40059- Santa's Sleigh

This is a concept that's been done more than a few times, but seemed worth buying to me this year since last year's version had only a model Santa and I preferred to have real minifigures.  This set comes with Santa and an elf, a sleigh, a model reindeer, and three presents.  Accessories include a walkie-talkie, a wand, and a letter.

I'm happy the little Christmas set comes with a companion.  Our elf seems a little older with greyed hair and his red shirt and green overalls/dungarees are cute, though one wonders why his short legs are red instead of green.  See below for his back torso print.  I'm fairly disappointed with the Santa figure since his outfit is entirely red with no printing and an old style Santa beard is used, meaning that the only available hat that will fit is one that seems like a pirate/biker bandanna.

Compare 2013's Santa to 2012's seasonal model one and the special minifigure in Series 8.  If the Lego Group didn't want to make this set's Santa too much like the Series 8 one, we see they could have at least used white hands to show gloves or some kind of printing on the body.  Maybe next year.

Attached to the sleigh is a reindeer (left in picture) nearly exactly the same to last year's, which is fine with me as it's a well done and cute model.  The three differences are the mechanism used to attach reindeer to sleigh, placement of ear pieces, and the beige fur piece over the nose is omitted this year.  All these changes seem for the better, though it's a little more difficult to remove the piece that connects reindeer to sleigh if you want your flying friend to romp around on his own without anything protruding from him.







Here we can see our reindeer with some of the presents that go in the sleigh.  There are two blue and white 1x2 presents, a white and yellow 1x1 present, a yellow wand, and a letter.

The sleigh is a good little red and green build, with room for santa to sit or stand and for all the presents.  Gold studs add nice detail.

See this year's sleigh (middle) compared to last year's (left), and the one in last year's Brick Friday Exclusive Set (right).  Last year's Brick Friday model is sleeker with a better look, but ours is still better than last year's Santa's Sleigh, and I like the use of green in this year's set.  Overall, this is a good set, but there is still room for lots of improvement, which I'm sure we'll see over the coming years.









Much like Decorating the Tree, we get a lot of extras, though again, the only interesting one is the wand.











Additional Image:

Year Released: 2013
Retail Price: $7.99
Pieces: 77
Minifigures: 2
My Purchase Location: Lego.com