LEGO Hogwarts Astronomy Tower – 75969 Review

In August of 2020, The LEGO Group released a brand new group of Harry Potter LEGO sets, which when put together, create a large, connected Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizarding. While most of these new sets in 2020 come with a heftier price tag, when put together, it’s both an aesthetic marvel, and a great playing toy. Thanks to our friends at LEGO, we had the opportunity to build Set 75969, Hogwarts Astronomy Tower. Let’s take a look!

The Build

The Hogwarts Astronomy Tower comes with a whopping 971 pieces, and will cost about 139.99 in Canada (roughly 99.99 USD I believe). While this appears to be hefty price for just under 1000 pieces – which is a lot above our ideal 10 cents per piece price point – there are two things to consider here. First, the set is licenced, which comes at an extra cost. Second, the set does come with 8 mini-figures, which is pretty good for a set of this size!

Mini-figures and the number of pieces aside, the Astronomy Tower is a really fun build, from start to finish. As you see the small details come together, and the set come to life before your eyes, I got giddier and giddier as the set began to come together. While my six year old was able to do a bulk of the work – as an advanced LEGO builder himself – I still feel the 9+ printed on the box is probably quite accurate, especially since there are a number of stickers that need to be applied to various pieces within the set.

The tower is constructed into 4 main pieces – the Hogwarts Greenhouse, the potions classroom, the bottom levels of the tower, and the top level of the tower. Each is basically a separate build, broken own by bag numbers. After completing each, you’ll be shown how to connect it to the rest of the set.

The build is pretty solid throughout, with a few exceptions. The spirals that sit atop each of the towers are farily flimsy, and I bent two of them pretty quickly trying to affix them to their places. There is also a small astrological build at the top of the tower that doesn’t go together as well as I would have hoped, and multiple times since my kids began playing with it, it has broken apart. Still, these are minor annoyances in what is ultimately a fantastic, enjoyable build.

Time to Play

While having multiple LEGO Harry Potter sets definitely enhances the play experience, even just this one set works really. With 8 minifigures total, there is plenty for multiple people to play with here, making it a very interactive and brother-friendly LEGO set. With the kids really getting into the audio books for Harry Potter, and enjoying the LEGO Harry Potter game on Nintendo Switch, they now have loads of book/game/movie scenes to recreate using this set (among a few other Harry Potter sets we’ve collected over the years).

What’s really been enjoyable about watching my kids play with this set is not only the number of available characters, but also the size and variety of the set itself. One minute the boys are putting the Hogwarts students through their paces in the greenhouses, the next they are brewing potions with Professor Slughorn in potions class, and finally they are up the Astronomy Tower looking at the stars. Top it all off with the Ravenclaw common room, and this set has more features than most in the Harry Potter collection!

And that is really the big selling feature for my wife and I. So often, even with larger LEGO sets, the ability to play with just that one set between two siblings is often impossible. Even if the set has multiple features, there always seems to be on feature that is ‘cooler’ than the others, and when you are dealing with a 10 year old and a 6 year old…well, you can imagine how that goes as they jostle over the ‘cool’ experience. But not here. They both seemed very content to jump between the sets many classrooms, swap figures between themselves, and just enjoy what was offered, on their own and together. Sure, there was a bit of arguing over who got to use Harry Potter, but when all the figures come with their own wands, unique looks, and more, even fighting over a single character didn’t last long when there were so many others to choose from.

Some of the areas – particularly the Ravenclaw common room, are pretty small, so beefy fingered children might have more difficulties playing with the characters in these spaces. It is also disappointing to see that there is no stud to place a character at the top of the Astronomy Tower. Aside from that, there isn’t much to dislike about this set. It’s even moduler, allow kids to change the layout of the three separate buildings – greenhouse, astronomy tower, and potions class – and also giving them the option to detach the three completely. It is easily on of the most accessible sets I’ve seen my kids play with in recent memory.

Conclusion

A premium will need to be paid if you want to experience this, and many other, LEGO Harry Potter sets. But if your kids – or yourself for that matter – are engaged with the Harry Potter universe, there is so much that will delight all fans, whether causal or hardcore. While there are a few missteps in the design of the set, the overall experience of building the kit and playing with it is very, very good. The LEGO Harry Potter Hogwarts Astronomy Tower is an easy recommendation form us!