Random set of the day: Witch's Cottage
Posted by Huwbot,
Today's random set is 5804 Witch's Cottage, released in 1999. It's one of 10 Belville sets produced that year. It contains 38 pieces and 1 minifig, and its retail price was US$10.
It's owned by 224 Brickset members. If you want to add it to your collection you might find it for sale at BrickLink or eBay.
Help me come to life! If you like the set I've chosen for you today, please pledge your support for me on LEGO Ideas so I have a chance of becoming an official LEGO set!
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29 comments on this article
Dang, this is the week to be a Belville fan. I hope you fans give Huwbot your appreciation, he's doing it just for you.
That reminds me, Halloween is coming soon.
OK, what's with all the Belville sets as of late? I'm often critical of Friends, but at least they got quite a few things right--most sets are still pretty much minifig scale, use standard LEGO parts, and a lot of the Friends accessories can be used with minifigs. I especially like female hats/helmets with hair, as it looks a lot less weird on female minifigs. And not to mention--fully fleshed out builds. Not these half-arsed furniture packs most Belville sets were.
However, one part I really want to pick up is that cat!
Poor witch - not much of a cottage, is it? Did she spend all her money on pimping her ride? Bet she's cooking up some evil plots and concoctions so she can get at least a basement room in that castle before winter.
@Rimefang said:
"That reminds me, Halloween is coming soon."
Though who will even celebrate it? Can't do trick or treating very well not being 6 feet apart!
Relationship with Clikits ended, Belville is my best friend now
Not another one
I chose them all. Every single one of them. And not just the Clikits, but the Scala, and the Belville too. They're all LEGO products, so I chose them for random sets of the day! I love them!
-Huwbot
@cody6268:
A few years back at Brickworld, before they moved from their original location, they had a keynote speaker who worked as a set designer. She started talking about her experiences, and it turned out she had been involved with every single attempt to capture the female market to that point, including Clikits, Belville, and Scala. I don't think a single theme that she'd been assigned to had been a success. It was hands down the most depressing keynote I've ever sat through, and it's understandable that the very next year they started bringing in keynote speakers from the AFOL community instead of sticking exclusively to LEGO employees. Oh, and she had apparently left the company by the time they launched Friends.
I vaguely recall in Lego catalogues, at the time, that this witch's name was Madam Tussa, and I always thought, really? That's the best they could come up with? The marketing team spent how long on that?
Still, Huwbot's on a Belville kick, at the moment. Good luck to him.
@Rimefang said:
"That reminds me, Halloween is coming soon."
Just wait until you have a friend who LOVES Halloween. Then it's 12 months of Halloween, and if you did not know, Halloween items have been starting to show up in the store since the end of July by me in the US... yea Christmas in July next anyone?
I didn't like the Belville sets much when I saw them in the catalog as a kid, but I did always think this was one of the better ones. It makes a very coherent, recognizable scene, and being made of snips and snails and puppy dog tails myself I found it easier to imagine myself role playing as the cackling wicked witch than as one of the Belville princesses or their royal counterparts.
@PurpleDave said:
" @cody6268:
A few years back at Brickworld, before they moved from their original location, they had a keynote speaker who worked as a set designer. She started talking about her experiences, and it turned out she had been involved with every single attempt to capture the female market to that point, including Clikits, Belville, and Scala. I don't think a single theme that she'd been assigned to had been a success. It was hands down the most depressing keynote I've ever sat through, and it's understandable that the very next year they started bringing in keynote speakers from the AFOL community instead of sticking exclusively to LEGO employees. Oh, and she had apparently left the company by the time they launched Friends."
Well, Clickits lasted for four years (2003-2006), Scala for five years (1997-2001) and Belville for a rather surprsing fifteen years (1994-2008). If none of those themes was a success, then how in the world did they manage to keep Belville going for so long?
I had forgotten all about this, but thinking about it now, my sister actually owned it. I’d remember that green window piece anywhere.
It isn’t much of a cottage, but I suppose you just have to use your imagination and play pretend.
And while you’re at it, you could also use your imagination to pretend this is a good set.
Hermione, is that you?
I owned this set as a kid! I remember having lots of fun playing with it and combining they play with normal minifigs kind of like the Smurfs and Gargamel!
It was rough around 2K. This is one of those sets that proves it.
Someone in Fabuland is wondering who has stolen their cooking pot and spoon.
I have that cat in white. From the only Belville set I own which I only bought because I like cats.
What manner of evil is this?
That cat is a perfect minifig-sized panther.
I realise there's not much to this particular set but I think US$10 is a pretty good price for something with this many specialised parts. Maybe modern pricing has ruined my perspective
Exodus 22:18. Just saying...
@anthony_davies
What does the Biblical prohibition against beastiality have to do with anything? I assume it is a typo and you mean Exodus 22:17: "You shall not tolerate a sorceress."?
Think someone needs to turn Huwbot off and back on again, he seems to have become stuck on belville... :)
^Maybe, 3rd in the last 6 days....
Or this is just a warmup for the flood of Friends sets I keep warning you guys/gals about in 2022!
You know what I notice as odd here?
Minifigure skulls.
This suggests one of two things: either minifigures exist in Belville world, despite them being very tiny in comparison; or Belville figures, despite their physical differences, have the same shape and size skulls as your average minifigure.
(Or else it was just less disturbing for Lego back then to include those than making an actual realistic-ish skull piece, but where's the fun in going with the *out-of-universe* answer? xD)
@BionicleJedi said:
"You know what I notice as odd here?
Minifigure skulls.
This suggests one of two things: either minifigures exist in Belville world, despite them being very tiny in comparison; or Belville figures, despite their physical differences, have the same shape and size skulls as your average minifigure.
(Or else it was just less disturbing for Lego back then to include those than making an actual realistic-ish skull piece, but where's the fun in going with the *out-of-universe* answer? xD)"
I think she's the Wicked Witch of the East and that's the remains of a poor little Munchkin. Hail Dorothy!
@LegoDavid:
The goal wasn't to sell sets from these themes, but to tap into the girl market. The LEGO System was originally envisioned and marketed as a toy that either gender would play with, but it wasn't long before they were really only selling sets to boys, meaning ~50% of the available market was basically skipping their section out of hand. These themes were all attempts to appeal to girls and get them to start buying _any_ LEGO sets. All three failed in that regard. I have no idea why Belville stuck it out so long, but I don't recall either Belville or Scala really being available in the US. I only know Clikits was because I was given a small set for free at NYTF the year the theme was launched. I don't remember seeing it stocked in stores, but that may have just been that I wasn't actively looking for it. Friends, on the other hand, has one of the largest sections at many of the stores where I shop. It's in a completely different aisle, where pretty much every toy is packaged in pink boxes, but it's placed prominently enough that it's hard not to notice it when walking by, and it often spills out onto the endcaps that are generally reserved for fast-moving product.
I suspect a lot of the longevity of Belville may have come from Germany. The appeal has reportedly waned in recent years, as Billund has shifted their attention more towards American tastes, but for a long time Germany was the top consumer-nation of LEGO product (right up until 1999, when the first Star Wars sets debuted). Simon Liu told me this was because, immediately after WWII when all German industry was in a shambles, The LEGO Company was the _only_ European toy company that was willing to sell product to German stores. An entire generation of post-WWII German kids grew up with LEGO sets being their only toys, and they in turn bought lots of LEGO sets for their own kids. By the time Belville came out, there were probably several other options available for German girls to choose between, but anything with the LEGO logo had a hefty advantage.
You can tell a lot about where a theme was popular by checking Bricklink stores. If the exclusive parts from a theme, or whole copies of those sets, are only available from a small region or a single nation, that's probably the only place they really sold well. The vast majority of Belville sets listed on Bricklink are located in Europe, and the three nations that most commonly show up are the Netherlands, Germany, and France.