Monster Book of Monsters

"With a BrickScore of 81.6, the Monster Book of Monsters is the rare GWP that earns genuine enthusiasm from all three reviewers — a cleverly engineered, beautifully detailed Harry Potter artifact that punches well above its price-per-piece for fans who can get their hands on it."

Across all three reviewers, the Monster Book of Monsters (30628) earns strong praise as one of the best gift-with-purchase sets LEGO has produced, impressing with its clever chomping/biting wheel mechanism, faithful use of textured Profile Bricks to simulate aged book pages, and solid thematic accuracy to the Harry Potter source material. Draco Malfoy is universally considered an appropriate minifigure inclusion, though reviewers agree he adds limited value at the scale of the book. The set's main weakness is its niche appeal — it's squarely for Harry Potter fans and collectors, with limited playability beyond the rolling-snapping gimmick, and GWP availability made it frustratingly hard to acquire for many buyers.

Where they split: Playability scores diverged meaningfully: True North Bricks and Zusammengebaut scored it 65 and 60 respectively (emphasizing the non-functional interior), while Bouwsteentjes rated it 75, focusing positively on the biting mechanism as a satisfying interactive feature. Minifigure scores also ranged widely — from 55 (Bouwsteentjes, who found Draco adds little value) to 87 (True North Bricks, who praised print quality and articulation).