Since we promised you more, here is the LEGO Santa’s Workshop light kit review! I didn’t work on the integration for this one. Mr. Family Brick did it all while I was working on the motion for the LEGO Christmas tree.
He also took the majority of the photos and gave me commentary, which I highly appreciate. We could almost say he wrote this post! Maybe next time I’ll give him the full credit.
About the LEGO Santa’s Workshop Set
It wasn’t until this post that I realized we’ve never reviewed the LEGO Santa’s Workshop build. We simply purchased it and integrated it into our winter village.
This build became available in winter 2014. (Wow. Can’t believe it’s been this long!) At the time it was released, it was only $69.99. Nowadays, it’s upwards of $300 on Amazon.
For us, the real novelty of this set had to do with the reindeer faces and the elf hats. The reindeer face bricks haven’t held up for us well. All of our face bricks are cracked. But the elves are still here and holding strong.
Even with the cracked bricks, the set is totally worth it.
We’ve always wanted to light up this set, as it sits high on our winter village build. It tends to get lots of attention. Fortunately, Game of Bricks was kind enough to share a light kit with us for review.
About Game of Bricks
Since we’ll be using their light kit, 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 The LEGO Santa’s Workshop Light Kit
Since the hubs was running the show on this one, we didn’t grab a photo of the light kit box with our build for you. You’ll just have to be okay with the stock photo above and I can still tell you what comes in the Santa’s Workshop Light Kit from Game of Bricks:
- LEGO Lights with Original Game of Bricks Box (2 for the main building and 1 for Santa’s sleigh)
- 4-Port USB Hub
- Video Instructions (You’ll need to ask customer support for these.)
At the time of this review, the set is on sale for $35.99 and is normally $47.99 USD.
Adding The LEGO Santa’s Workshop Light Kit
Mr. Family Brick felt the instructions were great. As he started, he did have some trouble removing the top story of the building. Some additional bricks from the bottom level came off with the top, but it was no biggie. That tends to happen when you do a good job connecting your bricks.
He started with attaching the lamp globe under the workshop sign. Once done, he routed the wire into the build and re-attached the second story.
After pushing the wire to the back, he attached the interior light over the door. At that point, he ran the wire out the opposite side toward the middle of the build.
This next section is where he deviated from the instructions. Here, he attached lights to the two roof sections and ran the wire out into the interior corner. Since our goal is always to hide the wiring, he felt it looked better this way.
He then ran the wire behind the corner with the letters.
And here this brings you outside again, where you attach the two lights to the bottom edge of the long front roof.
He then ran the wire above the hinges to conceal it. The wiring comes out the far side to light up the two lamps there, as seen in the above picture.
The instructions have you wire the USB hub into the building at that point. However, we wanted the plugs to be central, so he wired the excess wire back along the outside roof and down behind the hinges.
This is where the work begins with the second strand. The roof lights were easy enough as you just wrap the wire around the LEGO rope. It looked better than trying to hide the wire out in the open.
Again, he wanted the USB plug to be central, so he flipped the lights to end on the hinge between the buildings. This is opposite from the instructions as well.
Centralizing all the connections worked well for us and was easy enough to modify.
The third strand is used for lighting up Santa’s sleigh. This was also fairly easy to implement, as the light strand went under the saddle part of the reindeer.
It then was run under the sleigh itself, up to the lights and back down.
Also, not sure we’ve ever shared this, but this is the USB hub that comes with the kit. We like that it has individual switches, so you can connect more than one light kit to the same hub.
Our Thoughts
As you read, we only made two modifications for the lighting instructions. Otherwise, we feel the light kit is nicely executed. For us, it was just about perfect.
We really only had one issue with the kit. The location of the light-able elements did leave a lot of exposed wiring. I’m sure cable casing colors are limited, but it would be nice to have the kit change wiring color dependent on where the wire will be run. For example, a brown section of wire where the wire will run across brown bricks. In our images above, you’ll see there are plenty of white sections of wire that ran across brown bricks, making them stick out even more.
Other than that, the kit makes a fun set even more engaging and beautiful. You won’t be sorry with these lights!