Nearly every month, LEGO gives away a small set with purchases over a certain amount. We don’t always review these little bonuses, but sometimes they catch our eye with a standout model, such as last month’s excellent 40289 Diagon Alley or June’s 40291 Creative Personalities. For the first 10 days of December, the gift-with-purchase set is 40293 Christmas Carousel, featuring 251 pieces and valued at $15 USD. The set is available both in stores and online with purchases over $99 in the US and Canada, or £85 in the UK. The lovely design and moving parts made us decide to take a closer look, so let’s see what’s in store.

The box and build

The set includes three unnumbered bags of parts, plus a green 8×8 plate and the instruction manual. Although it’s not new to this gift-with-purchase set, it’s interesting that LEGO chooses to leave the bags unnumbered, when similarly sized sets from traditional themes have sorted bags.

The build naturally sits on the large green plate, and the bottom section contains the gearing mechanism, with a large window to show off the system. The mechanism is about as simple as it’s possible to get, with just a single pair of gears to make a 90-degree angle. With only four teeth on each Technic “knob wheel” gear, the system can handle a lot of torque but isn’t very smooth, creating small jerky movements as each tooth alternatively finds and loses grip with the opposing teeth. 20-tooth gears would have been a preferable choice here, resulting in a smooth action.

The completed model

The finished set looks lovely, with lots of decorative elements giving it lots of detail, such as the 14 bright green leaf elements. The rotating carousel atop the gearbox contains a train with a locomotive and 2 cars, along with a Christmas tree on the fourth side. For the scale, they’re quite nifty, though the two cars do look a bit more like tractors than train cars.

Aside from the slight jerky movement I mentioned earlier, the carousel rotates nicely to show off all four sides. It would be easy to attach a LEGO motor to this set to make a spinning centerpiece for your LEGO winter village.

Conclusion and recommendation

For a $15 set that LEGO is currently giving away, 40293 Christmas Carousel is a pretty great set. It works well at any scale, from minifigs on up, and non-LEGO-fan friends will be delighted by the movement in your Christmas decor. We loved last year’s Christmas Nutcracker, and this Christmas Carousel is likely to join it in our collection of LEGO Christmas decorations we bring out every year.

---

40293 Christmas Carousel is available Dec. 1-10 as a free gift-with-purchase for orders over $99 in the US, $99 in Canada, or £85 in the UK. 

The LEGO Group sent The Brothers Brick an early copy of 40293 Christmas Carousel for review. Providing TBB with products for review guarantees neither coverage nor positive reviews.

---

Check out the full gallery of images