Seasonal

Winter Village Fire Station

The cosiest building in the Winter Village, glowing orange from the inside out.

Brick Rated Score

4.2/5

Set 10263 · 2018

Pieces1,166

Minifigs6

Year2018

Set number10263

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The verdict

This is the 2018 entry in LEGO's annual Winter Village run, and it's one of the warmest of the bunch.

The light brick that fills the upper floor with an orange glow is what won me over, plus a cast of six little figures including a dalmatian, a baby in a moose sweater, and a saxophone player. It's not the most architecturally daring Winter Village building, and a couple of the roof and railing choices are fussy, but as a festive centrepiece it's got real heart. If you've been collecting the series, this is an easy one to add.

Best for: Winter Village collectors who want a cosy, figure-rich holiday centrepiece

The full review

What it is

The Winter Village Fire Station is the 2018 chapter in LEGO's long-running seasonal building series, a LEGO® set built to sit alongside the toy shop, the bakery, and all the other little snow-dusted structures collectors have been lining up on shelves since 2009. And of all of them, this one might be the cosiest. The two-tone facade, dark red brick up top and grey stone below, with tan roof accents and sprigs of holly on the walls, gives it a proper old-fashioned firehouse feel. There's a bright red curved garage door that mimics painted wood, an emergency call box out front, and a little tower with a bell. It looks like somewhere you'd genuinely want to warm up on a cold night.

The catch

The thing that got me, though, is the light brick. Press the button and the whole upper floor glows orange from the inside, and it's honestly lovely, especially seen through the windows from outside where the light goes soft and diffuse around the tower. It's not a bright light, so don't expect fireworks, but for atmosphere it does exactly what you want. Inside you get a snug little kitchen upstairs, firefighting gear with a gold helmet, and the kind of small furnished details that make these buildings feel lived in rather than just displayed.

Who it's for

It's not all rosy, though. Not everyone loves the architecture here. A few reviewers felt the boxy shape and the curly art deco railings on the tower windows don't quite match the storybook charm of the earlier Winter Village buildings, and the snow on the roof is laid out in a very regular, almost grid-like pattern that gets a bit dull to place bag after bag. It's also not a big footprint for 1,166 pieces, so if you're chasing raw size for your money there are better-value sets out there. The community rating sits at a fair 3.9 out of 5, which feels about right: well made and full of character, with a couple of quibbles. If you collect the Winter Village series, or you just want one cosy festive building that lights up, this is a warm and easy yes. If you're purely after showstopper engineering, you might find it a little plain. For everyone in between, it's a genuinely charming holiday build.

The parts story

What the build is actually like, and the pieces worth knowing about.

The build splits neatly across three numbered bags, and it's clearly designed to be shared. Bag 1 has its own separate instruction booklet and handles the smaller pieces, a bench, a frozen fountain, a Christmas tree, and the red ladder truck, so a younger builder can work on those while someone else starts the main structure. Bag 2 raises the ground floor with that clever red garage door, and Bag 3 finishes the upper floor and tower. It's about a two and a quarter hour build, gentle and relaxing rather than technical. The Christmas tree is a neat trick, four identical brick-built panels set at ninety degrees, and the tower uses clips and some tidy SNOT (studs not on top) work to attach its sections. The ladder truck, with its curved wheel wells and rotating turntable ladder, is the most satisfying little sub-build in the box.

For parts hoarders, the real draw is the dark red. There are 154 dark red pieces in here, which is a proper stash for anyone building architecture or brickwork, plus 11 bars in the tan colour that was new for October 2018. The set also brought a handful of fresh elements at launch, including a 1x2 rounded plate and a 2x2 plate with reduced knobs. The minifigures punch above their weight too: three firefighters with burnished copper buttons, epaulettes and metallic helmets, a hockey player, a saxophonist, a girl in a scarf, plus a dalmatian, a brick-built snowman, and an exclusive baby with a printed moose-and-snowflake sweater. As a parts-and-figures package, it earns its keep.

Fun facts

01The exclusive baby minifigure, printed with a moose and snowflakes on its sweater, made its debut in this set and became an instant favourite among collectors.
02The Winter Village series has run almost every year since 2009, and this fire station was designed to sit in scale beside earlier buildings like the toy shop and the bakery.
03The 11 tan-coloured bars used on the roof were a brand-new colour for that element when the set launched in October 2018.
04The set was a LEGO exclusive that retired at the end of 2020, and sealed copies have since climbed to roughly double their original 99.99 price on the secondary market.