Early Christmas has been kind to me once again. This year sees another installment in the winter village series. It seems Lego has caught on that people want to make villages for the holidays out of their bricks, and have started producing a series of sets with town buildings caught up in the hustle and bustle of the holiday season.
This year’s Winter Village Post Office is a nice addition to the collection. True to form, it comes with a semi-detailed interior which you can light up with the included light brick. The roof comes decorated with snow and you get two postal workers. I get a kick out of the option of turning the woman’s head between a smiling face and a scowling one. I chose the scowl, since this reminds me most of the Durham post office. (Even though it’s not my hometown, it’s the one I’m likely to use if I need to mail something at lunch.)
Of all the elements of the set, I’m drawn most to the mail truck that the two workers can use to deliver packages to the towns folk. It reminds me a lot of the mail truck found in Santa Claus is Coming to Town, though it lacks the tracks and skids. Just the same it’s a neat little jalopy that carries a few packages, and some snow shoes in the event the truck gets stuck in the snow. Although, these days, I’d expect if the postal service got stuck in the snow, they’d just head home.
The set also features a gazebo with two musicians playing a tune for all to hear. One carries a banjo and the other, a brick built brass instrument I believe is a saxophone. I found this to be the most challenging piece to build as the ’round’ construction and 4 posts made it interesting to line up where the roof would connect. I’m still not entirely sure I built it correctly, but it hasn’t fallen apart yet.
The set also comes with a few trees and and a bench for folks to sit down on and take in the activities of the town. Lego included plenty of little white 1×1 round tiles to use in an epic snowball fight. Really the set has plenty of playability and makes a fine addition to the Bakery and Toy Shop released in years past. The set comes in with 7 minifigures and a dog. The new dog at that, with the painted and sculpted face. Only one head comes with two expressions. The female postal worker, which I recognize the face from last year’s Kingdom’s Advent calendar queen. Two torsos come with painting on the back and some don’t have any at all, which I found a bit interesting.
Overall it’s a pretty good set. I’m guessing that if I had not had the ‘help’ of our 17 month old toddler, who insisted that things like the railing from her Duplo Zoo must absolutely fit on the post office mid build, the set would take an hour or two at most to build.
The set is definitely targeting a bit of an older audience as it returns to basics with 8 unnumbered bags. Some of which, contained smaller bags of bricks in them. That being said though, a sure sign of a quicker build was the single manual, thankfully packed with cardboard to protect it. Thank you again Lego. This is the one instance I’m all for a little more packaging, as manuals were shipping mangled or destroyed all together as box sizes got smaller. At an MSRP of $69.99(us) the price seems a little high, but after building the set it seems reasonable. I just hope in the future, Lego keeps the price point around $50-60 or this serialized village may come to an end of collecting for me.
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loaded with mp3s and Points of Interest. You’ll also note from the photo that the antenna folds out, which means while your working with it, you can conserve battery power by folding it down, not engaging the GPS. It also has the ability to add an external antenna, but I’m not sure why you would. It picks up satelites sitting in the living room of a single story house with plenty of RF noise.
to transmit messages, and other audio output over any customizable radio station. That’s right, unlike most FM transmitters, the iRiver can be set to any station, as well as it’s 3 quick presets.