Review 10235—Winter Village Market
Anyone who has visited Germany during Christmas know the tradition of the Christmas markets. There are plenty of them in each city and you can find there a lot of stands with food, drinks, christmas decoration and toys. After several “Winter” business buildings and the cottage last year, it’s time to start our own Christmas market, and this year LEGO gives us the first tools.
Like most of the new exclusive sets, the new Winter Village Market is included in the CREATOR EXPERT range. The box is smaller compared with sets of the same level from past years. The box atracts you immediately. Four small stands, one carousel, 9 minifigs and plenty of small accessories.
The building is divided in two parts. In the first part I built the 3 food related stands and a park bench. This first part include 5 minifigures: 2 women and 1 man in charge of the 3 stands and two kids, one boy and one girl.
The first thing to build is the park bench. Nothing new here. There is only a bench and a lampost. There is a pussycat on the bench and a wreath in the lampost.
After this first simple introducction, I built the 3 stands included in the first part. Those 3 stands are food related and there is one bakery, one candy shop and one barbecue stand. All three are different and it is what makes the building process interesting.
The roof style and its colour is different in each stand. The bakery is done with dark brown wood and the roof is supported with 4 wooden columns. The roof is dark blue and has two sides, with some snow and some red and black christmas decoration, as well as a wreat in the top center. In the front, there is a shelf with a cake, two croissants and two cupcakes. The saleswoman has also a bretzel in her hands.
The candy shop looks completely different. The stand is build in tan wood. It is narrow compared with the bakery. It has a 3-step roof in dark green colour, which is 4 studs wide. To protect the candies against the snow there is a sunshade in blue and white. Over the sunshade, there is a 3-wreath decoration.
In this candy stand you can buy lollipops (with a new round tile 1x1 with lollipop decoration), drinks and some boxes of (perhaps) chocolates.
The barbecue stand is built with cement bricks and a dark-blue arch in the front. There is a single dark-red roof on the top with a green and orange light to attract customers. Inside the stand, there is a barbecue to cook the sausages and the chiken. There is a chimney to leave the smoke from the barbecue. Along the roof, there is also a gold and white christmas decoration.
There are also 3 tables made with trunks (one per stand) to join the food you just purchased in the stands.
In the second step, I built the carousel and a stand with a game where you can win a teddybear if you put a ball inside a bucket. There are 4 minifigs, a man, responsible of the game and carousel, a woman, a boy and a girl.
The building process starts with the stand, but together with it, the mechanism to run the game and the carousel is also built at the same time. Due to that mechanism, and the size of the wheel with the buckets, the stand is huge compared with the other three. Anyway the stand is placed just beside the carousel, so it doesn’t look really big.
The stand is build in tan wood and with some cement bricks. The columns supporting the roof are dark red and the arch in the top is dark blue. A nice combination of colours. There is a front desk with the balls to play the game, and in one side, there is the teddybear for the winner. The mechanism to run the game is simple, there is a small gear connected with a big gear, where the buckets are placed. In the rear side of the stand there is an actuator to turn the small gear and run the game. Below the big gear, there are another gears to transmit the movement to the carousel.
The carousel is the star of the set, and the last thing to build. If someone of you lost the grand carousel (10196), now you have the opportunity to get a small, cute and functional carousel. It has two cars (one dark green and one blue) and two horses with new decoration.
The basement of the carousel is built to make the horses move, which gives the set some more reality. In the center there is a column with plenty of orange and aqua ligts. In the top of the carousel, there is an 8-side ring with lights, and silver and gold decoration. The silver decoration is done with chrome silver stickers. They are the unique stickers of the set and their use is completely justified, so no complaints about them. To cover the carousel, there is a tent in blue and white. There are 4 blue and 4 white pieces of clothing.
The set looks really beautiful, once it is complete. The carousel is the principal building of this set, and it is nice that it turns, and also that the horses swing while turning.
The game beside the carousel it’s also nice, and allows to hide the mechanism to turn the carousel, which is great. The other three stands are cute, with christmas decoration, different building techniques and all with different and with nice stuff on sell.
This set, with 9 minifigures, has 5 female and 4 male and I love this decision. Hope to see it in other sets and finally get the “parity” in the count of men and women.
We would like to thanks to the CEE team, with Jan and Kim, to provide us the set and allow us to do this first review of the set.
2011
