I found the LEGO Harry Potter Durmstrang Ship set #5768 for a good price on eBay, so I grabbed it. The set is another in a long line of pirate-like ships, with some interesting color schemes. Overall – a real unique set for the Harry Potter line. The orange-infused box. Notice how there are four bonus minifigs in this set. I believe this came out later on as a Target exclusive. For a $50 set (price at the time), including only two minifigs, none of which was a main character, might have made this a hard sell. Adding four primary characters really ups the value of this set:
This was a used set, so no little baggies inside the box. I’ll get to those huge gray pieces in a moment:
I believe these two minifigs are exclusive to the set. Very cool looking, they remind me more of the collectable minifigs of recent years:
The bonus minifigs, with the dopiest of faces for Ron:
The back of Harry, in his tournament jersey:
Perhaps the most offensive LEGO pieces ever. I was shocked at this. Most of the ship is comprised of these four pieces. The nice thing is that this must have been why the set was only $50 at the time. Once finished, it has an impressive scale for such a mid-priced set. But my goodness is this what LEGO should NOT be about. Dr. Dave Watford has addressed this issue on his own LEGO blog. Okay, more on this topic later:
Another offensive piece. This set started reminding me of Playmobil:
Okay, one of the cooler pieces was this shield:
I loved seeing the return of the Black Falcon shield in this set, a throwback to older castle sets:
The completed ship. As I mentioned, it is impressive in size. I really like the use of color as well, and the small gold elements:
Details from the back. Nice use of dark red and medium blue:
A view of the deck:
This set reminded me of a newer set I picked up, The Pharoah’s Quest Scorpion Pyramid. It utilizes a massively wide and tall baseplate to compose much of the set. So it is very similar to the large pieces used in the ship set, which are essentially just large baseplates:
In all, this is a set that LEGO would likely charge $100 for today, simply because of size. Clearly, they would add more minifigs today, and perhaps more playability features. In all – a nice set if you can get past the offensiveness of the hull. I almost want to rebuild a true LEGO hull, and add the other elements to it.
