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Item#: 4757 Hogwart's Castle
Ages: 8+
Pieces: 927
I picked up 2 copies of the newest HP castle set a few days ago and I'm
quite impressed by it.
MAIN MODEL
The main model is a rather large 3-wing castle with an extra tower building,
and gate.
The set comes with 8 minifigs.
The front of the castle contains a working clock, pendulum, and gate. There
is a wind-up motor inside the top part of the building. You wind it up, and
then press down on a lever. The pendulum starts to swing back and forth,
while the clock goes around. Additionally, the gate begins to go up. When
the gate gets to the top, the whole mechanism stops. You press another
lever, and the gate drops to the bottom and the process continues until you
run out of wind-up energy. This is the coolest "mechanism" I've ever seen
in any non-technic LEGO set, and it really works reliably. The mesh of
gears is very ingenious.
The front of the castle also contains a "belville" door piece with two
large, brown swing-out doors (non-animated). I suspect that castle people
will find these handy (once they get enough of the "new" dark gray to match
it properly).
The other two "wings" of the castle attatch to the front part with 2 black
technic friction pins. When attached, the castle wings stay nicely
together, but you can manually detach them without too much trouble.
two sets of stairs swing out from the back of the model to make a full set.
Its neat how they swing back and forth, just like the stairs in the movie.
There are numerous small "rooms" in the interior of the model that are
decently decorated, although they aren't quite as cool as the main hall in
the old HP castle.
The castle is relatively stable, but not quite as good as the old HP castle
because the base plates are just regular plates rather than the thick
1-brick plates from the old castle. I suspect that this is a cost
compromise because the new castle has MANY more pieces than the old castle,
and I feel that the new castle is much more "solid-looking" (and contains
more plastic) than the old one. The front side of the castle looks like a
real building, rather than the mindless jumble of juniorized bricks in the
old HP castle.
The first floor of the tower module is a small room without too much
excitement. The second floor of the tower is pretty cool. This is a bedroom
with two beds. The center part of the room supports the weight of the upper
floors, while the sides of the room fold out so you can see the interior.
I've never seen this sort of design. The top of the tower isn't too
exciting, except for numerous cool new pieces (see below).
The gate assembly doesn't have much worth mentioning. Its just the standard
"scary old house" gate pieces and some arches.
ALTERNATE MODELS
LEGO seemed to be completely ignoring alternate models for quite a while,
but they've been coming back lately. This set has at least two alternate
model suggestions (that I could find from the box and instructions), and
both are pretty cool.
One is a 4 story, horizontal castle wall with various towers on it.
Another is a fairly beefy tower.
COLORS
This is the biggest set to date with the new gray and brown colors. I'm
still irritated that my supply of the "old" colors are cut off, as this will
make life difficult for me when building in those colors. However, I must
grudgingly admit that I much prefer the new colors. The "blue" gray and
dark gray look much better than the old grays. I'm not so sure about the
point of changing the brown. I can barely tell the difference on the brown.
Contrary to the complaints of many people, I've been able to succesfully mix
the new and old grays with some pretty nice results. You just have to treat
the old and new as distinct, and complimentary colors. This produces some
interesting and subtle effects.
Note: Even the technic gears and axels are in the new colors. These bricks
look better as well in the new gray shades.
COOL PIECES
As with most sets, I bought this one mainly for the pieces. The main model
is cool, but I'm salivating over the pieces (from both copies of the set in
my inventory), so it will probably be taken down in a week or two. Here are
the coolest pieces:
2 8x4x6 1/2 cones in slate green - I totally go for this piece and can't
wait to get copies in clear and gray (in the upcoming millenium falcon).
This converts down from two 4x4 corners into one half of a 4x4 circle. I
could see it working out well for (big) rockets, and of course, castle tops.
I plan to turn it upside down, or sideways and use it as an obnoxious accent
to town buildings.
2 4x4x2 slate green cones
5 2x2x2 slate green cones
4 4x4x6 tan curve wall panels
4 4x4x1 tan curves. These are like the typical 4x4x1 1/4 circle pieces,
except that the inside is hollowed out. These are cool pices because they
can be used to slightly extend the 4x4x6 panels without infringing on the
interior spaces. I can't wait to get them in gray (in another hp set I
don't have yet).
"lots" of 1x2x1 light-gray "wood" pieces. There are tons of these and they
look really cool.
4x8x1 1/2 circle wedge in gray. This is like two 4x4x1 curved bricks put
together. I'm not complely sure why LEGO felt it necessary to create this
piece. I'm sure that some creative way could have been found to attach the
tower assembly that its used for. As it happens, this new piece has 3
technic slots on its flat edge that are used to secure the base of one of
the towers on the left side (looking from the front) of the castle.
"lots" of dark gray plates - This is a good way to start your collection
filling with new gray parts!
gray lion's head - First time available in gray
white "radar" dish with clock pattern - The printing on this is really cool
wind-up motor - oddly enough, this is in the "old" dark gray. This one
seems to work a lot better than the ones I've used before on basketball sets
and racers.
2x2 white radar with medieval markings on it - very nice printing
1x8x12? Belville door frame in dark gray with 2 brown doors
4 1x2 brown hinge plates - I haven't seen these before. They are used to
attach the roof piece on the main building. They seem to work pretty well.
White feather pieces with black markings - used on the top of "potions." I
haven't seen these before and they look cool.
large oblong shield with lion on it - I don't think I've seen this pattern
before
2 brown stair pieces.
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