Review - 12 Grimmauld Place

Welcome wearying wizards to Grimmauld Place. At first glance your standard London street lined with identical town houses. But on closer inspection you will notice that number 12 is simply not there. Now, your standard Muggle wouldn’t take any notice, they would simply dismiss it as an error in the architecture and never questioned whatever happened to number 12.

Thanks to the Unplottable Charm placed on the house it can only be seen by wizards and doesn’t appear on any maps. But this house is also under the protection of the Fidelius Charm, which means wizards can’t see it either! But not us, we are inquisitive, we seek number 12, we have been told of its location by its Secret Keeper.

Number 12, is building that will magically materialise before your very eyes and also much to his surprise, Harry, who is met at the home by Hermione, Ron, and his godfather, Sirius Black who has recently escaped from Azkaban.

THE BUILD

This three level building is packed full of details and many play opportunities to recreate scenes from The Order of the Phoenix. Grimmauld Place can also be used as an impressive display piece to sit alongside any other Harry Potter sets. The architecture is both detailed and simple with arched windows, front of house railings and brickwork that recreates many town houses you would find in the streets of London.

This set has a great figure count, nine in total: Sirius Black, Kreacher, Nymphadora Tonks, Kingsley Shacklebolt, Ron Weasley, Molly Weasley, Fred Weasley, George Weasley and of course Harry Potter. Also included is Hermione’s cat Crookshanks so lets say 9 and a half figures!

The first two bags of the build we created the base which has the mechanism (two angled technic beams) for Number 12 to appear with a simple and effective sliding action.

With Bag 3 we build the ground floor of Number 12 and in particular the kitchen. There are numerous details in this room including a fully laden kitchen table, cupboards and cooker making for great central point of the house. It is in this room which Sirius, Authur Weasley et all are meeting to discuss Harry’s future. Using Fred and George’s Extendable Ear the young wizards can listen into the secret discussion going on downstairs but they don’t take into account Crookshanks cat-like curiosity for a new play thing!

In Bag 4 we build the ground floors of Number 12’s adjacent properties including two ornate lamp-posts flanking each building. The interiors then create more of a ground floor area. Moving swiftly onto Bag 5 we create the first and second floor of Number 12, the exterior is nicely detailed and the interior has a rather grand piano on the first floor and a rather spooky second floor which has two heads on display!

With Bag 6 and 7 we build the first and second floors of numbers 13 and 11 respectively, details on the interior include bedrooms and a room with Sirius Black’s family-tree tapestry.

And with that we’ve completed this impressive build, it is now time magically materialise Number 12 and our wizards can jump inside to discover the delights held within.

The set is a fun one which adults and children alike will have great fun building. Many parts of this build were completed with my youngest daughter (aged 7) who was very impressed with the detail that each room has to offer.

CONCLUSION

In conclusion this is a fun and entertaining build that can be played with after each bag and once completed has many play opportunities to recreate those magical scenes from The Order of the Phoenix. As with many LEGO Harry Potter sets the high figure count is very welcome.

My only criticisms would be the interior looking a little disjointed but this I know is due to the ‘revealing mechanism’ and also the higher price point compared to other recent HP set releases.

Overall it is a good set and one many a young aspiring wizard would appreciate in their collection. With that my review score based on the above is a solid 8.5 out of 10.

All opinions are my own and thank you to Brick Central for affording me this opportunity to review this set sent from Smyths Toys Superstores.