LEGO® Icons 10293 Santa's Visit: Designer Chris McVeigh interview

The 2021 LEGO® Winter Village set has been revealed: 10293 Santa’s Visit is a charming, angular home built of Light Royal Blue/ Bright Light Blue bricks. It has 1,445 pieces, measures 27cm x 16cm and is 19cm high. It is available exclusively for LEGO VIP members from 16 September and from LEGO Stores and online from 1 October priced €89.99/ US$99.99/ £79.99/ AU$159.99/ CA$139.99. Buying this set? Consider using our affiliate links, New Elementary may get a commission: USA LEGO Shop | Australia LEGO Shop | UK LEGO Shop/for Europe 'Change region'.

And who better to introduce it than its designer, Chris McVeigh? New Elementary’s Caz Mockett and Ben Davies had the chance to speak with him during the RLFM Days in May where he gave us a sneak peek at his latest design.

Chris McVeigh: 

Santa's Visit features a family home and there are four minifigures: father, mother, a daughter and an all-new Santa.

It's got some really interesting details in it; you may have noticed the angles on the front. The home actually bends inwards at the front, and that's using really interesting geometry to make that happen. And what that allows us to do is open the back up even wider, so there's loads of little details in it. 

Here we have a dining room table, we have the fireplace and the mantel with the chimney. On one side we have the child's bedroom, which sits above the kitchen. And we have lots of little storytelling details, all throughout the set. 

There are a couple of interesting features that I can show you. First of all, Santa, who is all new for 2021. He has a new printed face which actually has a white beard underneath. He has a new torso print. And for the first time, we have dual-molded legs so you have nice big black boots. 

Now, as you might expect with this set called Santa's Visit, Santa can go down the chimney. That's a fun little feature we thought would be great for both kids and adults! 

There are a couple of other lovely little details in the set; there's a brand new 1x1 Christmas cookie that's actually based on a cookie my Mom makes. I’m super excited about that! It's a cookie with icing and sprinkles. It's something my mom calls Melting Moments and she's made them all my life, so it's really fun to actually kind of pay tribute to my own traditions.

The little girl minifigure has a new torso, her face is double-sided so she can be put in a bed and have a sleeping face, because we are really trying to embrace the storytelling for the holidays and that's definitely part of it. Matt Parsons is the graphic designer on this set.

Ben Davies: Can you highlight any new elements that you remember?

Chris: There are no new molds, but there are lots of recolours. Off the top of my head, there's quite a few recolors in bright light blue in here. There are the new cookies and also, for all of the lamps, I have recolored them to opalescent. So that will be a little bit different; a little bit more fun to have them in kind of a frosted look, rather than the typical trans-yellow that we go with for these types of things. That was really fun for me to put in there. 

The other thing that I want to show you is the Christmas tree, which is an interesting little tree, but you can press down on it, and it lights up. 

Caz Mockett: Oh, that's really charming! 

Chris: There's a light brick on the inside that will light it up when you press down on it. Obviously, in a room that's not as bright as this one right now, the effect is much more interesting and certainly more cozy and charming but the fact that you can actually see it in front of this camera I'm really excited about that! 

Ben: How do you handle the functionality there? It looks like it's not really a button-press.

Chris: Yep, you're actually just pressing on one of the blue elements to make it happen. But the actual construction of it, I think I'll leave that as secret for something to discover when the set comes out this fall. 

Caz: So do you think you're going to be a permanent fixture on the winter village sets, Chris?

Chris: Well, you can never tell. I enjoy my time doing these holiday sets. You know me from before I came to the company – I love the holiday season. The hanging ornaments were just such a huge kind of joy for me to create every year, and post instructions for those. So, it's really rewarding to be in the company now and be able to do these kinds of things.

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We've now noticed a couple of colour changes in Earth Blue/ Dark Blue: the 'macaroni plate' (68568) and 1x2 plate with rail (32028). Have you spotted more?

LEGO® Winter Village 10293 Santa’s Visit is available exclusively for LEGO VIP members from 16 September and from LEGO Stores and online from 1 October priced €89.99/ US$99.99/ £79.99/ AU$159.99/ CA$139.99. Buying this set? Consider using our affiliate links, New Elementary may get a commission: USA LEGO Shop | Australia LEGO Shop | UK LEGO Shop/for Europe 'Change region'.

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