Recently, I built and reviewed the Lumibricks Dutch Windmill Millhouse set, which had so many small fun details but also some areas where it could have been better thought out. (You can read that review for additional first impressions of the Lumibricks sets in general.)
Now, in anticipation of the upcoming holiday season, the company has come out with a Bavarian-themed Christmas Pub set. It has at least as many small themed details as the windmill set, and would be right at home in any Christmas village tableau. But it, too, has some features (or anti-features, as it were) that made me scratch my head, wondering why they decided to do things that way. Read on to see what I thought.
First Impressions
My first impressions of this set are very similar to those of the Dutch Windmill Millhouse set. The box is solidly built. It comes with two detailed building manuals. The included Service card gives you a way to access help if you need it.
The first manual begins by telling a bit of a story relating to the set, and there are occasional pages throughout the manuals showing other story elements. Next are the safety messages, and the rest of the pages clearly display visual building instructions without words.
The set has 2142 pieces spread across clearly numbered bags, with numbers from one to ten, with three or four bags of each number. You are meant to open the bags numbered with a one first, build with those pieces, and then progress to bags numbered two, etc. The multiple bags per number usually split the pieces up into small, medium, and large pieces. It’s clear they gave thought to which pieces go in which bags (within any given number), as easily confused pieces are usually separated into different bags. So, it does help to pour each bag into its own bowl or tray.
The set also includes two bags of specialized pieces, one for cable management pieces, and one for other special pieces. There is also the lighting kit, which includes the battery case, lighting bricks and wires, a USB connector, a screwdriver for removing the back of the battery compartment, and some rounded tweezers that may help you with the connectors (I found it easier with both of these sets to just use my fingers).
This set can be paired with an optional gift set for an extra cost that includes a nice plastic Lumibricks bag and a pop-up card with a pull-out section to include a personalized note.
Getting Started
The first thing you’re meant to do as you begin this build is to test out the lights to make sure they all work. The connectors are small, but they connect easily enough. All the lights on my set worked fine, so I didn’t need to refer to the included troubleshooting guide. The battery case was challenging to get open, but I figured it out eventually. The instructions also included direction on how to use the included brick separator.
Next, the instructions have you build the included human (and elf) figures, which were totally disassembled. I had my partner Rory build the figures this time, and he had no trouble figuring out which way the arms and hands were supposed to go, unlike my experience with the windmill. User error, I suppose!
This time I set us up with flat-bottomed trays to put the pieces in, instead of the small-bottomed bowls I had used last time. It made finding the correct pieces much faster. I can highly recommend having a series of these very inexpensive IKEA NOJIG organizers. They come in four different sizes ranging from 4″x4″ to 7 3/4″ x 9 3/4″ and from 29 cents to 99 cents each.
The Building Experience
Most of the build for this set went very smoothly. I noticed that getting up to speed with how Lumibricks notates things was much faster this time around, having already worked through an entire Lumibricks set already. My partner Rory and my younger kid took turns helping me build this time, and we split up the tasks with one person fishing for pieces while the other person assembled. It provided some great quality family time while also speeding up the process, along with giving a second set of eyes when someone couldn’t find a piece. I enjoyed the building process even more with company.
The bags labeled “1” were the foundation of the building, with those labeled “2” through “4” as the bottom story. Then “5” through “10” were the upper floors. As with the windmill set, the manual’s instructions were almost always very clear, with new pieces outlined in red with arrows showing how things connect. They also include some “this, not that” diagrams when they think you might make a mistake, and regularly provide handy top-down diagrams when there might be some confusion from the main viewing angle about where things go.
Sometimes, however, the instructions spread out the steps unnecessarily. They might split larger tasks into multiple steps or gave additional views when it seems unnecessary to do so, and sometimes they neglect to give additional views when it would have been helpful. For example, an earlier single step might have had a certain number of pieces and complexity, and then the next steps spread the same amount of pieces and complexity into two steps. The lack of consistency was odd to me. Another example is how they almost always illustrate from which direction to put panes of “glass” in the windows, but they left that direction out for one set of windows. There are also a couple of brick colors which, in the manual’s images, take some care to discern between, and more than once I had to go back and fix spots where I’d grabbed the wrong colored brick in an earlier step.
I was once again tested with my 50-something-year-old eyes, since, except for black pieces, for which they mark edges in the manual with white, all the other pieces’ edges were marked in the manual with black, which was hard to see on the very dark browns and reds. Good lighting helped some, but I still got a headache trying to sort it out.
The experience with the wiring was a bit hit or miss. In some places, the cable management pieces were utilized really effectively, but I think this set would have benefitted from more of them, as it had many fewer than in the windmill set. In some places, long stretches of wire were merely hidden behind other pieces, sometimes making it hard to not smoosh the wires when placing additional pieces in their locations.
The set comes with some fun lights, though, including pulsing colored string lights for both the Christmas tree and the building itself, and a ring light for the ceiling. Because the electricity has to get all the way to the top story from where the battery pack is connected at the bottom, and the stories are meant to come off (attic, second story, and first story can be separated), the set has contact plates that you put between stories that transfer the electricity down the line. This setup works well. But the set also has exposed (coated) wires in a variety of locations, though, making it not kid- or pet-friendly.
I enjoyed discovering the many themed pieces as I built. Unlike with the windmill set, which had most of the fun pieces at the end of the build, this one had a lot of them near the beginning of the build, and then scattered throughout the rest of the build. The most concentrated piece of whimsy is the table with lots of food and drink on it. So many delicious options. But there was also a heart-shaped cake or cookie in the oven. A letter in the mailbox. Musical instruments. Art on the walls. And secret green bottles in a secret pathway between the outside fireplace and the picture over the fireplace (though this bit of whimsical functionality is very hard to make work once the building is constructed, due to the closer quarters—you’re more likely to make a mess of the food on the table than successfully get the bottles out from behind the picture). Additionally, Lumibricks has some unique bricks I’ve never seen in other companies’ offerings, so it’s always fun to see how those pieces might be used.
Some Additional Observations
- The music feature worked as advertised, with a handy hidden-but-easily-accessed button where you can play or change tracks, and turn the whole thing off easily and intuitively. The included songs are supposedly all Christmas songs, but one of the tunes is clearly “Oh My Darling, Clementine,” which is not remotely a Christmas song. (They do list one included song as being called “Happy New Year,” so perhaps they thought that’s what that was?) So I wonder about that choice. The other songs are very familiar and Christmas-oriented. They play with a very high-pitched tone, though, probably MIDI, which has always hurt my ears.
- If you attempt to upload your own music, you have to provide your own data cable, and the instruction manual’s direction of how to copy files over is sparse (see photo above). Thus, I did not try to upload my own music.
- This set also had a few pieces that were built from what felt like lower quality or oddly flexible plastic, including the brick separator, the berries, some thinner plant items, and the tree boughs, which made constructing the Christmas tree challenging—the boughs keep getting knocked off. But most pieces were built of the normal plastic.
- But, if you don’t struggle with the tree like I did, the boughs are attached with ball-and-socket joints or claw joints, so you can arrange the tree branches in a way that pleases you.
- Like with the windmill set, it seems the tolerance for pieces is a bit wider than I’d prefer, with pieces not always fitting together consistently. Some fit easily, and others more snugly. You can see light through gaps where pieces don’t quite meet. And you can see spots on pips where the injection mold was filled.
- More than once in more than one location, sometimes groups of pieces that I’d previously secured came loose again, and I had to re-secure them, again pointing to potential quality control issues.
- Two sides of the outside of the pub are unlit, so they probably intend for those to be against a wall or in the back.
The Completed Christmas Pub
Once completed, you can access the interior of the building through each of the three stories. The back opens up for the bottom two stories, with the bottom story clicking into place with a claw piece and the middle story just swinging open with a little handle, nothing keeping it closed. The roof, however, is tricky. One half of the roof swings up and ostensibly out of the way, but it’s very wobbly on its arms. And, to open it at all, you need to remove the chimney entirely, which was an intentional choice on their part, the manual stating that that’s how to access the attic.
Though the doors and windows open when you’re assembling them, by the time you’ve finished the whole set, there are pieces blocking your ability to open them, making the whole set less interactive and fun. Doors and windows not opening in a build means that someone either made a questionable choice, or didn’t consider actual play value. It seems a missed opportunity.
You can power the set with the included battery case (requiring 3 AAA batteries, not included), or with the included USB cable and your own power bank. The battery case fits snugly in an open compartment in the base of the sidewalk, but it’s a challenge to fit in there, and an even bigger challenge to take out, since there are some other pieces blocking the way. This will keep us from turning the lights on very often, unless we modify the set or create a separate battery compartment “shed”.
Sometimes I was confused as to why the designers chose a specific way of setting up part of the build. Then sometimes it was cleared up with an, “ahh, I get it,” but sometimes I was still left with a quizzical look on my face.
Despite some odd choices and functionality, when this set is fully built and complete, its half-timbered Bavarian/German beer hall look feels very warm and festive, with lots of fun elements, whether lit up or not. You can tell it’s wintertime, with all the snow on the roof and in piles around the set. I still think they could have planned the construction a bit better, and made the layout easier to interact with, but the set will look great on the shelf with our other Christmas decorations.
My favorite parts of the set are the snowman outside, the owl high up on a perch, the delicious looking food, the piano, the mailbox, the elves, and the twinkly lights, which have gentle pulsing twinkles instead of some of the harsher blinking ones you find with real-life twinkly lights.
Conclusion
In my house, we love decorating for Christmas and having side tables filled with our favorite Advent calendars and holiday decor. What we’ve always wanted though, is a Christmas village that we could put out every holiday season and slowly add to over time. Though we’d seen plenty of complete villages in our comings and goings, most of them didn’t really feel like “us”, and we didn’t want to invest in any official set that we’d have to buy piecemeal and risk it not being available. So, instead, we’ve picked up little things here and there, adding to our eclectic collection of wintry scene elements, houses, trees, gnomes, and more.
The Lumibricks Christmas Pub, though much larger than our existing Christmas village elements, will be a nice addition to our hodge podge of festivity. Its lively atmosphere and fun interiors and exterior, lit or unlit, all combine to be a nice addition to our annual decor.
That being said, my thoughts on this set, like the Lumibricks Dutch Windmill Millhouse set, are mixed. The completed set isn’t nearly as interactive as I’d hoped (with windows and doors that can’t be opened, interactive features that are extremely challenging to access with normal adult-sized hands, and an attic room that can’t be accessed without disconnecting the chimney), and it feels like they cut some corners in the design and development process, skipping the solid foundation of creating completely compatible and internally consistent pieces and features before moving on to more sophisticated and complicated kits. Sometimes pieces or collections of pieces don’t go together too easily, and I wouldn’t call most of their engineering decisions very slick.
But, if you’re looking for a set that’s pretty fun to build and, in the end, mostly just fun to look at, this set is a decent one. You get a large, festive Bavarian-style house with plenty of winter and Christmas elements, and it will light up, adding to the warm atmosphere of a cozy home on a cold winter night.
The Lumibricks Christmas Pub is $119.99, which is a fairly decent value for how many pieces you get.
Note: I received a sample for review purposes.
