REVIEW: 10263 Winter Village Fire Station

[Bob De Quatre]

Introduction

Winter is coming... And with it comes  a horde of undead warriors  the new Wnter Village set: 10263 Winter Village Fire Staion. So let's the spirit of Christmas and the smell of burning buildings surround us and let's see what Lego Santa has brought us!

Thanks to EB and the LEGO CEE Team and Designers for giving me the opportunity to review this set!

 

Set information

Name: 10263 Winter Village Fire Station
Theme: Creator Expert
Year: 2018
Pieces: 1166
Price: $99.99, GBP 84.99, 89.99€
Resources: Brickset, BrickLink

 

Packaging

The box has an usual size for medium sets, at almost 50cm height, 30cm large and 10cm wide. It shows a very nice Winter Village scene in front of the fire station building, with all of the smaller builds included in the set.

The back of the box shows detail pictures, describing play features of the set, with all the minifigures in action.

 

Content of the box

The box contains a sealed bag with a two instructions booklets and the sticker sheet. The seven bags are numbered from one to three.

 

Instructions booklets

The set comes with two instructions booklets, a smaller one with 51 pages, and a bigger one with 83 pages. 

The instructions themselves are simple and easy to follow... Maybe a bit too simple for a 12+ set. In the biggest booklet, the parts added to the assembly at each steps are highlighted in green.

 

 

Build

The first booklet will guide us through all the smaller builds of the set, using first set of bags. Here are pictures of each of those smaller builds:

With bags number 2 we'll build the first floor of the fire station.

And we'll finish the fire station with the 2nd floor and the roof using bags number 3. The build is pretty straightforward and not very enjoyable, except for the nice snot assembly of the white laticed windows on the tower on the left side.

 

The completed set looks like a nice scene, with all the smaller builds adding life outside of the fire station, and will make a great addition if you already have some of the other Winter Village sets.

The fire station feature a lightbrick on the roof, which can be activated to illuminate the 1st floor... well sort of... I think the lightbrick itself could have been a little more concealed.

The roof can also be removed to have a better access to the kitchen and especially the coffee machine, that the chief officer seems to like a lot. To me the roof is lacking snow, with all the tan plates showing, something that could have been improved with a few whites plates and slopes.

My favorite build is the fire truck, despite the too many stickers used. It's not a complicated build, but it looks nice, and could easily be modified to a more solid build.

The christmas tree build is pretty simple but still interesting, using 4 wedged sides to recreate the conic shape of the tree. It could be improved to create a bigger tree, with more space for ornaments! The frozen fountain on the other hand isn't as nice as the rest, and could have been better with higher borders and more work on the firefighter statue pedestal.

  

 

Minifigures

The set comes with a nice selection of minifigures: a young girl, a baby (always protect your baby's hands with gloves when it's cold!), a ice hockey player, a musician with his saxophone, 3 firefighters and a dog.

The three firefighters have the same pants and torso, and all minifigures have backprinting, except for the baby and the hockey player, but including the dog!

 

Interesting parts

The set includes some exclusive parts (for now): a few bars 6L with stop ring (63965) in tan, the baby with dark turquoise body and the firefighters' torso. The set also contains a big load of dark red bricks, which are always welcome, but I would have liked some dark red brick bricks (98283) as it would have given more texture to the wall of the upper floor.

 

Conclusion

Design: 7/10 - A nice design, but with some flaws like the back of the headlight bricks showing both the exterior and interior of the walls. 

Parts: 7/10 - Some new parts, but nothing too fancy. A nice selections of minifigures.

Build: 6/10 - A basic build, with simple techniques for a 12+ set. Some improvements could have been easily included.

Price: 7/10 - With a ppp of 0,077€, this set is rather average.

Overall: 27/40 (67,5%) - A nice set, especially if you like the Winter Village sets. It makes a good playing set and may please children more than adults, but in this time of the year we're all children again, isn't it? Well...

[paul_delahaye]

I love this set, the only changes I would have made as the designer would have been the tree, I mean what were they thinking.  These extra pieces should have instead been used to make the garage a little longer.  It's funny that in most sets, they end up taking a few bricks out to make the set meet a price point, but in this one they had some spare and put in that tree! 

I also think the ladder looks wrong on the fire truck with that hinge arrangement.  I would have preffered to see a removable wheeled style of ladder like this:

[Andy D]

Gee... just what a Winter Village needs for fun and tourists. The only thing better would be a police station with jail, maybe a bar or how about a hospital? Gee, how about a library or a school?

It is a nice looking set, but IMHO it does not fit with the Winter Village theme. Pass!

Andy D

[Cylo]

It's a great set, along with a great review. Overall it is a nice looking set, I would say the firetruck is my fav too!

[Withacee]

Cheers for putting up the review.
I like this set a lot; it looks slightly higher than some of the other WV sets, but it will fit in very well in our village.

[Kristel]

Thanks for the great review Bob!  I agree that there are a few elements that could be improved, especially the fountain and the roof. 

[PotatoBrick]

I reviewed this set as well on my Youtube (won't post the link as I'm not sure this is allowed). It's a pretty neat set and very quick to build. Solid Christmas family build-together set imo. 

[Redhead1982]

Thanks for the review. Actually, I still have mixed feeling about this one. It doesn't fit my view of the WV perfectly, hence I'm still undecided about getting one. The parts are not that impressive (for someone with already too-big-too-handle LEGO collection), so I actually might pass this one. However, there are some elements that look perfect for the WV style. Just to point out, the frozen fountain and the tree are my favourite mini builds, the bench with the light is already a traditional detail in the WV sets. I'm not a fan of the building, but I do like some of the details. Considering these mixed feelings, I'm pretty sure I won't be buying this set for this Christmas, but in the future...maybe.

[Aanchir]

On 10/29/2018 at 11:54 PM, Andy D said:

Gee... just what a Winter Village needs for fun and tourists. The only thing better would be a police station with jail, maybe a bar or how about a hospital? Gee, how about a library or a school?

It is a nice looking set, but IMHO it does not fit with the Winter Village theme. Pass!

Andy D

I never got the sense that the Winter Village was meant to be tourism-oriented… if anything it seems like it's just supposed to be evocative of a nostalgic, small-town setting celebrating the holidays. I don't see any reason to think such a setting wouldn't have or need a fire station, particularly with Christmas and Christmas Eve being some of the days when the most accidental house fires take place in a lot of countries! Not to mention how many places use ladder trucks in their Christmas parades!

Note also that the idea of lighted Christmas villages as premium collectibles was first commercialized as Department 56's ceramic snow village series, which has introduced new fire stations in 1983, 1987, 1998, 2005, and 2011. So the idea of a fire station being suitable for a collectible Christmas village is nearly as old as the LEGO minifigure, and 26 years older than the LEGO Winter Village series!

On 10/29/2018 at 7:08 PM, paul_delahaye said:

I love this set, the only changes I would have made as the designer would have been the tree, I mean what were they thinking.  These extra pieces should have instead been used to make the garage a little longer.  It's funny that in most sets, they end up taking a few bricks out to make the set meet a price point, but in this one they had some spare and put in that tree!

The real surprise for me isn't that there's a tree (because that really is one of the main things reinforcing the holiday theme here), but that a slightly smaller but similarly constructed and MUCH more attractive tree was shown just last year in a Creator 3-in-1 "How to Build a Holiday Tree" video:

The differences from the tree in this set are not too extreme… shorter size, some spots of snow (probably just as appropriate for this set, considering how many appear on the station itself), sparkly transparent rather than solid-colored ornaments, a smaller star, and more consistent layering in terms of the color of each layer of plates and how far they stick out from the trunk of the tree.

As far as size goes, I understand the reasoning behind that… it was almost certainly to create a play opportunity for the firefighters to use their ladder truck to attach the star, as shown on the box. Not as much need for that with a shorter tree like the one in this video. But the other changes like the less consistent layering, solid-colored ornaments, and lack of snow seem to detract from the tree's appearance more than they enhance it.

Besides the tree, my other disappointment is the snowman. Granted, LEGO has never had a great track record with snowmen, but I much prefer the ones from 40263, 40124, 41102, 60099, etc. Even if LEGO decided the carrot nose was essential to set this one apart from the one in the Winter Toy Shop, they could have at least used the same unicorn horn element used for Olaf's carrot nose in the Frozen sets, which is both more carrot shaped and less out of proportion with the headlight brick they chose as the head. Never mind the question of "why those arms?"

But overall, I love the unique, ornate architectural style of the building, not to mention the addition of hanging snow/ice on the edges (though that staircase looks like something of a safety hazard in such icy weather, what with its lack of railings). I also always appreciate a believable living space in any theme, and although this one may be small, that seems appropriate for a village (rather than big city) fire station. And even then, including places to both eat AND sleep puts it head and shoulders above not only most City/Town fire stations but even the Fire Brigade from the Modular Buildings series!

[Andy D]

On 11/4/2018 at 10:10 AM, Aanchir said:

I never got the sense that the Winter Village was meant to be tourism-oriented… if anything it seems like it's just supposed to be evocative of a nostalgic, small-town setting celebrating the holidays. I don't see any reason to think such a setting wouldn't have or need a fire station, particularly with Christmas and Christmas Eve being some of the days when the most accidental house fires take place in a lot of countries! Not to mention how many places use ladder trucks in their Christmas parades!

Tomato-tomatoe.. My winter Village is strictly a tourist destination, with no vehicular traffic and no vehicles beyond a one-horse open sleigh  I just can't imagine Santa's house in a typical town/Village setting and Santa's house was the WV set from a couple of years ago. 

I understand some folks wanting to make WV just another small town/Village and that's OK, I just don't see it for my WV, hence, for my WV... no fire station.

just MHO, YMMV

Andy D

[scottwb2010]

14 minutes ago, Andy D said:

Tomato-tomatoe.. My winter Village is strictly a tourist destination, with no vehicular traffic and no vehicles beyond a one-horse open sleigh  I just can't imagine Santa's house in a typical town/Village setting and Santa's house was the WV set from a couple of years ago. 

I understand some folks wanting to make WV just another small town/Village and that's OK, I just don't see it for my WV, hence, for my WV... no fire station.

just MHO, YMMV

Andy D

You could always make the fire engine into a horse drawn pump! Or turn the fire station into something for your tourists

[gylman]

Thank you for doing the review. It's very helpful. 

 

For the number of pieces, and the cost, this is a disappointing set.  It doesn't fit well with the others. I think they have run out of ideas. For the first time, I think I will pass on the Winter Village series.  Maybe it's time to put this series to rest and try something new. 

[Vindicare]

Having just built this, I couldn’t help but wonder why the hockey playing kid didn’t have the new medium legs. Of the two colors we currently have, blue is one of them. It’s all speculation, but maybe they weren’t planning a bigger roll out of the pieces until next year?