Last year, we received a LEGO Winter Toy Shop Light Kit for review from Game of Bricks. If you remember, I’ve already reviewed our first attempt at integrating their light kits for the LEGO Gingerbread House back in November.
I added this light kit in January of this year, but never got around to posting the review. Game of Bricks reached out to us again about reviewing other light kits. Before we did that, I thought it would be a good idea to get this review posted as well.
If you’d like to see a few previous of the latest light kit integrations, check out our Instagram feed.
About the LEGO Winter Toy Shop
The LEGO Winter Toy Shop is an older set originally released in 2009 and then re-released in 2015.
The re-release caused a bit of a scandal among LEGO fans, but I’ll let you read about that in my other article.
I would normally post the description of the set here, but it is rather long. You can check out the full description in our The Ultimate List of LEGO Holiday Sets – Part 1 – Winter Village Sets post instead.
As this set was already a part of our winter village build, we had to pull it out from its current home. We also had to find all of the extra builds not attached to the building, as the light kit lights up everything. Once we did that, we were ready to add the lights.
About Game of Bricks
Before I get ahead of myself, here is background into on Game of Bricks:
Game of Bricks was created by people who love LEGO. The dream began just in one day, with the founder of the company. The creator of Game of Bricks was looking down during Christmas time on the London Tower Bridge and thought to himself “this building is wonderful with lights on”. At the same time he thought about same LEGO on the 10214 Tower Bridge set. He decided to copy these lights from the real Tower Bridge to a LEGO one. This is how Game of Bricks Company started.
About Their LEGO Winter Toy Shop House Light Kit
This is where I would put a photo of the light kit as it came, but I quickly discovered that I never grabbed that photo. I almost couldn’t find the photos I took of this set! Fortunately, you don’t really need a photo for me to describe what came with it.
The LEGO Winter Toy Shop Light Kit from Game of Bricks comes with:
- LEGO Lights with Original Game of Bricks Box
- AAA Battery Box (Batteries Not Included)
- Video Instructions (You’ll need to ask for these.)
At the time of this review, the set is on sale and available for $25.99 USD. It is originally $51.99 USD.
Adding the LEGO Winter Toy Shop Light Kit
Since I got to integrate these lights, instead of Mr. Family Brick, it appears I didn’t take as many photos as I normally do. I was too busy putting them in!
As suggested, we did test the strands out prior to integrating them. We recommend that as well, because I can attest it’s a pain in the rear when you have to take apart a set to adjust lights.
Speaking of taking apart sets, this integration requires that you remove the roof section of the Winter Toy Shop build. Don’t be alarmed, as it will be worth it in the end.
You’ll also end up replacing a few things, among those, the light brick. You just won’t need it anymore. Just frees it up for you to use in another build.
Since we integrate our sets into winter village build, we didn’t have the correct lamp setup with our Toy Shop. We had to go find the pieces and cobble it together to try out the lamp lighting portion of the kit.
Due to how the lamp is built, it was more difficult to disguise the wires. Not sure we will keep it in the build as is. Since it would be weird to not have our street lights lit up when some of the houses clearly are, we’ll probably have to address this sooner rather than later.
Also, we opted to skip integrating the strand to light the tree for now, since it is located elsewhere in our build as well.
Our Thoughts
The first time around reviewing a light kit, we had no idea what to expect. As we’ve been experimenting with integrating light strands into our builds this summer, we have a better idea of things we’d like to see in a light kit.
As far as looks and choice of lighted locations in the build, Game of Bricks does an excellent job. Once it’s all setup and done, it does look rather nice.
Having said that, there are a few areas where the wiring really shows for this build. The issue particularly shows with the lamp post. I suspect we would have had a similar issue with the tree had we chosen to light it up as well.
I’m not sure much can be done about that, as there aren’t a lot of bricks that can be used to hide the wires in this build. If you want cleaner street lights, you’ll have to go with a different type of lamp post structure for your builds.
All in all, we’re pleased with the kit and would highly recommend Game of Bricks for your light kit needs.