In this episode of the Brick Magnate Podcast, I discuss the Lego Gringotts Bank set from the Harry Potter series.

I review the build experience, the end result, and the value for money. I also address the dilemma of displaying the set alongside the Diagon Alley set and why that makes this set a little divisive for me.

Well, hello there. Welcome to episode 9 of the Brick Magnate

podcast. I'm your host, Mike Morrison, aka the Brick Magnate,

and this is the show where I get to wax lyrical about Lego with

my fellow brick building enthusiasts and review the

latest sets that I've been obsessing over

in recent weeks months. And today, I'm reviewing

a fairly recent set. I'm gonna be talking

about the LEGO Gringotts set, which only

released a couple of months ago and had people Very excited because

it's a huge set and also a pretty iconic one for

Harry Potter fans. But before we get started, just a

little reminder if you are listening to the show for the very first time or

if you checked out a few episodes and you haven't yet subscribed, make sure you

hit that Subscribe or follow button in your podcast app

to ensure that you do not miss a single episode of The

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down the rabbit hole into LEGO obsession.

So today, let's talk about the LEGO Harry

Potter Gringotts set. I

was quite excited for this one. I was intrigued

by it. It was, I'd seen rumors that a Gringotts set was

coming, and I think a lot of people were taken aback

by how Lego had actually approached it and designed it. So I

was curious. And I've gotta say, for me, in my

experiences anyway, Lego Harry Potter can be a little hit and

miss. All the way back in episode 1, the very first episode of this

podcast, I reviewed the Lego Hogwarts

Express, the big Hogwarts Express set that they released,

which, overall, was a bit of a disappointment,

especially for that sort of premium priced

signature set. But on the flip side, both

the full size Hogwarts set and Diagon

Alley. Those are really, really strong builds for me anyway.

So I was hoping for more along those lines than some of the

other Harry Potter sets that are out there. So did it

deliver? Let's dive in. So this set is,

4,803 Pieces. So

it's a big one. It is a big one. It's about,

2 thirds, a little more than 2 thirds the size or or

the brick count of things like the, Millennium Falcon or the

Razor Crest or those big UCS Star Wars sets.

And for that, You pay $430

or 370 British pounds,

which is actually under the the

measuring stick of 10¢ per piece that,

most people will use to calculate Whether a price

is is good value or bad value based on the brick piece count.

It comes with 13 minuteifigs, including the main

trio, along with Hagrid, as well as iconic characters like

Bellatrix Lestrange and Grepook. And,

it's an interesting set because, first of all, It's very tall.

And that's because you not only get the bank building itself,

but you also get the underground area with the railroad and The

Vaults, which obviously played a huge, huge part in the movie. So that's

really unique and visually impressive, but it's a

double edged sword, which I'll come back to, as the review

kind of comes on. But first, let's talk about the build experience.

I think the best way to describe this build

is uneven. I was going to say that

it's a build of 2 halves since you are literally building 2

distinct separate areas above ground, below ground, But that makes it sound

like maybe OneHalf was good, so maybe the underground was good,

and the building was bad, but that's not the case. They both

had Fun build phases. But they

were also hampered by some really boring stretches too. And it

does Like, in the way that you're building, sometimes when you're building a a

set that has multiple areas or multiple components, you might do a

bit on each, but this Does feel very divided into okay. 1st,

we're building this whole separate standalone underground bit, then we

build the overground, and then we just pop 1 on top of the other.

But, yeah, they both had fun myths. They both had really, really boring

stretches. So you start the build with the underground vault area. Now,

obviously, because the bank the building sits on

top of this, this is kind of like

it's its own sort of area, but it's primarily

concerned with being a sturdy base.

So it's more that's kind of the priority, and you can tell the priority for

this bit. Make sure it's a solid sturdy base for the

building, rather than make sure that it's really

cool as a standalone section. And it does work. It

is a solid base. The the the set doesn't really wobble.

It doesn't feel flimsy. But it also means that,

there's a big Stretch of pretty uninspired building,

that is that goes into creating this kind of strong x

shape that supports the weight of the bank above it. So

yeah. Definitely, I think uninspired for for stretches of this when you're building

out kind of the the foundations of That area,

there there's some vault rooms built into that x stand and a

few attempts to reproduce elements from the film, But you do feel like you're limited

by the true purpose of this section in being an x

shaped bass with a few bits and pieces tacked on. That's

definitely what it feels more like. The thief's wall the the waterfall,

the thief's downfall, from the movies where the card

passes through. And if you've got any enchantments or spells, then it washes

off those spells. Right? That's a big, big part of the movie. Right? It's kind

of a a a main feature of this area.

But that's a good example of what I mean by they've kind of

just I wouldn't say phoned in, but they've been limited

by What they could do within this section

by having to stay true to the the main purpose, the main

priority of this section in creating a strong base. So it's just kind of tagged

on. It's just like a flimsy strip of blue tiles really

awkwardly, I'm sitting on one of the axes of the base, and

act it is quite flimsy. Like, it it's

it doesn't There's something when you build it. It's one of the first things that

you actually piece on to the base. And when I kinda did it, I was

like, oh, that really? That's how they're doing that.

It feels something weird, but it connects on with 1 little

thin piece at the top. Anyway but I think that's

kind of representative of,

where I feel the shortcomings with the underground section

of this, war. The areas it's fairly joyless

in terms of the build, save for a few funny strikes in the vaults

themselves, which the vault kind of just like slot in.

I'll mention those Easter eggs in a bit, but the big highlight of this section

comes in adding the railroad tracks

for the carts to spin down on. Like, that's

that's the bit that kind of salvages this section. So you have this

spiral of railroad, and you have the

cart that obviously will have, the characters in, and they spin

round. They they they make their way down, and and you can have them stop

off at at the different vaults. That's cool.

But, unfortunately, That part doesn't come until, like,

right at the end of the build for this section, so it

doesn't save that experience from feeling like a bit of a slog.

I did find myself flicking ahead in the instructions to see when I

would get started on the bank building, which looked like it would be the more

fun part of the process. And for the most part, it was. You know, I

quite like modular building sets and building my LEGO city, and building,

like, Diagon Alley and stuff like that. So I

knew that this was the part of the build I was going to enjoy the

most, and it was. I mostly enjoyed building the the

bank above ground. The way in which they tackle kind of the wonky

structure, at the front of the bank,

was was satisfying. You know? When you see each level

of the building come up, and you've got those kind of those askew,

bits on the front facade. It's cool. It's just one of those little things where

you're like, yeah. I like that. So, yeah, it was it was

quite good. With the exception of Lego, once again, deciding to use stickers

for the signage on the front, which obviously looks terrible compared to

printed bricks, because, you know, you've obviously got The name of the

bank, it's all it's it's kind of split in the middle, and there's awkward

spacing because they've done it with stickers. Everyone hates stickers.

Right? The interior of the bank building itself was pretty

plain. It's mostly that ground it's

mostly about the ground floor. There's kind of like a A small third

floor with not much happening. But once you're done with the

the fairly sparse detail in the,

on the The first the ground floor where they

have the the different, they're not checkouts. They're kind of the

the teller stations right. It's where They walk up to,

to the, is it dwarves or is it elves? Or is

it goblins? It's goblins. And it's goblins. Yeah. So they walk up to

the camp where the goblins are at, and they're they're in disguise and all of

that. You've got that, but it's just it's just a bit anaemic. It's just a

bit, I don't again, I don't wanna

say phoned in, because that suggests laziness. Yeah. Maybe there

just wasn't as much they could do with with that. But once you're

done with that bit, the rest of it is fairly plain. You're really

just building up 3 stories of outer walls and then the roof, which Did get

pretty repetitive. You can tell they tried to mix it up a bit for

this phase by having you do a bit of the building, then a bit of

the outside, and the little random side building they add on,

and then a little bit of a a wall that they added at the edge

of of the the space for the baseplate. And then you're building a wall

on the building again. So they they had you dot around that area to

mix it up a little bit, but I don't think it really saved it during

the more monotonous parts of the build. There was a

dragon. So you piece together a dragon, the dragon that's down in the vaults, and

it helps them escape. These are all spoilers for the Harry Potter movies, by the

way, in case you've not seen them in the last, you know, 20 years.

So that mix Things up slightly, but not enough to really elevate the overall build

experience. So I'm gonna give this a disappointing

2a half out of 5, which I think is fitting for a build of 2

halves for it to get half marks. It's a shame because this

is a big expensive set. Maybe I'm being harsh, But I think

when you have something that's based on a phone IP like Harry

Potter, Harry Potter, and they look on, Harry

Potter, Yeah. When you've when you've got an IP like

Harry Potter, especially one that's got, you

know, a set that's got 2 very contrasting areas.

You know, the the polished, kinda quirky, overground

building, and then the the the cave, the natural, the the

rock, and the stone, and the the dark and dingy

underground. It shouldn't feel like you're

just grinding it out, and you shouldn't be flicking ahead in

the instructions to try and find the interesting part.

So, Yeah. Yeah.

A a disappointing build experience, I'm sorry to say. So let's talk

about the end result. Well, it does Look Great. It's

an impressive, satisfying size. It stands at

just under 80 centimeters tall, So it's a strong signature piece

on its own, even more so if you purge the dragon on top of the

building. So that's gonna bring it closer to the 1 meter

mark. So It is a striking

piece. The contrast between above and below ground

really works visually Despite some of the details on

the underground section feeling a little tacked on, if you step back from the

whole thing and look at it, like, the the contrast in the color,

The contrast in, you know, the the neatness, even with

the wonky walls up up top, but kind of the the neatness and the cleanness

of what's above with The jaggedness and

the, the kind of griminess. I'm

not grimy, but it's a bit it's brown bricks. Right? Brown and gray

bricks. Like, there's a good visual contrast, and it looks,

it it does look good. There's some fun little Easter eggs in there

for Potter fans too, particularly the addition I think

my favorite one, the addition of a a vault containing Helga Hufflepuff's

cup, where they added in a cool little mechanism. Fairly simple

one, but a cool addition that emulates, the the

I don't know if it pronounces Gem Geminio curse, the

doubling spell. So if you kind of pop your finger and touch the cup,

it sort of pushes back a little mechanism, and a whole bunch of

Duplicated cups spill out of the vault.

Call me easily pleased. You know? And

there's also something very satisfying about seeing the rail carts

spiraling around the base. Again, I did say I'm easily pleased. Right? But

there is something. You know? Pop your cart on the top, and it spirals round

and comes out the bottom. That's yeah. Fun. Right?

Satisfying. Although on that, it

again, though, the kart thing, it's it's a bit clunky when you're

unloading and reloading the karts on the track. Little fiddly. I've had bits break off

when I'm trying to do it, which I don't really want.

So yeah. So it's It's a set that

that maybe looks a bit better from a few steps back

than it does up close. When you start getting into the details, it's a bit

disappointing. It's a little clunky. And so where having

the 2 sections of Above and Below Ground really becomes a double edged

sword, though, is if you're planning on adding Gringotts

to your existing Diagon Alley set. And that's what

I'd intended on doing. I've got Diagon Alley. It's got Honeydukes. It's got

the, joke shop. It's, it's it's got

Ollivanders. I think it's got Burt and Botts. It's got all

all the shops. It's missing Gringotts. And so, you

know, my first thought when I get it,

is I'm going to, you know, add it to the display where I

have Diagon Alley. I can't even remember. Gringot is in Diagon Alley.

Right? It is. I don't know. My Harry Potter

law is getting away from me. But I think, you know, Lego

marketed it on the basis of, You know, hey.

You can take the bank off the base, and you can display it with your

diagonal alley buildings. Right? This completes your diagonal alley set.

So that's what I'd intended on doing. And I think it was smart of

LEGO to make it so the bank building is on its own

baseplate. It can be lifted off the underground section displayed separately.

And if you did that, you would never know that that's not what it was

originally designed for. So they presumably did that knowing that a lot of

people who would spend all this money, who

would be willing to spend $430 on this set,

are also probably the same audience who would have spent

the $500 or 600, whatever it was, for,

the Diagon Alley set. Right? So

that set, I think, was released a couple of years ago. And so,

yeah, maybe they're thinking, okay. That profile of a Lego buyer

will be in a place now where they're gonna spend 100 of dollars. They're gonna

get Gringotts. They're already likely to have Diagon Alley all

by the 2 together. So, you know, if if you're one of

those people, that's fantastic. But now you're left with the dilemma

of what to do with the lower section, because it

it's no good on its own. It doesn't work on its own. It

doesn't look good on its own. If you just look at the

base, the underground section stand alone. You can tell

it's missing something. If you just look at the building, the bank on its

own, you wouldn't know that it's missing the underground.

Right. But it wouldn't work to have

the underground attached if you're putting the bank next to the

Diagon Alley buildings. So suddenly

that base area, the underground area becomes redundant. And if you're

displaying Gringotts next to Diagon Alley, That base

area, half of the set is gonna end up shoved in a corner

or in a cupboard somewhere. And that's not ideal for something that took up Half

of the build and accounts for a big part of the cost of the set.

You know, you pay $400 for this, you gotta shove $200 worth in a

cupboard. Right? Now, obviously, this doesn't apply to everyone, but given the fact that

Lego did specifically mark this set based on the

fact you can Take the bank off the

base and display alongside Diagon Alley.

Like, they did that deliberately, and they're assuming there's more than a

few people in their audience who will want to do that. So

that's definitely a mark against this set for me. It might sound harsh,

But any set where you have to face the choice of sticking half of it

in a cupboard somewhere needs to have that factored into my scoring.

So I'm gonna give this a 3.5 end result. If you don't

have Diagon Alley, then maybe it's a fall for you. The

underground area definitely lets this set down, in

all areas other than the the the railroad.

And other people probably won't find that as as,

Satisfying as I do. Like, yeah, I'm easily pleased having the

car to go around in a spiral and being able to have them stop at

the different vaults. I like it. It's cool. That that kind of salvages

what is otherwise a pretty uninspired area.

So, yeah, the underground area lets it down. The use of stickers definitely lets

it down. That really annoys me that that the Gringotts

sign is is stickers. And the kind of

sparseness of the interior of the bank itself. As someone

who likes modular buildings, and I like The

the little details on each floor, but this doesn't have much of that going on.

So, yeah, 3a half end result, and that mostly

It just comes from how visually impressive the set is

from a few steps back. So

finally value for money. This was not a cheap set, but it does sit at

the right side of the 10¢ per, item per per brick

count line in terms of Average costs. It

should be pointed out, however, that a bunch of those pieces that make up the

brick count are single square tiles or dots,

as well as little spiral cone thingies. That's not their official

name. It's the one they use for the stalagmites and stalactites in the underground

area. I don't want I don't know why. I just don't like them. I don't

know if it's because they're like rubbery, and I like my I like my plastic.

I just don't like them. And, Yeah. I'm overly critical

when you've got a high brick count, but you've got a load of these tiny

little pieces. It feels like that detracts from the value

you're getting. You know, if you look at the brick count for the LEGO Bowser

where almost every piece was a thick, substantial,

chunky piece, and then you have a set which is

you know, you've got hundreds of the thin one square

tiles. You can't you can't compare those in

terms of value. Anyway, that's just my weird

neurosis over this. There is a decent amount of minifigures

with this set, but, again, you have the same thing that they've done

with other Harry Potter sets where they've included multiples of the same

character at different ages to reflect the different

visits that they made to Gringotts over the series. So

you have young Harry, with Hagrid, which I think is

is to represent the 1st series, but then You have the

older trio of Harry, Ron, Hermione,

to represent. I think it's the 6th movie that they go there, or

maybe the the 7th. 6th is hard blood print, so that's not when they go.

So with the 8, I get confused. 7 books, 8 movies.

Yeah? So I think it's the 7th movie they got. Anyway, nobody cares.

But, yeah, you end up with that duplication, which is a little bit annoying, especially

if you bought other sets. Like, I don't know how

many Harrys I've got now. I've got too many Harrys, too many Hermione's.

They're not unique and different and distinct enough, to warrant that.

So, Again, this does sound like I'm nitpicking. Right?

But anyone who's built other Harry Potter sets probably has already

more Harrys run than Hermione's, and they can shake a stick at. They're really not

gonna want more. But, you know, there are some additions in there.

I don't think I've got a Bellatrix, minifig from any

other sets. Might have it from Grimmauld Place possibly. Don't

think I've got it from Hogwarts. So, you know, having a a

Beltrix, having Grippook, again, I've definitely not got him from

another set. They're cool. Overall, I

can't give this too high a mark for value for money though, given that the

The pretty the bill experience was pretty average,

bordering on disappointing, and again, you just can't escape the

problem of What happens if you wanted to

display this alongside Diagon Alley, which is how they marketed

the set? That's not That's not me wanting to do

something that is contrary to the purpose of

this set. They use that as a strong marketing angle.

And yeah. I mean, it's it's

tricky. Right now, I haven't actually, I'm doing nothing with it. It's Still it's

still on my my desk my hobby desk while I do my builds

because I'm annoyed at the fact that I'll need

to I'll need to find somewhere to just shove the the underground

bit. Or you get the real, kind of like, the real

ninja Lego builders where They

they'll do something to raise up the other buildings

in Diagon Alley, and they'll just have The below part

kind of sit below the street level. Like, that's kind of the only way you

could display them together, but that's that's getting a little crazy. Right?

So yeah. It's a tough one because you really can't fault them

for making it possible to display the bank as a standalone thing, but

I don't actually think it'd be right. Yeah. I don't think it'd be right to

dock points in my review just based on the Diagon Alley problem.

But even so, based on the build experience and some

some let downs in the end result. I've still got to give this a

pretty mid range 3a half out of 5 for value for

money. Brick count to to dollar price,

it's on the right side of things, especially for a licensed

IP set. If you're

displaying it standalone, you're gonna be happy with it.

But the build, It wasn't a fun build. It just

wasn't a fun build. You know, you want a build that you

enjoy that maybe has 1 or 2 boring bits, not a bill that's

boring that has 1 or 2 enjoyable bits. Right? And that definitely

impacts value for money because you're paying for that experience too.

So while I wouldn't say that this set was a letdown overall, I do think

it suffered for its own ambition to create that 2 tiered result.

The practicalities of this made from mixed bag of the

underground area and a relatively sparse upper building, and, of course,

you have the Diagon Alley quandary in there as well.

Thing is, though, I don't actually think they could have done it any other way.

Had they just released The upper building, they would have been slated for missing out

the best bit in terms of what you see in the movies. And if they'd

ignored the Diagon Alley crowd and made it more of a complete

set that couldn't be separated. So you're not building 2 halves and piecing them together.

You're building 1 cohesive set. I think they'd catch

heat for that as well. Maybe they should have done it a

little how they've done the recent smaller Hogwarts

and and Hogwarts grounds set. Right?

So I don't know if you've seen it, but you've obviously got the big, big

Hogwarts set. That was, like, 600, $700. But

they released a smaller scale one that actually is

more more of a model of the the the broader grounds of

of Hogwarts. And so the Hogwarts itself is smaller.

You've got more of the surrounding area. Maybe they they cut in on something a

little bit like that with, Gringotts,

where the building itself is smaller, but, actually,

you use more space for the underground area. Right? I don't know.

Who knows? So yeah. I think it it would the

choice to do this, I think they they had to do Gringotts at

some point because people wanted it, But it was a bit of a

poison chalice, not unlike Helga Hufflepuff's cup,

ironically. So overall, this wasn't the letdown

that the Hogwarts Express set was. That that for me is the low bar

for pre like, the premium signature Harry Potter pieces,

but it's definitely not hitting the heights of other sets like Hogwarts

itself or, of course, like Diagon Alley. So this is

probably divisive. I'd love to hear what you think. You can connect with

me on, Instagram and on TikTok. I am at

brickmagnate. Brick, m a g, and a t e

on both of those platforms. If you wanna let me know what you thought of

the set, whether you agree or disagree or feel

particularly strongly, about anything I've talked about

here, then let me know. Of course, if you follow me on those platforms,

you'll find videos and other behind the scenes looks at

the different sets that I talk about in the show, as well as some that

I don't. And, be sure to hit that subscribe

button or head to brickmagnate.com for

past episodes and future episodes of the show. Next

week, I'm gonna be talking about The Lego set I swore I

would never buy, but then I caved and bought

it and didn't regret it. Find out what that set

was and get the full review of it on next week's episode.

For now, thank you so much for joining me for another edition of The

Brick Magnate podcast, and I'll see you all next week.