Review : LEGO Harry Potter 76444 Diagon Alley: Wizarding Shops

Today we quickly take a look at the contents of the LEGO Harry Potter set 76444 Diagon Alley: Wizarding Shops, a box of 2750 pieces that has been available since January 1, 2025 at a public price of €199,99. This product is not exclusive to the official online store and LEGO Stores, it is also available from many retailers.

This Diagon Alley with LEGO Architecture sauce will be on familiar ground here, this product takes up the principle and the minimalist scale with many details which are only symbolized by a simple piece.

As is often the case, you have to be very imaginative to see a possible reference to a detail seen on screen, only those who never miss a rerun of the saga on television will probably be able to mention them all. Others will find here a much more compact version of the places with a pure exhibition product that can be displayed with its "real" layout or in a more linear alignment of 90 cm long that will form a pretty colored frieze on a shelf.

This product is also aimed at all those who have no use for the playsets in the range, whether it is the "luxury" version with the sets 75978 Diagon Alley (449,99 €) and 76417 Gringotts Wizarding Bank Collector's Edition (€429,99) or children's versions via the sets 76422 Diagon Alley Weasleys' Wizard Wheezes (94,99 €) and 76439 Ollivanders & Madam Malkin's Dresses (89,99 €).

This set allows you to get rid of the subject for €200 and in an exhaustive manner but by agreeing to skip the minifigs to be satisfied with the nanofigs delivered here. This box does better than the promotional set 40289 Diagon Alley offered from 80 € of purchase in November 2018, a small box which was then content with the bare minimum on an even smaller scale than the proposal available here.

The assembly of the product may seem laborious to those who have never had in their hands a set of the Architecture range. The inventory of 2750 pieces is mainly composed of small elements with the exception of a few plates which serve as a base for the various modules and you have to be very patient and meticulous to obtain something recognizable. There are still a whole bunch of Spare Parts on arrival, so much so that we sometimes wonder if we haven't forgotten to put some elements in place.

LEGO provides five instruction booklets so that the experience can be shared by several people, each assembling their shops before putting the tower together in the desired configuration. There are no stickers in this box, so all the patterned elements are pad printed.

The different shops are well identified throughout the pages of the booklets but in my opinion there are some missing explanations on certain references that would have deserved to be better documented. The assembly will only take place once and it is better to maximize the flavor before resigning yourself to forgetting the construction on the corner of a shelf.

As far as I can tell and being lenient due to the scale of the thing, the street seems pretty complete and faithful to me and the facades are easily recognizable. I'm less enthusiastic about the other side of each of the modules with interiors that are probably full of winks intended for the most assiduous fans but whose finishing often remains very basic. Once again, the scale used does not allow for certain fantasies and you will have to make do if you choose to expose the street by aligning the modules in their "real" configuration.

On the side of the dozen nanofigs provided (microfigures according to LEGO), it is as often in this format very approximate at the level of the pad printing. We can see the glass half empty or half full on this point but I find the result a little disappointing even if we will not zoom in on the different characters who are only there to populate the diorama seen from afar.

We can pretty much recognize Harry Potter, Hermione Granger, Ron Weasley, Fred Weasley, George Weasley, Lavender Brown, Ginny Weasley, Draco Malfoy, Narcissa Malfoy, Mr. Borjow, Garrick Ollivander and Madam Malkin but the ink is really smearing in places. You will be allowed to lose one of these figurines, they all come in duplicate in the box.

If you have already fallen for the set 76419 Hogwarts Castle & Grounds (€169,99) because you wanted to have a definitive, compact and still sufficiently detailed version of Hogwarts without playing with it, this new set in the same vein is made for you. It is a good summary of the subject treated with easily identifiable shops and a convincing staging if you present the different modules in their most realistic configuration.

By spending the €200 requested by LEGO, you remove the headache about this iconic street and you can move on without being burdened with playsets with less comprehensive content and more or less finished. The downside: this product does not allow you to obtain any minifigs and it has nothing playable contrary to the promise that LEGO makes in the description of the box. It is really the assembly of the thing that must immerse you in the atmosphere of the universe that you like more than the fact of then exposing a street with its facades facing each other and whose interior spaces with a somewhat approximate finish will remain clearly visible.

As you will have understood, I remain mixed on the proposal: I find it relevant because it deals with the subject in a very applied way but I wonder if the subject in question really deserved this type of treatment with the inevitable compromises and shortcuts that the scale implies. In any case, €200 for that is a bit expensive and don't oppose me with the price per piece to try to find a reasonable side to the price of this box, 80% of the content of this product is only made up of small 1x1 pieces.

This product is fortunately not exclusive to the official store and will soon be available for much less elsewhere than at LEGO. It will then be time to re-evaluate the interest of such a set.

Discount -14%

LEGO Harry Potter 76444 Diagon Alley: Wizarding Shops

199.99 € 172.97 €

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Note: The product shown here, provided by LEGO, is as usual involved. Deadline fixed at January 16, 2025 at 23:59 pm. Just post a comment under the article to participate. Your participation is taken into account regardless of your opinion. Avoid "I'm participating" or "I'm trying my luck", we suspect that this is the case.

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