4738 Hagrid's Hut
Price: $39.99
Pieces: 442
PPP: $.09
Minifigures: 4
LEGO Description:
My Christmas present from my parents for this year. That and socks. Guess which one I enjoyed more?Action and adventure await you in Hagrid's Hut!
On the shadowy outskirts of the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry grounds, Hagrid's Hut is home to the school's half-giant grounds keeper. Harry , Ron and Hermione never know what will await them there. From giant spiders to baby dragons, magic and mystery surround this rustic cabin. Includes 6 characters: Harry Potter , Ron Weasley , Hermione Granger , Rubeus Hagrid , Nortbert and Aragog Hagrid's Hut features furnishings including chairs, a table, a stove and pots and pans Light up the fireplace! Swing open doors and lattice windows! Entire hut opens into two halves for play inside Hagrid's Hut measures over 6' (15 cm) tall and 6' (15) wide
Packaging
The packaging for this box was a usual box, nice printing, thinner than I had thought it would be. My instructions were squished and there were a few stickers in there for Hagrid's hut's corner pieces and walls. When I dumped it all out, it looked like this:
Very fun :D
Minifigures
This set came with four minifigures: Harry, Ron, Hermione, and Hagrid. They are all wonderful minifigures, and Hagrid is especially unique.
The three regular minifigures are nice to begin with. Both heads are double sided. My only complaint is that all three of their torsos are exactly the same. While this helps because they're all androgynous, a little more detailing for Hermione's torso would have helped distinguish it as a female torso.
Hagrid, as you can probably tell, is a unique minifigure. He stands about a head taller than the other minifigures and has unique hands. They actually have fingers etched into them. The legs are not poseable though. Only the arms, hands and head are. His hair/beard is one piece and does not other minifigures (it's able to be placed on them, but it does not fit to the form of their body.)
Minifigures from behind. Hagrid is a shaggy goliath. Hermione's hair is pretty nice, and Ron has red wavy hair, akin to the surfer from Series 2 of the CMFs blonde hair. Harry has the same shaggy black hair as in all of his other sets.
And the embarrassing bald shots. Hagrid has a smarmy, kind of dopey look on his face. Ron has one too, but less dopey looking. Hermione sports a rather pleasant, fair look on her face, while Harry sports the same face from the other sets.
My only complaint with these faces is a printing issue. On my Hagrid head, the actual print appears to be tearing off from the head. It's poor quality control.
Double sided faces. Hagrid has none. Hermione looks extremely peeved, Ron looks nervous or panicked, and Harry has his stoic angry but stiff upper lip look. All in all, pretty good.
The Build
The instructions first directed me to construct Aragog, the spider. There's not too much to mention about him. He's a really repetitive and simple build.
There he is, being frightening and attacking your face. His arms and legs are all katanas put into some sockets, attached to a joint in 8 separate spots.
The second half of his body is composed of just two small sloped plates together and attached by 2 hooks. From the side and front, the face looks kind of ridiculous with it's large hump. However I didn't mind too much because of this next part.
There are two printed pieces in this build :D The face is kind of eerie and frightening, and the plate for his backside is a nice piece to have.
These are all of the legs. 8 of them in total, all fully functional swords. In action, they look something like this:
Harry Potter just got cooler. NOTE: Samurai NOT included.
Now onto the hut.
There really is no good way to approach this hut. I'm going to opt for photographing the hut from each side and pointing out some things I liked about it.
These are the front and back doors, respectively, of Hagrid's hut. It's a pretty humble looking hut, rustic, I believe the right word would be.
If you look in the corners of the pictures you'll notice some of these pumpkins. They're really just some pumpkin minifigure heads turned around with some plant parts stuck in them. I suppose you can count these as minifigure parts. Either way it's nice to have some more. They aren't used very often and as far as I can remember they only show up in the board game Monster 4. The foliage is nice as well to have.
Look to those corners again and you're going to see these mushroom round plates. That's all they are, rounded discs with printing on them. There's no bottom or other pieces. Very nice to have, especially since they aren't stickers!
This is the side with the power functions brick. I'll get to that later when I show you the inside.
Here's the other side with some nice golden windows. I really like these, probably because I'm a Castle fan.
You may have noticed some hinges on the outside of Hagrid's hut and that opens up the hut for inside playing. I think this is a really nice feature and it opens up the set for playability.
The mantle on the fireplace has some various potions on top. Some fish and hunks of meat hang from the ceiling.
If you swing the cauldron on the inside out and you push the red button from the back, the fire lights up. It's pretty well done and the effect is enjoyable. Power functions are always a plus in this set and it's used pretty well.
The other half of the hut is home to a table and a little trunk. A key and an axe hang from the ceiling, with his little dragon Norbert sitting on the table. If you open up the trunk...
It reveals a letter and a ruby, which you'll see a bit later.
Things to Note
The whole roof is constructed by a construct of sloping plate pieces that you can see above. It's very effective and it stays in place well.
You should also note that I didn't have stickers on in any of the pictures. I do not like putting on stickers.
The set came with a large number of animals too. Not in this picture is the dragon pictured a few pictures above. The owls are new to the Harry Potter series. They are more detailed than the previous owls, have actual detailing, and are not printed. The spiders and the rat are old models, but still nice to have.
The set comes with a large amount of accessories, some of which have already been seen before, but I hope this helps illuminate them better.
Final Words
This set is an excellent set. It has a good number of minifigures, came with a lot of specially printed pieces, had a power functions brick, came with a healthy number of pieces for its price, had lots of accessories, and was a fun build to do. It also had a lot of playability with the opening up, and like any good action set, featured some sort of conflict (here the spiders vs. the wizards).
I would strongly recommend this set. There is absolutely nothing wrong with it and it is a blast to have.
