When the lights are on, it means the McCallisters are home... well, at least one of them! The LEGO Ideas Home Alone 21330 is here just in time for Christmas and boy is it on our wish list!
As a category, LEGO Ideas never, ever disappoints. But despite that high bar, LEGO and fan-designer Alex Storozhuk have topped our expectations once again with this incredible set.
Clocking in just shy of 4000 pieces and measuring a solid 37cm x 34cm deep and wide as well as 27cm high - Home Alone is officially the biggest Ideas set to date! and those bricks aren’t just filler either; there is so much detail in this set covering both easter eggs from the film and just great LEGO design in general, this set is really in a category of its own - almost a hybrid of a Modular Building and a Winter Village set! Home Alone is a Christmas movie after all!
Demand for this set was through the roof, but we here at Light My Bricks were determined to get our mitts on a copy and light it up as soon as possible. The postman was spotted arriving one morning and the parcel that he handed to us was suitable large enough to signal today was the day. Time to build!
No sooner had we begun to leaf through the huge and heavy instruction manual (with Kevin’s battle plan on the front!) head of LMB Customer Service informed the build team that inquiries on when our light kit for Home Alone would hit the shelves were pouring in at an unprecedented rate! Better get clicking!
Once the spectacular set was complete we couldn’t help but take turns in playing with it! So many details to admire and movable features to interact with, we knew we had something special on our hands. Special sets call for special measures and the Light My Bricks lighting design team working on this kit project was the biggest and best of any kit to date! All of our super-star designers worked around the clock to really take this kit to the next level!
What became clear during the build process was that the overall challenge of this project, would be making sure every detail was lit and every exciting opportunity to include our components was taken advantage of, while at the same time retaining 100% of the playability that the set affords. We don’t think we’ve ever seen a set at this size with both this level of detail and this amount of play!
This meant really challenging ourselves to look at how we might light certain sections of the build, working and then re-working where cables were laid and finally double, triple, quadruple checking our work to make sure we’d come up with the best overall solution possible! We couldn’t be happier with the results… if we do say so ourselves!
Let’s look at a few examples of the above. First, the treehouse really only needed one light (economy of component always top of mind for LMB!) the question then was how to supply power to this single Bit Light? Initial ideas were to thread a Connecting Cable around the biplane… but quickly this broke our rule of retaining 100% functionality!
After building the Wet Bandits truck, it was a no brainer to ensure it could be lit independently of the main circuit via one of our Flat Battery Packs, nestled neatly in the back of the cab. However, after discussion amongst our crack team of designers, it was decided that an extra Connecting Cable should be included to accommodate those hobbyists who would prefer to display more so than play.
Now the difficulty began to increase. The next two-part challenge was achieving that spectacular red-hot glow of the front doorknob. We all remember cringing as Marv got a ‘warm welcome to the McCallister home in the film! Step one, we went straight to our trusty White Micro Bit Light and placed it under the red crystal used as a doorknob, these particular components fit anywhere! The next important step was ensuring that the door could still open and close normally, retaining that ever-important functionality. The first pass was to have the wire running to the ceiling, with ju-ust enough slack that the door would still swing. But as noted above, this set saw us revising and reviewing at every turn making sure that we had landed on a premium result for each aspect of the kit. As such in this instance, we ended up actually running the wire along the door and finally through the hinges, which allowed for all important flexibility without sacrificing tidiness.
As you can see, there are so many awesome details in this set that we made sure to light up. It was commented that this set is kind of a cross between a Modular Building and a Winter Village set... and strange as that sounds, it's kind of true! The addition of our Wireless Connectors, normally employed in our Modular Building kits are used here to both ensure maximum set access and playability - while also allowing the warm and cozy ambience normally reserved for a Winter Village addition, to be on full display. From flickering candles, flames and fireplaces to Christmas lights, trees and decorations! It's the sum of all our components composed together that achieves the overall result... and what a result!
If the walls of LMB HQ could talk, there would be quite a few more insights to give on this one! But as you’ve just read, the story of the Light My Bricks Home Alone light kit is once again, as LEGO continue to level up and produce bigger, better and more detailed sets, we push ourselves to match LEGO’s innovation and excitement with our light kits.
