Lego 10217 Diagon Alley - Borgin and Burkes

Prologue

So this is the second building in the Diagon Alley set which is know as
Borgin and Burkes and boy am I taking my own sweet time on it. So it is supposedly a dark spooky shop that sells dark magic stuff and all. Lego has a usual policy again violence and I guess by extension will not have gross objects like Hand of Glory in there. Here is the instruction manual cover art and is the same as the Ollivander's Wand Shop one except it is labelled 2.

 

The Build - Borgin and Burkes

Okay I have done some Google research on the set and this second build is the
Borgin and Burkes. This build features 4 minifigures, 1 skeleton and 1 brown frog. The brown. The skeleton is the same as those found in all the other Lego sets but I have put ths spare hood on it so that I would not loose this part. The 4 minifigures are Lucius Malfoy, Fred Weasley, George Weasley and Fenrir Greyback. As for the animals, this is a brown frog which is normally found in green or dark grey, so this is considered an uncommon part to me.

The build unlike Ollivander's Wand Shop has no accessories to build. At 25% we can see this build is going to consists of mostly dark colours and the glow in the dark 1 x 2 tiles which are rare but can be found aplenty in this build.

The top view shows nothing much at this point in time as well.

At 50% build, it looks pretty complete at the first floor. The front of the shop has a pretty nice typical shop design.

On one side, is some board with a whole bunch of posters which are printed on stickers. This reminds me of those boards which SBS made to let people put their adverts on found at some bus stops.

From the back, we can see the Vanishing Cabinet and it takes up so much space that the 1/3 left side of the shop and the display window has practically no space left for any decoration or even space to place any minifigures.

At this stage, the right side seems to be a play feature in the works.

At the 75% level,we start on the 2nd floor which uses 2 very nice brick pieces which have nice arches framing some window pieces behind it.

Here is a close up of the brick which has the nice arch and is uncommon.

At 75% completion, the back does not differ much from the 50% level.

At this stage we can see the play feature is actually some chimney that allows a placement of a minifigure. When rotated simulates some scene in the movie where Harry reaches by Floo Network this shop through the fireplace. Do not ask me more I have no idea as I did not watch the show. The chimney looks good though.

This picture show the rat which I did not mention earlier during the introduction of the minifigures. Overlooked it as it is not that high on my favourites list. Some trough at the side with a glow in the dark brick probably having something toxic in it. TMNT anyone?

The completed build look dark and spooky somewhat.

 

Side looks great as well with those vines and purple pieces making it more Halloween like.

Once again, one of the sides is more plain looking just like Ollivander's Wand Shop.

So now we can see the play feature from the outside which allows us to "transport" a minifigure into the shop.

We have the Vanishing Cupboard which is quite ordinary actually but takes up quite some space in the build.

What I do like about the Borgin and Burkes shop must definitely be the roof with some glass skylight or something with the vines creeping up along the sides. Very unique build I feel. The second floor room actually is not a room at all sadly, just looks like it from the outside.

Finally we have the glow in the dark pieces that add just some fun value to the build. It looks nice but does not really make a compelling factor to get this set just for such a thing. It is not a main feature in anyway at all. Guess it helps to give Lego dreams to any kid when turning off the room lights and watching this build glow in the dark.

Final Thoughts - Borgin and Burkes

This build has less decorative pieces on the inside and I suspect it is due to the 2 play features which are just "meh" to me.

I like the second floor of this build more with reasons stated above about the skylight thing, vines and the 2 brick pieces used to create the second floor. Overall a fun build nevertheless and is definitely better than the average Lego City buildings but the Ollivander's Wand Shop is slightly better than this.

Lego 850425 Desk Business Card Holder

Prologue

A short interlude to my Diagon Alley builds. I finally got the Desk Business Card Holder from Secret Chamber when they finally managed to restock it.

The back of the box show the list of parts you would be getting in this set. I feel the amount of letters given would not be enough for Indian and Thai names. Thankfully for my case, they are sufficient though I wish that Lego would give just slightly more so that one can put a bit more on the name plate.

The sides are rather unremarkable.

As the set is quite smaller, we get an instruction sheet instead of an instruction manual. Build looks pretty straight forward.

Contents

For me, once I opened the bag, I found printed black tiles spilling out. To my surprise, one of the bags had a small split at its side. Also the polybags are not like the usual ones we get from Lego which are made of a material that tears really easily and more like a wrapper kind of material. The one that came with this set are the type that are polypropylene (PP).

The Build

Pretty fast but satisfying nevertheless. I like the nameplate and really wish I had more letters to use. No way I am buying another set just for a few more letters. The 2 minifigures on either side are pretty generic.

Taking a closer look at the nameplate, you can see that I had a shortage of the "O" and "N" letters which I improvised.

The name card holder is made up mostly of 1x2 bricks of red, green, blue and yellow. Overall it is simple but effective. Have not figured what I would actually put in there.

Final Thoughts

Is the set worth it? Well mostly to decorate and denote yourself as an AFOL, this set is more if you have some spare cash. In comparison, one would get more parts in a standard Lego set. Though we have to remember this is not a standard Lego set and there are a lot of printed tiles which naturally add quite a bit of cost.

So this is more of a good to have set rather than the must have type. Also, I wished it gave a bit more printed letters as well. Fast build and not really meant to give you the kind of feeling when building a standard Lego set but adds a nice touch to your home decor for sure.

Lego 10217 Diagon Alley - Ollivander's Wand Shop

Prologue

This is a set that my wife bought in Hong Kong during her holiday there with her friend. It was much cheaper than in Singapore costing around SGD215 but I have only taken the time to open it up recently as I was more excited by other modular and Pirates sets. Below is a cover art of the set.

The front cover is very beautifully done with each set having the same amount of attention. Harry Potter and gang are staring from the upper right corner with a very irritated/bored kind of look or as we affectionately call it the "sian 1/2 look".

This set consists of 3 desperate builds, which I have no idea what the names are, I just know one is like a evil wizards shop, another a bank and the last one like some wizards' equipment shop. Forgive me as I did not watch ANY of the movie or read the books. The back of the box shows as usual some of the play features and moveable parts of each set.

The other 4 sides as usual show various other smaller pictures of the set. I like the fact that even the bottom of the box has a picture on it. The top features all the nice minifigures one would get out of the set. For me though, as I am not a Harry Potter fan, does not make me want to have this set even more or anything, I am more interested in the sets itself but the fact that we get so many minifigures do not hurt the set one bit.

The bottom of the box has all the obligatory warnings about how it can be a choking hazard, yada yada

Now here is this part which I do not understand. It is pimping the video games but it is saying do not to aim at eyes or face...

The last side has the name of Diagon Alley in a few different languages and when you look at it, you realise that it seems the foreign language translation is very different for some reason.

The box is also using the tape and simple box flaps packaging meaning it is easy to open the box and also easy to store it flat as no glue was used on the flaps. This is one reason I do really like the exclusive sets, their packaging protect the items better and are easier to keep at the end of the day.
 

Contents - Ollivander's Wand Shop

Enough with the box, here is a shot of the manuals, sticker sheet and bags of the set. In total, the complete set has 16 bags of various sizes, with bags labelled 1 corresponding to the first build and so on.

The set comes with 3 manuals with the logical division of 1 manual per build. The manuals and sticker sheet are safely packed in a plastic bag with a cardboard backing. This has become more or less the default standard used in most of the exclusives from Lego today and is great as it protects the items much better than any other method Lego has used so far.

With that said, let us move on to the build itself.

The Build - Ollivander's Wand Shop

Okay I have done some Google research on the set and this first build is the
Ollivander's Wand Shop which Harry Potter goes to get his first wand.
This build features 3 minifigures and 6 animals. The map which seems unique to this set is held by Mr. Ollivander and the other 2 characters, Ron Weasley and Hermione Granger both carrying wands. As for the animals, there are 3 very cool looking owls in all different shades, 1 uncommon bat and 1 common silver coloured fish.

The build beings slowly by building some accessories to the wand shop. It starts with some display boards, wizard hats stand, an owl/bat stand and 2 lamp posts that look very Victorian to me. They also made me think of the Elseworld novel of Batman called Gotham by Gaslight which was fantastic novel by the way, but is weird why my brain went that direction...

Anyways from the loose acessories, we go to the main build itself, the wand shop. At 25% build, it looks pretty sparse and it is quite an unsteady structure at this stage.

At the 50% level, it looks much better with the name of the shop being up and the nice pearl gold and black windows of the shop front giving it a very nice classy look.

At the left side is a poster featuring some unknown villain I guess.

The right side features the very nice combination of pear gold and dark red awning and the wall has this nice mix of reddish-brown, tan and dark tan bricks. Both side of the wall have this construction style that gives the nice bricks and mortar look.

At 75% completion, we can see the 2nd floor is up with some of the roof portions as well. The front façade features the curved windows arrangement. They are like bay windows and really is quite a nice feat of build with he 2nd floor one extending slightly over the ground floor one.

Looking from behind, we can see a sprinkling of potions bottles on the 2nd floor. I like the 2 distinct colour schemes. Black and reddish brown predominantly at the ground floor and the sand green with tan making up the 2nd floor.

Finally, the whole build is complete and the building simply looks great.

This side picture show the awning side which I do like due to the pearl gold with dark red combination awning. Pearl gold with black also seems to work very well together.

The colour combination is very well done I feel and the interior wizard accessories make the place look rather cramp and all the wood colours gives it a somewhat vintage feel.

The other side feels slight more plain with the wanted post but it still looks good nevertheless.

Final Thoughts - Ollivander's Wand Shop

This set was bought last year in Hong Kong and is one of the few sets that my wife bought that does not come from themes that I usually buy, namely modulars and star wars. Reason is that I really do like medieval looking building but I have been resisting for such a long time (looking at you Castle and Kingdoms). This was bought to just dabble into a bit of it. Some sets like LoTR disappointed me but generally buildings and boats do not for me. I think the reason that I was disappointed with LoTR was that these set actually need to have a much higher piece count to give some credit to the structures they are trying to represent but due to multiple consideration they come out looking rather skeletal.

I do love the colour combination and that possibly pulls me towards this build much more than the other ones though I have not started building them yet. Maybe my assessment will change after I am done building with them. I am taking some time to build as I am trying to savour it as much as I can. Look out for my 2 other reviews of this set these following weeks.