The LEGO® Winter Village sets have become has much a Christmas tradition as the Queen’s Speech, Mince Pies, and awful cracker jokes. This year things are getting a little heated, with an old fashion Fire House. Admittedly a Fire Station isn’t the first thing when you think of Christmas, but having may of the past releases and planning this years display, I knew this years set would be an interesting addition to the popular Winter Village range. But how does the Creator Expert Fire Station shape up? Let’s find out and take a closer look at set 10263.
Product Description
Welcome to the snowy LEGO® Creator Expert 10263 Winter Village Fire Station, where the firefighters are enjoying the calm of the holiday season. This delightful LEGO set features a 2-level, holly-adorned building with an upper-level kitchen, complete with a red telephone, table, fold-down bed and a LEGO light brick. Behind the large red fire station doors, you’ll discover firefighting equipment and a fire pole, while outside there’s an ice rink with a decorative firefighter statue, a decorated Christmas tree with transparent star and gifts, plus a bench and lamppost. This set also features a classic red fire truck with a turntable ladder, hoses, toolbox and deep-tread tires. Gather the family and bring the magic of the holiday season to your home with this festive LEGO Creator Expert set. Includes 6 minifigures, plus baby and Dalmatian figures, and a brick-built snowman.
- Set Name: Winter Village Fire Station
- Set Number: 10263
- Pieces: 1166
- RRP: £84.99
- Measurements: Fire Station measures over 23cm high, 25cm wide and 14cm deep.
- Availability: Exclusive to LEGO Brand Retail Stores & shop.LEGO.com
The Build
The build is split into two sections, and begins with scenery elements and this rather fetching vintage fire engine. Fire engines have featured heavily in LEGO sets over the years, but we’ve never had an old fashion style engine like this one. It’s a fairly simple build but that simplicity is what give the engine its charm. Stickers are used to add a little extra details on the engines bonnet and side panels. It even has some of the retro-style LEGO tires.
The ladder is mounted on a hinged plate holder, so not only can it be angled it can also be, rotated and raised, should a tree need its star placing on top. There’s enough room for one minifigure to be seated behind the wheel and you can just about squeeze the dog in there as well. So it’s not a massive build, any bigger and it would look odd, so I think it’s the perfect size. The only part of the fire truck I find a little odd is the hoses, They are randomly clipped along the sides of the truck. I understand they are there to be connected to a hydrant as opposed to be the pumping water from the truck, but they still look a little out of place.
Along with the fire engine, you also get this nice frozen pond. With includes a fire-themed statue, complete with the golden coloured fire helmet. It remains me a little of the Winter Skating Scene Christmas promotional set from 2014. A slightly bigger, more ornate fountain would have been even better, but I still love this little build, especially how the sides are raised, meaning the transparent blue elements are completely enclosed by the rim of the stone grey parts. So it looks like a complete section of frozen water, without any of the white bits peeping through.
It’s quite surprising to see how many different forms of Christmas can be built with LEGO and the one in this set is another new build. When I first saw this style tree, I wasn’t sure I liked it. The flatness of the sides, made it seem a little too modern looking. But having built it, I really like it. The four tree panels are connected to a single studded column, with the whole thing being pretty stable. It could of done with a few different coloured decoration, maybe some blue, but I do like the final build. Even though it looks like a modern compared to the rest of the set.
The final section of scenery is a bench and street light combo. A staple of the the Winter Village sets it would seem and point of annoyance for me. Just about every single Winter Village set released includes a street light, and every single one is different. Whoever is on the Winter Village planning committee needs to bring a little consistency to the villages appearance. A minor annoyance, but it’s always bugged me.
The actual Fire Station is a two level, open back building in the same style as past Winter Village sets. I’m not sure if it’s intentional or not but the colours used are very similar to the Ghostbusters Firehouse HQ, with stone grey and dark red used for the main parts of the wall sections. These are trimmed with brick yellow pieces and a selection of white elements to denote a dusting of snow. In the centre of all this is a classic red door, neatly set back behind the surrounding door arch.
The doorway is the perfect size for the fire engine to fit through, with the doors opening inwards. It’s one of a number of clever build techniques and use of parts found in this set. I really like how sticks with notches and 1×1 round bricks are used to create architectural features around the window. Along with the masses of 1×1 plates with holders are lined around the top of the roof ledge. The only thing I’m not a fan of on the outer section of the build is the back of the angular bricks used to hold hooks within the interior of the set, especially the ones set with different coloured bricks. Makes them stand out a little too much.
The best and most unique build technique used can be found on the Fire Station tower, this is created with the new ornate fence panels. These are combined with 1×2 snap plates and holder plates to create a right angle corner section, which clips in to the rest of the tower. The result is a unique looking tower, packed with detail.
The roof section can be easily removed to provide better access to the inside of the building, it’s also home to a light bricks. This can be press down to illuminate the inside of the Fire Station. It’s a fun addition to set, but I certainly wish LEGO would invest in creating a more robust lighting system for LEGO. You can see by the amount of custom lighting setups that there is a real hunger there for people to light up their LEGO, especially these festive sets.
The interior is filled with plenty of details, the first floors is where the firefighters hangout between fires. So you’ll find a small kitchen, dinner table and even a bed for the dog. One of the best interior elements is the fold away bed. When folded back it shows a calendar counting down to Christmas and a picture of the firehouse Dalmatian. The doorway on the right, leads to a stairway to the ground floor and the one to the left, gives access to that all important fire pole.
The inner ground floor is a little more sparse, with a few firefighting tools, including a couple of fire extinguishers, axes and a spare fire helmet. The fire engine can be parked here, although it will hang out the back of the set. But that’s nothing compared to the oddly out of place element. Can you spot it? Yep it’s that lonesome, brown pieces, randomly placed among the dark red pieces. I didn’t notice it when building, it wasn’t until I was having a closer look at the set, I spotted it. At first I thought I’d mixed up an element along the way, I checked and couldn’t see anything so went through the instructions and sure enough it’s meant to be like that. The part in question is a 2×2 plate with reduced knobs, I can only assume it just wasn’t cost effective to create that particular piece in dark red. It’s not in your face, and admittedly it’s around the back of the building, but once you know it there, you can’t help but focus on it.
The Minifigures
The set includes 6 minifigures and a tiny baby figure. There’s a male skater, with a fairly rare torso only used in 5 other sets. A young girl, who is wrapped up warm in Jay’s scarf element from The LEGO NINJAGO Movie minifigure series. Plus a bandleader, who also has a fun connection to NINJAGO, as he sports the epaulets only used in a trio of Skybound sets. I say bandleader, but he doesn’t have anyone to lead. A few other musicians would of been nice or maybe giving him a pot to collect money in like some street performers have. The little baby figure is a new addition to the world of LEGO, the torso section features a uniquely printed festive design.
The other minifigures are a trio of firefighters in a new traditional style uniform. Each minifigure has the same outfit, with the only difference being the heads and hairpieces. You get a grizzle old timer, female and male fighter. Each have either a hairpiece or a funky new pearl gold fire helmet, which goes great with the traditional uniform and overall olde worlde feel of the set.
Overall
When the set was first revealed I wasn’t overly impressive, it didn’t look very festive and to be honest even after building it, I still don’t think it shouts Christmas. It needed something a little more than just a few sprigs of holly on the building part of the set. However I really enjoyed the build and as mentioned above, it has loads great use of bits of detail, especially on the outside of the building. The fire truck is simple but looks has a nice vintage appearance. The additional bit of scenery adds an extra level of detail, although I wish they would maintain a standard look for all the street lights used in the Winter Village line. Despite my initial thoughts on the set, I really like it, and can’t wait to see how it looks within my Christmas display this year.
This set was provided via The LEGO Group for the purposes of review. The thoughts and opinions of the set reflect those of BricksFanz and not that of the LEGO Group.
