Back home again, I had just started on a post about buildable books, when pictures emerged of a new gift-with-purchase (GWP) set of the Monster Book of Monsters. It appears currently only to be available in China, but hopefully it will make its way to other regions soon! Here is what we know…
Background
In Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, the booklist included the ferocious Monster Book of Monsters, which was the text book Rubeus Hagrid had selected for his Care of Magical Creatures class. The book, written by Edwardus Lima, should contain all the relevant information about magical creatures, but it is hard to access the information as the book usually tries to bite anyone who comes too close. The only way to subdue the book is to stroke its spine, after which you can open the book placidly.
Previous LEGO versions
Previous, the book has been represented in a number of 2004 sets using the old book mould with appropriate printing. This include Draco’s encounter with Buckbeak (set 4750), Hogwarts Castle 2004 version (set 4757) and Hogwarts Express 2004 version (set 4758) and the motorised version of this (set 10132).
In 2020, we had a new minifigure sized Monster Book of Monsters released with the LEGO Harry Potter Collectable Minifigures (CMF) series 2 together with Neville Longbottom.
But let’s move on to the main topic of this post.
New Gift-With-Purchase set revealed
In China, the Shanghai LEGO Discovery Center has sent out a newsletter, revealing this new LEGO Harry Potter GWP set. From the newsletter it is shown that The Monster Book of Monsters (set 30628) will be a gift with purchase when you spend a minimum of 1399元 (approximately US$210) on LEGO Harry Potter products in store from 15 October to 15 November.
Unfortunately, at this point it appears only to be available in China, but hopefully it will make its way to other regions soon, maybe for Black Friday, or later for the holiday period. It would be strange if it was restricted to a single country.
Below is a close-up of the actual box. The book is shown clearly on the front of the box and looks great. It will be a nice addition to larger brick build items, such as the recent Hedwig set, and potential future brick built books (as rumoured).
As seen in the lower left corner, the set includes a Draco Malfoy minifigure (it appears to be identical to the one from the Hogwarts Students set).
A user on WeChat has got a copy and posted some photos of it there as reproduced below. The first two photos show it from the front and explains that the mouth opens. From the photos, we can see that the book title and the four eyes are from stickers rather than being printed on the bricks.
The post also had a photo of the book from the bottom, showing the mechanism that makes the mouth open and close.
Finally, it had a small movie showing how it looks when pushing it along a table, snapping wildly as it should according to the books.
I can’t wait to get my hands on one of these! Fingers crossed, we will soon see them in the rest of the world.
Till then, Build the Magic!
Blockwarts - A LEGO Harry Potter fan site 
Lego Monster Book of Monsters was briefly available at Barnes and Noble online in late Nov, followed by limited stock in their bookstores in early Dec, but quickly sold out each time. No word if that was the extent of its availability, or if it might show up elsewhere another day. Personally I suspect it’s gone.for good unless you want to pay a higher price to ebay resellers.
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