I will say this now, this review is going to be focused on the Autumn colours for the set. A nice bit of detail is that the set comes with enough leaves that you can have a Spring/ Summer look with a set of green and dark green leaves, or an Autumn look with a set of dark yellow and two tones of brown. To those in the northern hemisphere, March, April and May are Australia's Autumn, or where I live it can be called "I don't know if I want to be Summer or Winter yet" due to how rapid the temperature changes can be, especially in March. So for now, the copy of the set that I have is using the Autumn leaves. It doesn't change much about the set in terms of functions, it's just aesthetical preferences.
Starting with the minifigures, there isn't anything specifically special about them. You get two kids and two parents in the set which is all it really needs. The prints on them are solid, with no major issues like the grey faces of last year, though I do find it odd that the mother is the only one to have an alternate face print, for seemingly no reason. It's likely reused from another set, though I have no idea where it's from. The only major issue I have with the minifigs is the fact the kids don't have moveable legs, making it impossible for them to sit down at the table, or on the swing. It's an inherent issue with the way Lego handles minifigs of kids, alongside the fact that it's the same torso, so their proportions always look off. Not the end of the world if you're used to it, though it would be nice at some point to get pieces better suited to making kids as moveable as adult minifigs.
In terms of a completed build, the Tree House is a mixed bag. While I love the complexity and detail in the build itself, especially the internal structure to the tree itself, there are some awkward points to it that I can only assume can be traced back to price limits. The tree itself looks awkward when you get to the main tree branches up the top like the tree just cuts off abruptly. The main trunk would have helped with the pacing of the wood buildings as well, as there's nothing really connecting the parents' bedroom and the other two rooms. While the set looks really good from a distance and has a lot of really nice detail when you look closer at it, it's things like that lack of a bridge that does tarnish the look of the set as a whole. The cabins themselves were a lot of fun to see come to life, tons of little details in them made them really interesting to build, to see what we were actually building. It even inspired some creepy elements like the fact that the scissors under the parent's bed is secretly a murder weapon. Because all the good horror stories are in the forest! I'm not a fan of the way the beds are made though, as it's hard to get minifigs to actually stay on the beds, though that is something I can ignore. On the whole, the build is fun, but there are some things I think could have been added in to make it better overall.
One thing to note about my view on this set is that there is another reason why I'm mixed about this set, and it's something that isn't the set's fault. I share this set with my mother, it was what we spent Easter Sunday doing during our time in Corona induced Lockdown. One of the things she wanted for the set, and I was interested in trying too, as it did look impressive on the website, is a fan-made add-on for the set that adds in custom LED lighting. When put onto the set, and in the dark, the lights are really impressive, and it was fun for me to hook it up to a Smart Switch that allows home assistant systems to turn the majority of the lights on and off (the colour lights need their own remote first). However the process to install the lights, with an inherent bias coming from the fact that I set up lighting systems as a part of my job, these lights were a pain to instal in due to their size, and there were numerous points where I felt uncomfortable to the point of going against the instructions to try and handle cable management without risking crushing the cables between the bricks. We also gave up on cable management when we got to the leaves, so the coloured LED cables do stick out a lot in the daylight, but I'm willing to concede that a chunk of that was us being fed up with the instructions. They're a confusing mess, and the pdf format that they used for it made looking at the visual aids very frustrating at points as they became misaligned in the formatting process. I'm sure they looked good in the editing process, but it's something I wish they caught before publication. Is the result worth it? Arguably yes, but the issues I personally had with it during the installation process was not pleasant, and is probably the most frustrated I've ever been when putting together anything relating to a Lego set.
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| In defence, the official release does look better then the original design posted to Lego Ideas |
While I really like this set, it's one that I think needed a bit more to it to make it truly amazing. Things like expanding on the walkways, and making the tree a bit taller would have helped make the set better. I'd say the set is still worth a buy thanks to the engineering in the tree trunk, and it has a lot of MOC potential, to the point where I could see someone getting a lot of these and making their own version of the forest houses of Endor. So close, but comes up just a bit short.
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