lot of the parts are going to be rather small.

It'd be redundant to show you the back of the box with the flap flipped down, given you just saw it on the back of the box, but here's a bird's eye view of the flap, which itself has a bird's eye view into four Hogsmeade shops. The completely non-LEGO art style feels jarring and I think I would've preferred LEGO-style images here.

Without further ado, let's go through day by day.

 

DAY 1
We start off with the main man boy who lived himself, Mr. Potter. The students' outfits in this set all take inspiration from their getups when they visit Hogsmeade in Prisoner of Azkaban, as seen here. Harry's outfit has been faithfully recreated, though he could've done with a recolour of the other version of this hood that had hair attached, which sadly was only ever used twice and hasn't been seen since 2018.

Harry is a fitting way to start the calendar anyway.

DAY 2
Next up we get a mundane little counter for Honeyduke's, though the Bertie Botts 1x1 brick is always welcome.

DAY 3
Honeydukes continues with this slightly more elaborate counter with a glass display built in and a 1x2 cheese slope to probably represent a till, though it's unprinted. Quite a few spares here as well.

DAY 4
Here we get a version of the Sirius Black wanted poster, with one of the set's obligatory exclusive prints. This calendar contains only two exclusive prints apart from Minifigures; 2022 had 3 (though one was the brick for the game spinner), 2021 had 6 (including its dish for its spinner), 2020 had only 1 (though exclusive printed bricks are used as the legs of three characters, so that could count as 4), and 2019 had 5. The number of exclusive printed parts is a bit proportionate to the number of exclusive printed minifigure parts, though not perfectly.

The print and overall design of this stand, while simple, look good,  It's a print with limited use, but good graphic design nonetheless.

It's actually the third iteration of this poster, and second iteration of this exact stand, as pictured below with the much more elaborate one from Hogsmeade Village Visit. That one used the exact same graphic design of Sirius from the original version found in the 2018 Hogwarts Express, though the original had inaccurate text. This new one is the first to allude to the text that appears in the film underneath the moving image of Sirius, despite being smaller than the last one.

DAY 5
Only five days in and we get our second spiffy Minifigure in the form of Ron. Now, Ron's hat is inaccurate to the film, but from a purely LEGO perspective it's an awesome reappearance and recolour of the part developed for Ron's brothers in the second Harry Potter CMF series.

DAY 6
We now whip over to Zonko's Joke Shop for a stand that's perhaps even more boring than the first Honeyduke's stand, though involves slightly more building and has a ton of extra pieces.

I was startled to see incredibly messy mould injection points on all of the clip pieces, so I took a picture, below. Have you seen parts recently with such messy-ness? This is nearly clone-brand level bad.

DAY 7
The next day continues with Zonko's. It was fun seeing a bunch of different colours of 1x2 plates in one bag, and the 1x1 cones are nice colours, though that's about all there is to say.

DAY 8
Here's the second and final exclusive print, this 1x4 tile printed to look like it's a wooden hand sign. Kinda useless, but kind of cool too.

DAY 9
Hermione rounds out the trio on day 9, not even halfway through the calendar, with another fantastic recoloured hair-hat combo and an exclusive torso (like Harry's and Ron's) that's generic enough to use outside of the Harry Potter setting.

DAY 10
A quick Bricklink search shows that there are a lot of ways to build small (blocky, awful) Christmas trees, but this set's designer decided not to reinvent the wheel and instead recycle the design from the 2019 and 2020 Harry Potter calendars. If you're onto a good thing I guess... It's certainly not very interesting, though the colours are better than the previous versions.

DAY 11
Speaking of not very interesting, this very basic mailbox, though everybody can use more owls.

DAY 12
Somewhat worse still is this fountain, which has nothing particularly Harry Potter-y about it and provides no interactivity with the minifigures. It's pure scene dressing.

DAY 13
I was quite surprised again when I opened Day 13, and saw the most desirable Minifigure in the set, the exclusive and first ever Aberforth Dumbledore. I would've bet a small amount of money that LEGO would save Aberforth for Day 24, given he's the coolest, newest thing in the set.

This sent me down a Bricklink rabbit hole seeing what LEGO does in terms of Day 24 for the other themes. City has pretty consistently had Santa on Day 24, apart from a brief lapse in judgement in 2018 when they presented this abominable snowman build instead (serious what the heck is that). Star Wars consistently includes a cool holiday figure last, which is also a good choice. The other themes, though, have been mixed bags, which again is just weird. Why wouldn't they always want to go out with a bang in every calendar for every theme?

As for Aberforth himself, he's pretty cool though not super detailed. The torso print immediately reminded me of this torso from Western, which isn't exactly a ringing endorsement because LEGO has levelled up their design work a lot since 1996. Obviously it is a bit better than that, but it's still simple. His face is very highly detailed though and I like the wry little smile.

To be honest I felt unconvinced by this figure when I first saw images of it: the bright purple didn't remind me of Aberforth because, while he might technically wear purple, all the scenes Aberforth appears in are so dark and relatively washed out in that colour scheme Yates preferred for all of his Harry Potter films. The use of this particular hair and beard, which LEGO continues to use for Professor Dumbledore from films 1 and 2, also made this Aberforth look too much like his brother, though when paired with a Gambon Dumbledore there are enough differences to set them apart. Still, I think Aberforth needs something like the Hobbit film dwarf hair to really capture his wild, bushy look.

DAY 14
Fittingly, our journey through Hogsmeade now takes us to Aberforth's Hog's Head Inn, and this once again mundane table with a definitely-not-alcohol bottle. It's a trendy water bottle. For sure.

DAY 15
Next comes this cask of definitely-not-alcohol. People keep juice in casks right? RIGHT? As casks go, it's a good little build, but is this exciting for a kid?

DAY 16
We move back outside for this spindly lamp post, though at least this could double as some sort of weapon, what with the lightsaber hilts.

DAY 17
Now we get the only total repeat Minifigure of the set: Madam Rosmerta, the proprietor of the Three Broomsticks, who also appeared in Hogsmeade Village Visit. She's a decent figure though, and the set contains Three Broomsticks stuff, so her inclusion makes sense.

DAY 18
The "Three Broomsticks stuff" begins the next day with this terribly simple and dull table. "Look mummy, today I get to build a table with five parts! What a treat!" - said no kid ever.

DAY 19
Irksome mundanity is really setting in with this decent, but again unexciting, fire place.

DAY 20
At least day 20 bring two builds and something with which Minifigures can interact. Is this the start of a wreath-making workshop or just a large table decoration?

DAY 21
Like Ron's, Draco's exclusively recoloured headgear is inaccurate to his film costume, but I'm not bothered because it's a great colour scheme for the part and LEGO doesn't make anything like his film hat anyway. The jacket is also extremely reusable. This means that there are no minifigures left for Day 24 though...

DAY 22
Things should be ramping up towards Christmas, but instead we get probably the least exciting build so far: this basic bench.

DAY 23
One Christmas tree wasn't enough, so here's another one, now with extra cheese slopes.

DAY 24
And rounding out this month of utilitarian builds comes this wet thud of a snowman with next to nothing special going for it. Nothing magical. No elevated design. The scarf is a jumper plate and a face is non-existent. Sigh...

Here are all of the spare parts - I counted around 40!

 

COMPLETE SET and CONCLUDING THOUGHTS
Now, the whole concept (or perhaps conceit) of this set is that it gives you everything to play out Hogsmeade scenes by placing the builds in their respective sections of the box's flap, as shown below. The effect is kind of weird for my order-liking brain, since you're placing LEGO and making Minifigures walk on top of top-down non-LEGO-style designs, including things like tables and chairs. I think they should've gone with just the floor design of each store, and left any interior furnishings to the physical LEGO rather than the artwork. Kids probably won't mind it as much as I do, though I think I would've minded as a kid too.

In any case, when all's said and done this is a cool thing, to have all the builds and Minifigures tie together into a complete scene. However, is an Advent Calendar about the journey or the destination? For us adults who like order, harmony, and cohesion, this set does a good job, but if it's supposed to feel like somewhat of a special gift every day for 24 days, it largely fails.

The vast majority of days are mundane nothingness, all in service of creating the full scene at the end. While I don't personally care for micro models, if the point is to provide something somewhat cool every day, the Advent Calendars with micro models do a much better job of fulfilling that mission. People seemed to dislike last year's Harry Potter calendar, but a ton of those models look cute to me, and are each a whole recognisable little thing in a single day. The 2020 calendar did a decent job of mixing between stuff to build a Yule Ball scene and micro models on a Goblet of Fire theme. This one goes completely in the build-a-scene direction, and I'd thus be hard pressed to tell you any single day felt exciting or special besides the Minifigures and perhaps the Sirius Black sign, which would be a mighty slog for nearly a month.

For AFOLs or general Harry Potter fans who aren't interest in the advent aspect, the value here is all in the Minifigures. Whether or not you're interested comes down to how much you like contemporary, everyday Minifigure parts. To my taste, I love what's on offer here with three recoloured headgear parts, four useful wintery torsos, and Aberforth to add to the Harry Potter collection. However, if you're purely a Harry Potter fan then Aberforth is really the only thing going for this lineup, since the kids' costumes, while exclusive, are inconsequential.

 

SCORE
How do I rate this set?

9 MINIFIGURES
There's enough cool and exclusive stuff, including an exclusive character despite his flaws, for me to rate the Minifigures quite high.

5 PIECES
I've got to give this a low 5/10 because, while there's never a satisfactory number of pieces in any Advent Calendar, these pieces are especially uninteresting apart from the couple of prints.

6 BUILD/DESIGN
Unlike calendars with micro models, there are no NPUs to be found and nothing special or particularly charming about any design here.

2 EXPERIENCE
Here I'm ranking what I feel like the experience would be to open a door everyday, which I think would be a rather abysmal slog.

7 PLAYBILITY
End result playability would be fairly decent though if you like roleplay, since you get a complete and coherent set scene in which to enact play scenarios.

6 PRICE
The price varies by region, being a better deal at full price in Europe than North America, though like I said up top, it's so easy to find these sets on discount. The price isn't "good", but for the minifigures alone it is ok on discount.

5.8 OVERALL - This might well be the lowest score I've ever given a set, but I think it's justified. The minifigures are really all this set has going for it.

What do you think? Am I wildly off base?

I'll also be back with a few crappy alt models that I tried to build out of the limited selection of parts, which I'll post in a comment in this topic.

[Mazin]

As much as i'm not a fan of HP or it's Lego incarnation i'd totally love to get this just for that magical vibe on the box packaging ;) 

[JintaiZ]

Thanks for the review! This set is pretty disappointing, especially compared to other Advent Calendars this year.

[MKJoshA]

On 11/30/2023 at 1:59 PM, Clone OPatra said:

I was startled to see incredibly messy mould injection points on all of the clip pieces, so I took a picture, below. Have you seen parts recently with such messy-ness? This is nearly clone-brand level bad.

I first noticed this in my Viking Village set. But now that I've seen the injection mold points I can't unsee them. They are noticeable on almost every "new" piece! Not sure when the change happened, but sometime in the last 3 years is my best guess. It was so bad I opened a complaint with TLG customer service. I'm still in active dialogue with them explaining my concern and showing pictures that prove it's gotten worse. Would you mind if I shared your picture?

As for the set. I didn't even realize that was Aberforth, I thought it was Dumbledore! This calendar is pretty bad. I'm glad I went for the Marvel one for my kids instead this year.

[Clone OPatra]

On 12/7/2023 at 5:52 PM, MKJoshA said:

It was so bad I opened a complaint with TLG customer service. I'm still in active dialogue with them explaining my concern and showing pictures that prove it's gotten worse. Would you mind if I shared your picture?

Sure, go for it! I haven't noticed it being this bad on other sets, but maybe I wasn't paying close attention.

Yeah, the Aberforth is so easily mistaken for Albus since LEGO has used this exact hair and beard for Albus as well.

[Seaber]

I updated my Aberforth to have the kilt piece from the CMS bagpiper and darker legs. I tried the hairpiece from the Grey Lady - the same piece as Luna has but in Light Bluish Grey - and it looked a little bushier but slightly clashed with the beard piece. 

 

Here he is with all his brothers! 

[Rom]

I completely agree with this review.

My wife and I are doing the one-a-day thing - she has this year's calendar and I have last year's, and every day she gets to be reminded that she drew the short straw. Today she got the nondescript bench seat, I got a dragon perched atop Gringott's. The coherent scene idea is fine, but at least make the individual builds HP-themed! I agree that this year's minifigs are great though, and the lamppost and tree are cute. My wife won't be impressed that tomorrow is just another tree though...

I don't understand the disdain for last year's HP calendar - it's fantastic. Almost every day gives me a gleeful chuckle when I see what cute little build they've concocted. My only minor criticism is that they give a massive spoiler on the box for what day 24 will be (at least it looks like it will be great).