A baby reindeer? Huh. If we were getting a new animal in the deer family, I would have preferred an actual deer. Lego's reindeer mold is huge; at scale, it's slightly bigger than the biggest reindeer in real life—not exactly good for the "eight tiny reindeer" described in "A Visit From St. Nicholas." Meanwhile, the antlers are clearly caribou/reindeer, which is great for Santa, but makes a lousy substitution when the part is used as a deer, as in its original appearance in 75945.

I think I ended up with seven copies of the big version (three to get nine reindeer in time for Christmas the first year it released, and four more on clearance last year). I’m going to have to buy a bunch of the little ones on OPAB.

After seeing the baby reindeer in the advent calendar I sort of expected another set to finally come with a mother deer..

Christmas sets released in time for Halloween!!

The sleigh is so cute! I like the lights on the reins. Love how it includes both Santa and Mrs. Claus plus a baby reindeer! This Mrs. Claus figure matches the upscaled one which is neat. The sleigh is a nice smaller version of 40499 imo.

Looks like Cataclaws ate too much catnip. :)

@R0Sch said:
"Looks like Cataclaws ate too much catnip. :)"

Yep. Don't do drugs, people (or cats!).

Going to be an expensive Xmas with all of these Xmas sets and the new Harry Potter range.

@FlatSixLego said:
"After seeing the baby reindeer in the advent calendar I sort of expected another set to finally come with a mother deer.."

It did. One adult male reindeer, one adult female reindeer, and one baby reindeer. Female reindeer can grow antlers, too.

$42.99 CAD for that 187 piece sleigh set is beyond egregious.

Which is a shame, because it's a very nice little holiday set.

Shrinkflation comes to Santa's sleigh. Or did it become a LSW set? Or, both?

Regardless, sad to see that Santa's sleigh is going the way of the battlepack.

If they are going to over-price 40866 (Santa's Holiday Sleigh Adventure) they could at least make 1 of the reindeer red nosed.

@StyleCounselor said:
" @jkb said:
" @markisnot said:
"Reindeer battle pack!"

... and battle pack pricing. Could as well be $45.00, because... you know."

No kamas?"

... for example... !

I want the the Mrs. Claus and baby reindeer, and since they will probably cost as much as the entire set, I might as well buy the set and bypass the secondary market.

Neat selection.

40866 is adorable, but $10 USD overpriced imo.

OHMYGOD CATACLAWS!!!!!!!
The fact they never made an official big set of Cataclaws is criminal.
Either make one the size of Playful Cat ( 31163 ) or give us a display model like Tuxedo Cat ( 21349 )

@AllenSmith said:
"A baby reindeer? Huh. If we were getting a new animal in the deer family, I would have preferred an actual deer. Lego's reindeer mold is huge; at scale, it's slightly bigger than the biggest reindeer in real life—not exactly good for the "eight tiny reindeer" described in "A Visit From St. Nicholas." Meanwhile, the antlers are clearly caribou/reindeer, which is great for Santa, but makes a lousy substitution when the part is used as a deer, as in its original appearance in 75945."

The original appearance is as a stag (male Cervus elaphus). To be a perfectly accurate male deer, the antlers should perhaps be tan instead of reddish brown, but other than that it’s a decent depiction. A doe on the other hand (Do, a deer, a female deer) is yet to be seen

@markisnot said:
"Reindeer battle pack!"

I think the actual term is reindeer battle herd.

@Vindicare said:
"Is this a place for adults or not? Closing the HP comments after what weren’t even disrespectful thoughts on the author is pretty childish. Even though I would disagree I could see the comments being stopped if a long winded heated exchange happened….but nothing if the sort even started.
"
It was headed that way, as it does under almost every HP-related article. At this point it's a miracle these articles aren't closed from comments from the get-go.

Baby reindeer looks nice but I already have the clearly superior 40499, so nothing for me here.

@sipuss said:
" @Vindicare said:
"Is this a place for adults or not? Closing the HP comments after what weren’t even disrespectful thoughts on the author is pretty childish. Even though I would disagree I could see the comments being stopped if a long winded heated exchange happened….but nothing if the sort even started.
"
It was headed that way, as it does under almost every HP-related article. At this point it's a miracle these articles aren't closed from comments from the get-go."

I’m surprised people haven’t been banned yet.

@WizardOfOss said:
"So many Coca Cola Christmas sets, and not a single one of the real thing: Sinterklaas!"

And his assistant!

I welcome the inclusion of Mrs. Claus and prefer the scale of 40866 to that of 40499 . Initially I though that the price was too high, and still do, I'd like to see it around $20-25. However, according to the CPI Inflation Calculator, 40499 would cost $61.62USD today, adjusting for inflation. That would give it a Price per Piece (PPP) of nearly 18.0c versus the PPP of 16.0c for 40886 .

Looking through the comments on the release and review of 40499 , it was considered a bit overpriced at the time it was released too, but most people could justify that cost because of the inclusion of four new reindeer molds.

Side note:
I understand Price per Piece is not necessarily the best comparison of value, I've been persuaded that Price per Pound (kilo?) of plastic would be a much better measure.

@sipuss said:
" @Vindicare said:
"Is this a place for adults or not? Closing the HP comments after what weren’t even disrespectful thoughts on the author is pretty childish. Even though I would disagree I could see the comments being stopped if a long winded heated exchange happened….but nothing if the sort even started.
"
It was headed that way, as it does under almost every HP-related article. At this point it's a miracle these articles aren't closed from comments from the get-go.

Baby reindeer looks nice but I already have the clearly superior 40499, so nothing for me here."

Yeah, I’d have to double check, but I don’t think this Mrs. Claus is new & yhe baby reindeer comes in the AC, which has more to offer. If I didn’t have the first sleigh though, this would be an easy buy.

@Euca said:
" @AllenSmith said:
"A baby reindeer? Huh. If we were getting a new animal in the deer family, I would have preferred an actual deer. Lego's reindeer mold is huge; at scale, it's slightly bigger than the biggest reindeer in real life—not exactly good for the "eight tiny reindeer" described in "A Visit From St. Nicholas." Meanwhile, the antlers are clearly caribou/reindeer, which is great for Santa, but makes a lousy substitution when the part is used as a deer, as in its original appearance in 75945."

The original appearance is as a stag (male Cervus elaphus). To be a perfectly accurate male deer, the antlers should perhaps be tan instead of reddish brown, but other than that it’s a decent depiction. A doe on the other hand (Do, a deer, a female deer) is yet to be seen"

If you take a minifigure with hair to be the average height of a northern European man (around 5'-11"), Lego's reindeer stands 4'-11" at the shoulders. Reindeer shoulder heights range from 2'-9"–4'-11". Red deer range from 3'-1"–4'-3"—quite a bit shorter. As to the antlers, a proper red deer ought to have more pointy parts, pointing more upward, with less of a central trunk, and less forward sweep at the end. Basically, I'm expecting "The Monarch of the Glen" out of a stag, whether I'll poke my eye out on the thing or not.

Unfortunately for me, my local deer, the black-tailed deer, is a more diminutive species. It has a shoulder height ranging 2'-7"–3'-5", so the Lego deer/reindeer would look preposterous in my forest MOC. It would need to be a full 3 plates shorter to model even the biggest specimens. Lego's mold is more the size of an elk, but looks too little like one to be convincing. Alas.

@CCC said:
" @Vindicare said:
"Is this a place for adults or not? Closing the HP comments after what weren’t even disrespectful thoughts on the author is pretty childish. Even though I would disagree I could see the comments being stopped if a long winded heated exchange happened….but nothing if the sort even started.
"

Just about every HP announcement gets ruined by people discussing their thoughts about JK Rowling rather than the sets. I think I'd prefer removed comments and instant bans for anyone discussing their politics rather than the sets / theme."

It remains one of Lego's best selling themes, they need to learn that no one listens to them and instead a massive amount of people gain enjoyment from Lego (and probably they do too as they continue to buy the sets).

@SkyCaptain_USA said:
"Side note:
I understand Price per Piece is not necessarily the best comparison of value, I've been persuaded that Price per Pound (kilo?) of plastic would be a much better measure."

It’s not. It doesn’t take much effort to look up what ABS, MABS, and other types of plastic cost per pound, and it’s not that expensive. Raw material cost is almost certainly the smallest contributor to a set’s final MSRP.

I don’t think anyone actually wants bans on the basis of being negative about something that isn’t the set itself, considering recent examples include Will Ferrell, the LAN, KPop, Olivia Rodrigo, America In General, Football&Footballers, Disney’s Business Decisions, Lego’s Business Decisions, and comments from most of the people who don’t like it when the negative comments are about Rowling’s attacks on human rights (which, I think people sometimes forget, is not just some distant concept of “politics” when it’s you or your friends and family whose everyday lives are affected by it).

*I’d* prefer Brickset didn’t cover HP beyond the bare minimum of announcing new sets, or failing that that people didn’t drag it into non-HP-exclusive threads where I can’t even do the obvious things to avoid it, but we don’t always get what we want.

—

I like this year’s Christmas sets so far, but I don’t think any of them have reached the heady heights of instant adoration that I felt for last year’s Gingerbread sets — or for last year’s excellent Christmas GWPs, for that matter (the Hot Chocolate Stand in particular may as well have had my name written on it, it was so thoroughly aimed at Stuff I Specifically Love).

The Christmas Stocking is very nice, and I’m not opposed to a small version of the sleigh to go elsewhere in the home with less room set aside for Christmas decorations (especially since the fawn is very cute), and even so I’m not wholly convinced I’ll get around to it. I think my wishlist is pretty safe from being overburdened!

I’m told that male reindeer have usually lost their antlers by the time Christmas comes around so I suppose there’s an argument that all of Father Christmas’ reindeer are girls, but since his reindeer are also magical flying reindeer (occasionally with glowing headlight nose mutation) and thus presumably a unique subspecies unstudied by science, I feel you could make whatever argument you wished about their relative antler sizes and the timing of when they do or don’t have them.

I'm usually against comments getting removed, but in this case those incessant "Rowling is a TERF" ones are nothing but spam and not convincing me that this is anything more than yet another dirty social media cancellation campaign. Rather than facts they're just virtue signalling, like flooding a discussion about beef recipes with comments like "I'm vegan O:-)" and "Meat is murder(tm)"

FYI, I *did* actually try to google before writing this, the top result was a news page that promised a timeline of the whole affair, but was interrupted by a message to "Register an account to read the rest" (a-hole behavior like this was my final nail in the coffin for MSM).

I then ended up on https://www.quora.com/What-has-JK-Rowling-OBJECTIVELY-said-or-done-wrong-in-regards-to-trans-people-which-has-labelled-her-a-transphobe?top_ans=1477743914347324 , where the top posts said it had started with Rowling defending a researcher getting wrongfully accused for posting her personal opinions on social media and the whole stupid sh!tstorm (involving trans ACTIVISTS rather than actual trans people) snowballing from that. Yes, the rabbit hole is probably deeper than this, but it's really not my job to do the spammers' homework.

@Hiratha said: "*I’d* prefer [...] that people didn’t drag it into non-HP-exclusive threads where I can’t even do the obvious things to avoid it"

Yes, I'd prefer not to do it either, but what can we do when that thread gets closed? Given how it's likely trolls that brings up that discussion *because* it tends to escalate out of control, maybe the moderators needs to focus on those who initiates it?

Of the various takes on Reindeer in the Holiday sets I'm glad they seem to have stick with these, the minifig version . I know we all like to put together everything but these version of Reindeer are so much more reliable.

One user mentioned "Reindeer battle pack" on this set which got me thinking, picking up a few of these and using the Reindeer from those in the older Holiday Theme sets (where possible) would be a great idea.,

@Hiratha said:
"*I’d* prefer Brickset didn’t cover HP beyond the bare minimum of announcing new sets, or failing that that people didn’t drag it into non-HP-exclusive threads where I can’t even do the obvious things to avoid it, but we don’t always get what we want."

This would be a lot easier if, instead of a bunch of people bum-rushing the comments to attack Rowling either before the comments inevitably get shut down, or with the specific goal of making that happen as soon as possible, people who don’t want to read about Harry Potter stuff for political reasons just didn’t click on those articles at all. But where you’ve shown a remarkable level of restraint, you know not everyone standing on the same side of the fence as you is willing to let anyone enjoying the story for the story go unavenged.

"I’m told that male reindeer have usually lost their antlers by the time Christmas comes around so I suppose there’s an argument that all of Father Christmas’ reindeer are girls, but since his reindeer are also magical flying reindeer (occasionally with glowing headlight nose mutation) and thus presumably a unique subspecies unstudied by science, I feel you could make whatever argument you wished about their relative antler sizes and the timing of when they do or don’t have them."

So, the way I originally heard it is that adult, both male and female, grow antlers. More recently, I’m seeing that it varies by species how likely females are to grow them at all. So adults of one species might all grow them, where only a few females might grow them in another species. Then I’d heard that pretty much all males will have shed them by Christmas, so the only reindeer that supposedly would still have them on Christmas Eve are females.

40499 is still available on Amazon Japan right now for around US$32 with free shipping, so means better value than this new version?

@recce said:
"40499 is still available on Amazon Japan right now for around US$32 with free shipping, so means better value than this new version? "

Way better.