REVIEW: Hogsmeade Village Visit

Along with Hogwarts and Diagon Alley, Hogsmeade is one of the iconic locations from the Harry Potter universe one would expect to see in a Harry Potter theme park. It is therefore surprising that we haven’t seen any sets with Hogsmeade since 2004. Luckily the 2021 wave of sets includes an excellent Hogsmeade set, which I’ve been sent to review. Here is what you get…

Set 76388 – Hogsmeade Village visit – 851 pieces

Price: US$79.99 / €79.99 / £69.99 / AU$139.99 / 749 DKK

Hogsmeade is an entire village for wizards and witches hidden from the muggle world. It lies at the Great Lake near Hogwarts and it is Hosgmeade station one travels to on the Hogwarts Express to get to the castle.

Hogwarts students get to visit Hogsmeade a few weekends each year where they can buy tongue-tingling acid pops from Honeydukes, dungbombs and other tricks from Zonko’s joke shop or refreshing Butterbeer at The Three Broomsticks.

So the village is used in quite a few scenes in the movies, such as the snow ball fight near the Shrieking Shack, Harry’s disastrous Valentine’s Day date with Cho Chang at Madam Puddifoot’s Tea Shop and the first meeting of what became Dumbledore’s Army at The Three Broomsticks.

Considering all this, the location is very underrepresented in terms of LEGO sets. In fact, this is the first time we get to see Hogsmeade since the Shrieking Shack (set 4756) and Hogwarts Express (set 4758) both from 2004.

Due to the lack of a decent Hogsmeade set, I built my own Hogsmeade village based on the Winter Village Elf Club House set as covered in this post.

When I design a MOC that hasn’t been released as LEGO set, it is typically a good predictor of what is going to be released officially by LEGO the following year. So I wasn’t overly surprised when the reveal of the 2021 sets included the Hogsmeade Village Visit set.

This Hogsmeade set is a great addition to the Harry Potter range as we shall see, including two iconic locations: Honeydukes and The Three Broomsticks both set in a nice wintery scene. Let’s have a closer look…

Box and content

The front of the box shows the two included buildings with the graphic behind adding similar houses with their steep roofs that characterise the buildings in Hogsmeade. You clearly get the sense that this is Hogsmeade. At the bottom left is the 20th Anniversary of LEGO Harry Potter logo and the usual banner showing the included minifigures. We get seven of them in this set including a golden anniversary edition of Ron Weasley.

The side of the box shows the minifigures (apart from the anniversary figure) sets up interacting with each other.

The back of the box shows the the inside the two buildings. You can see Madam Rosmerta serving butterbeer to McGonagall inside The Three Broomsticks, with a small apartment upstairs with a cosy fire in the fireplace. The sweets shop Honeydukes is full of lollipops, jars of acid drops, and everything else to serve your sweet tooth. Above the shop is what looks to be a storeroom. An insert photo shows McGonagall and Rosmerta in the apartment discussing important matters, while another insert shows Dean Thomas and Harry Potter enjoying butterbeer inside The Thee Broomsticks.

In the lower left corner, it is listed that the set includes four random wizard card tiles, which is a new collectable item included in the 2021 anniversary themed sets.

Inside the box, you find six numbered bags with parts, two instruction booklets and two sticker sheets. The sticker sheets are loose in the box, but were in perfect shape in my box.

Let us open the bags and see what is inside.

Minifigures

I will start with the minifigures. The set includes 6 “normal” minifigures: Harry Potter, Dean Thomas, Madam Rosmerta, Professor McGonagall, Mr. Flume and Mrs. Flume.

In addition to those six, we get an exclusive golden anniversary Ron Weasley minifigure along with four random wizard cards, which are explained in this post. The anniversary figures unfortunately don’t come with a printed stand as we have seen it for Ninjago and Star Wars anniversary figures. Instead the anniversary print is on the back – not very useful, as figures rarely are displayed with the back facing forward. That said, I really like the golden figures in these sets.

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Continuing with the normal minifigures, Harry Potter, Dean Thomas and Professor McGonagall are well known in the LEGO Harry Potter universe, though Dean Thomas has only appeared once before in the Collectable Minifigure (CMF) Series 1, at that time in Gryffindor robes. So this version with him wearing casual clothes is very different. I like the printed winter jacket. It is however trumped by the printing on Professor McGonnagall torso and skirt, which are also brand new. Those look amazing with all the detail. It is also nice to see McGonnagall with a hair piece instead of a wizard hat for once. In comparison Harry is pretty boring.

All three figures come with alternative face prints as shown below.

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While Harry Potter, Dean Thomas and Professor McGonagall are well known in the LEGO Harry Potter universe, the other three are worth an introduction. They are residents of Hogsmeade, with Madam Rosmerta being the barmaid at the Three Broomsticks, and for Honeydukes, we get the owners Mr. Flume and Mrs. Flume. It is the first time we see these three characters in a LEGO set.

Below we see their new minifigure representations, with Ambrosius Flume to the left, his wife in the middle and Madam Rosmerta to the right.

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They all come with nicely printed torsos, both front and back, and Mrs Flume also has a printed apron on her legs. As with the three Their heads also all come with alternative face prints.

The inclusion of Rosmerta (who came with a hammer) and McGonagall, allows you to recreate a few scenes from the Prisoner of Azkaban, where the two ladies are in conversation with the Minister of Magic Cornelius Fudge. First, this was in front of the pub, where Rosmerta was waving a hammer when telling the minister how angry she was at the dementors, scaring away her customers. Secondly inside her apartment where Harry, under his invisibility cloak, overhears what Sirius Black had done, and that he is even his godfather.

The Build

As mentioned, the set includes two buildings, Honeydukes and The Three Broomsticks. Each are made from three numbered bags. First up is Honeydukes…

Honeydukes

Starting with bag 1, you get a good start on Honeydukes. This is a fun build, as you get to add a lot of sweets to the store. The colour scheme looks great with the medium nougat and green colours going well together.

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As it is often the case, 1x6x5 panels are used as sides. This is not surprising for a normal set like this, but it it was disappointing in the large exclusive Diagon Alley set, as it stands out (negatively) compared with the rest of the brick build walls. In this case, the panels work reasonably well, with the stickers reinforcing the sweets shop look.

Bag 2 adds the curved windows in front (you need to apply stickers to trans-clear half cylinders) and half of the roof construction.

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Bag 3 allows you to complete the roof. Here is the completed building.

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Bag three also include bricks for a few smaller models for the winter scenery outside: A lamppost, a bench and a sign showing that Sirius Black is wanted by the Ministry of Magic.

The Three Broomsticks

Next up is The Three Broomsticks. Bag number 4 allows us to build the entire ground floor. Inside you have the bar desk and a table with two benches where patrons can enjoy a meal or a refreshing butterbeer.

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Bag 5 completes the majority of the top floor. There is a fireplace, a desk of drawers and a nice dark green arm chair.

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Finally, bag 6 completes the roof and the remaining details on the front, including the Three Broomstick sign over the door.

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Here is the completed model. What a lovely scenery – the village is ready for the Hogwarts students to come.

Here a a few scenes you can make from the set.

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The latter photo begs for using Harry, Ron and Hermione from the Collectable Minifigure (CMF) Series 2, which reflects them visiting the place in Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince. I’ll do that when time allows.

Conclusion

This is a great addition to the LEGO Harry Potter range, capturing the look and feel of Hogsmeade well. It is nice to see it as winter scene, as many visits to the village was indeed during winter time.

The included minifigures are great overall, each being rather unique (apart from Harry Potter which is pretty ordinary) and a good match for the included buildings. The buildings themselves are well designed, and different enough to make for an entertaining build.

It would be great with a follow up set in a future wave adding additional buildings, such as Zonko’s joke shop, the train station or the Shrieking Shack.

More reviews of the new 2021 sets are coming, so check the Reviews page for any updates.

Till then, Build the Magic!

(Note that this set was kindly provided by LEGO for review. The views expressed here are my own however).