Tag Archives: Santa Claus

LEGO Icons 10339 Santa’s Post Office – Santa would like a word [Review]

It’s turned to fall in the Northern Hemisphere, there’s a chill in the air and the leaves are turning depending on where you are, and it’s time for Halloween decor… just kidding, of course, it’s time for Christmas stuff already. There’s a Winter Village Multiverse developing between the human world and the North Pole/Santa/Elves world, and this year we get another addition to the the Santa side of the portal. LEGO Icons 10339 Santa’s Post Office contains 1,440 pieces and 5 minifigures and will be available October 4th for US $99.99 | CAN $129.99 | UK £89.99. LEGO Insiders will have early access starting October 1st. You might think, oh, of course, Santa probably gets more mail than anyone else in the world, there must be a huge facility to process it! Read on to learn the alleged truth about Santa’s mail.

The LEGO Group provided The Brothers Brick with an early copy of this set for review. Providing TBB with products for review guarantees neither coverage nor positive reviews.

Read on for our full review!

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Something’s fishy about this holiday scene…

At first glance, this North Pole build by ForlonEmpire is as heartwarming as it is well constructed. A young penguin interrupts Santa’s fishing expedition to offer him a present. Santa himself is teeming with great parts usage, from the big-fig arms getting an upgrade as Santa’s upper arms, to the pair of bucket handles doing double-duty as his belt buckle. And the semi-circle tiles as bows are inspired. But the more you think about it, the more sinister this scene becomes. Why is there a sled full of presents in this remote location? The answer is obvious. Santa has laid-off his elf work force because penguin labor is so much cheaper. This penguin isn’t giving Santa a gift. He’s made the gift in exchange for a fish. Santa’s cornered the market on herring and if the penguins don’t work, they starve! Merry Christmas!

The North Pole

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After a long night, Santa deserves a break!

Nothing beats a good sit in your favorite chair after a long shift at work. And in this yuletide LEGO build by Koen Zwanenburg, we see the man of the hour, Saint Nicholas himself, taking a break after his most logistically-challenging night of the year. And boy, does he deliver (Koen, that is) when it comes to the use of curved slopes. They’re adeptly used to shape Santa’s beard, boots, and belly, not to mention the dark red seat he sits in. The exposed studs to represent the white fur on the outfit is truly a gift, as is the gold filigree along the edges of the armchair. But my favorite bit has got to be the cute little bows on the packages. I’ve struggled this season to create ribbon in this blocky medium for my own builds, yet Koen achieves it so easily here with wedge plates, cheese slopes, and tiles. And with that, I should probably check and see if the big guy left anything under the tree for me. Fingers crossed it’s a LEGO Minecraft set. Have a very Merry Christmas!

Santa Claus

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Milk and cookies? No, engine oil and gasoline, please

There is a race track (or more specifically, a drag strip) in the UK called Santa Pod. I wonder if that’s where Sergio Batista‘s festive hot-rod is headed, to spread some festive cheer worthy if its name! It certainly wouldn’t be out of place. The custom chrome pieces, while not completely purist, really complete the look, particularly with that red-and-gold combination. It’s probably not the most subtle way of delivering presents – you’d definitely hear Santa Claus coming, looking at the size of the exhaust. I imagine it’s still fairly rapid though. What’s the conversion from horsepower to reindeer-power again?

Too Soon? (Santa SB Rod)

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TBB Cover Photo for December 2021: Santa’s holiday cabin

While this may not be Santa’s primary residence at the North Pole, we can pretend that this cute cabin by Andrea Lattanzio is Santa’s holiday home. Since Santa only works during the month of December, does he have the rest of the year off? Does he go on holidays? He must go vacationing all over the world since he has so much time. I’d think he has a cabin close by in the Canadian or Siberian wilderness somewhere to to escape his elf-infested home for a bit of peace and quiet. I sure hope he doesn’t need to get away from his wife, and that his marriage to Mrs. Claus is still doing well…

Santa's Cabin

We’ve written about Andrea’s A-frame cabin before, but we forgot to mention who owns the property. Now I’m curious to see Santa’s beach house in a more tropical region of the world. Or maybe I’m just wrong and Santa doesn’t have the rest of the year off, maybe he rents an apartment in a big city and works a boring financial job…

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LEGO 40499 Santa’s Sleigh – Santa Claus is coming to town [Review]

Hang up the stockings because Santa Claus is coming to town! Flying down from the North Pole this Christmas is the new LEGO 40499 Santa’s Sleigh! We had the opportunity to get an early look at Santa and his holiday ride, the perfect accompaniment to this year’s Winter Village Collection set, 10293 Santa’s Visit. With 343 pieces, the set will be available October 1st for US $36.99 | CAN $49.99 | UK £34.99. Read on to see our review of the unboxing and building below.

Click to read the full hands-on review

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Ho! Ho! Oh no! Santa is stuck!

2020 has been a hard year for everyone, and some of us have put on a few extra quarantine pounds. Ian Hou’s LEGO Santa Claus is no exception, as evidenced by the quarter round bricks shaping his belly. It seems that Jolly ole Saint Nick misjudged how many milk and cookies he’d been eating.

nEO_IMG_Santa! You break my chimney!_01

Now a previously comfortable slide down a chimney is a bit more than a tight squeeze! I think Santa jumped in pretty fast and built up some speed too because of the angle on those hinged bricks tell me chunks of that chimney are flying off pretty quickly. And I think he’s noticed too, the 1×3 arches forming his mouth look like his “Ho! Ho! Ho!” has turned into an “Oh! Ow! Ow!”

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Swol Santa is ready for Christmas

Santa Claus is ready to thwack some holiday cheer into the grinchiest of Scrooges. Created by builder Joffre Zheng, this ripped LEGO Santa spends the whole year getting swol to make up for all the cookies he eats on Christmas eve.

White Beard

No beard? No problem. The white pointed mustache is all that’s needed to convince me to stay on the nice list. I really like how well this model is put together. The boots and pants both give a rustic feel to an already super manly Santa. The lack of a tall, pointy hat increases the size of his jaw, adding to the “I bench-press a dozen elves everyday ” vibe.

Let’s look at the candy cane. Some might complain that it’s not as curved in the crook as candy canes usually are, but here it works. The brutalist lack of gentle curves adds to the toughness of the build. I guess Santa’s body was less of a bowl full of jelly than we thought.

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May your days be merry and bright

Ah, Christmas morning. Is there anything more magical as a kid? I argue that there is not. And architeclego captures the feel perfectly, as a child ventures into the living room to see the presents left by Santa Claus. The lighting is beautiful here, mingling the warm, gentle glow of the tree lights, the strand over the window, the lantern, and the fireplace with the cool moonlight streaming through the window. Perhaps the kid got up right after midnight, because Saint Nick is still on the premises, peeping through the panes to see the presents being received. The immersive scene is delightful, with a tiled ceiling with exposed rafters, bare brick walls, and well-varnished hardwood floors. Here’s to all Christmas mornings looking this good!

Now, I’m ordinarily a purist when it comes to everything LEGO. But the inclusion of some evergreen sprigs and an LED string here improve the presentation so much that I can hardly object. The Dobby socks over the fireplace look great, and that is probably the best use of a bow I have seen; I mean, it’s a bow on a present, but still, it looks much better than it does as a hair accessory. The best part, though, is that the kid is getting a vintage LEGO police car for Christmas. He must have been a very good boy this year.

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Rudolf the hot rod brings toys and oatmeal to all the children of the world

With a bit more than a week left until Christmas, Santa will need to up his game if he wants to deliver toys to all the good children of the world (except, of course, those who don’t have Santa in their holiday traditions). Thankfully Ian Ying has a solution with this extra blingy Rudolf Hot Rod. It has all the horsepower (or deer-power) needed to get the job done and there is enough custom and official LEGO pieces in shiny chrome to make any hot rod enthusiast’s heart go pitter-patter. The red-nosed deer skull hood ornament offers a clue as to what became of Rudolf. Good riddance, I say! I just wish it had more trunk space. I don’t know about you but the list of toys I want is quite long and I’ve been such a good boy this year…at least on the books anyway. Also it seems this Santa bears a striking resemblance to this Wilford guy.

RudolphHotRod1

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What happened to the reindeer?

Santa Claus, despite his media persona and the products he is implied to endorse, is not the consumerist type. Sure, he brings presents on Christmas to children, but not the max-out-the-credit-cards-and-refinance-the-house pile of presents that parents are somehow expected to provide. He lives a life of humble solitude, somewhere up in the frozen north (though not the North Pole; what responsible person would build a house on seasonally variant ice?), where he prepares for his annual journey of beneficence. At least, that is what this build by Andrea Lattanzio (Norton74) seems to imply. A delightful cabin, similar to Walden but much redder, rests in a peaceful snow-covered clearing, with deep snow on the roof and a sled ready to go (even though the sled is pulled by huskies, rather than reindeer).

It's time for Santa Claus to go!

The most impressive part of the display might be the collection of parts used to create the snow-covered foliage, from levers and megaphones to minifig hands and everything else white. However, I love the cannon as a chimney — topped by pots, even more. Unicorn horns make for lovely icicles on the eaves (if only they were available in transparent colors!). My one quibble is that the woodpile looks far too sparse to make it through the winter in conditions like that. Santa will freeze to death. Unless he isn’t watching out for the polar bear lurking behind the cabin, in which case he’ll be devoured before freezing. And before bringing me LEGO for my stocking.

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North Pole or bust!

I love Christmas as much as anyone. In fact, I would wager that I love it more than most people. But I have to admit that my jaw clenches, a tic twinges in my cheek, and my guts churn when I start seeing Christmas merchandise and commercials before Thanksgiving. I once worked at a store where the Holiday displays came out at the beginning of October, and I had to see them almost every day for three months. It was torture. And the Christmas songs played on a loop piped into the stores – don’t even get me started on how much I despise all 3,000,000,000 versions of “Jingle Bell Rock”. That being said, I do appreciate a good LEGO build when I see one, even if it is Santa Claus at the start of November. Kale Frost had the opportunity to build a huge Christmas display for a mall out of LEGO bricks, and the head of the Head Elf is particularly noteworthy.

Santa

The bushy white eyebrows make good use of some wings, and the clips are surprisingly effective as eyelashes. I love the clear blue eyes and the jolly face. This Santa looks like he needs some more cookies, though, since that neck is not as, ah, girthy as I would expect. It doesn’t look like he is hiding multiple chins behind that LEGO beard, and he is hardly ruddy. Perhaps this is Santa after some weight loss and exercise, getting swoll in the North Pole Crossfit Gym. Not that it really matters, as long as he leaves me some presents under the tree — the kind that make the proper rattling noise when shaken.

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