The Sanderson Sisters’ Cottage Review – Full of little details.

We received from LEGO the Hocus Pocus: The Sanderson Sisters’ Cottage set sent to you. The set is packed with details and includes a number of unique minifigures. It was created this way by LEGO Ideas. That is, the set was initially conceived by a fan.

A unique design

So the set was conceived by a fan of LEGO, although you won’t immediately see that from the set. Before a LEGO Ideas set is created, it first goes through all kinds of committees and along designers of LEGO itself, who polish the design. In the end, the building is based entirely on a fan’s ideas. That fan cum designer gets a share of the revenue and ten boxes of the set to keep for themselves.

This design was created by Amber Veyt (The Ambrinator) and is based on the 1993 film Hocus Pocus. This forgotten Disney film is about a trio of witches who are accidentally brought to life. Although the film was mainly popular in the United States, this set was conceived by the Belgian Veyt.

It’s all in the details

When building the set you notice almost immediately that it is made up of an immense number of small parts. The final house of the witches you are building is not particularly large, but the box does contain over 2,300 bricks. That’s quite a hefty number, which is mainly because of the detailed interior. That has advantages and disadvantages. For example, it is great that there is so much to see on the inside of the set. Even the roof can be flipped open so you can peek inside.

On the other hand, the high number of details does make the interior of the Hocus Pocus house a bit crowded. Once the set is finished it is very difficult to reach certain parts on the inside because everything is so close together. One of the cool details is the cauldron. It can light up by pressing a button, just like we saw before with the LEGO Pac-Man Arcade Cabinet.

Of course, that’s not all. The set is truly filled with Easter Eggs, such as the presence of a spell book behind glass, broomsticks and even a candlestick with candles. My favorite detail are the two skeletons, hanging in a cage on the inside of the roof. This cage can swing back and forth as it is secured by a chain.

Difficulty

Disney Hocus Pocus is not the very hardest set to put together, due to the lack of many moving parts. That certainly doesn’t make the set any less spectacular. One of the parts that does move is the water wheel on the side of the house. This one can spin around. It is connected to the chimney of the house. When you give a crank to the wheel here, the flames coming out of the chimney move.

That there is so much detail in the set will also be due to the extensive decal sheet that is included. This completes the set. Although it is a lot of stickers, this does not otherwise pose too much of a challenge. Most of the stickers are quite simple to apply and can often only be applied one way, thus avoiding unnecessary mistakes.

While Hocus Pocus may be a cult classic, I have to say, by the way, that it may otherwise be a fairly obscure set. Especially for Europeans, where the film is somewhat less known to my feeling anyway, this might not be a set you would buy very quickly. That’s a shame, because it is excellently put together.

LEGO Hocus Pocus: The Sanderson Sisters’ Cottage is here available from LEGO’s online store