In Europe Thanksgiving is generally regarded as a North-American holiday and the traditions surrounding it are for many Europeans shrouded in mystery. Despite that I'm positive that even non-American fans of Lego get all tingly when a new wave of holiday sets is announced. Actually, excluding the turkey, this set could be sold as autumn harvest and nobody would blink an eye.

First of all I have to congratulate the designers for choosing the perfect autumn colour palette. That was the selling point for me. If you love warm, earthy, autumn colour tones, you'll be amazed how many of those are present here. And despite the variety, they really complement each other.

You get three separate builds - a vegetable patch, a tree, and a cart/wagon. All of them are done nicely, the tree and the patch fit together well. You get a couple of accessories like a brick-built scarecrow and a basket with some produce. The cart's design suggests it should be pulled manually; however, it's far too large for a minifig. I can confirm that you can attach a horse to it using a standard carriage shaft once you remove the 1x2 black plate with snap. It definitely looks better in this modified configuration. My only tiny critique is that you cannot fit the basket onto the wagon. (Well, technically you can but it doesn't look right.) Anyway, that's just me nitpicking.

The minifigs are your standard fare, a farmer and a young girl. Two brick-built birds are included, which is always a nice touch.

All in all, it's a lovely, enjoyable autumn mini-build. The price is right for what you get and the Thanksgiving references are so subtle that even if you're not a fan of this holiday, it shouldn't bother you.

Even though I've never celebrated Thanksgiving, I knew I wanted this set from the moment I first saw it. There's just something very nice and beautiful about the colors and the setting here.

The minigifs here aren't anything special, but I wouldn't really expect anything else from a holiday vignette. The farmer is pretty similar to the one released as part of the Minigifures Series 15, while the "daughter" is also pretty ordinary-looking. I do like the brick-built birds: as much as I appreciate it when LEGO releases new animal molds, there's more joy in building the turkey by hand and seeing it come together.

There's a great selection of veggies and fruit in the set, along with a small garden/field. As a veggie lover, this was, frankly, one of the biggest reasons I got the set. You've got carrots, apples, pumpkins and a bunch of other assorted roots and stems (although I still haven't figured out if the yellow cones are supposed to be a very short-stemmed corn or an upright-growing squash).

The autumn tree is well-made and offers some rare parts like the brown tree canopy and orange flowers. The biggest part of the set is the horse-drawn carriage... although the horse itself is nowhere to be seen. This is, I think, the biggest flaw of the set, and a pretty baffling one. I understand that the holiday vignettes have a size limit, but including a farmhorse figure would have given the set much more play value and charm.

All in all, this is a good set for its money - pretty and yet useful, especially if you're looking to expand your city with an agricultural area.

Set #40261 Thanksgiving Harvest: This is another one of the Holiday Vignette sets from 2017 and it’s another great looking vignette style item for LEGO fans. Is this set worth tracking down now that it’s 2018? Well as always I’ll try to explain the good things and the bad with this review, so you can make an informed decision.

Box/Instructions

Box: For this holiday vignette set we have a harvest orange colored box with a nice looking harvest scene on the front. It’s a wonderful little box design with a name plate printed up top so you can write who you’re gifting this to, should you be purchasing the set for the gift.

Instructions: Like with most LEGO sets these instructions serve their purpose well and look very nice, they also reveal what’s coming up next for the Holiday Vignette sets of 2017, specifically the Christmas themed sets, which look very nice.

Parts

A nice selection of earthy parts in this set, with a lot of plants also found here of various sorts used mostly to make a nice little garden area for veggies. Also a large tan basket/barrel piece which is an interesting addition and I’m sure MOC fans will find a use for it in their building. Overall a decent parts pack at a good price for those looking for such things.

Minifigures

Male Farmer: Generic parts are used most often in these sets, this Father for the little girl has some decent use of prints we’ve seen quite often in LEGO City and includes a nice cowboy style hat and pitchfork.

Female Child: This girl has parts we’ve seen many times over when it comes to these little Holiday Vignette sets. She comes with a nice series of prints and a small pail accessory to help with the harvest of the fruits and veggies. Not much more to say about either of them really.

The build

This is a lovely build, from start to finish you’ll enjoy making many aspects of a rich harvest scene with a tree, a small patch of garden with scarecrow, a large wagon and a buildable turkey. Each portion of the vignette is a quick and simple build.

The fact that it’s a bit of a disjointed build however does make it somewhat different from past vignette style holiday sets. However each portion is relatively simple, there are no issues or difficult steps. I especially enjoy the two buildable animals included in the set, they’re quite cleverly constructed and add to the overall feeling of the set once completed.

The completed model

Harvest Scene: Without a baseplate this little vignette set is a bit disjointed when put together on the shelf. The wagon tends to roll off unless you prop it in place with the included hitch piece designed for that. (Unfortunate there is no horse or tractor to pull the wagon.)

The tree is a very solid looking model as well, it includes some nice foliage and you can place one of the buildable birds on top of it as part of the scene. The little patch of garden has a very nice looking buildable scarecrow and some greens and veggies, the shoots unfortunately don’t like to stay in place very well and the small size of the garden area does suffer a bit from being a tad too small for decent placement of the foliage.

The buildable turkey is a nice solid little model with a very clever use of parts. It adds a lot of charm to the vignette and stands out as a personal favorite of mine.

Overall opinion

This is a very nice set for the holiday build. It includes a very robust series of little builds that can go quite nicely with other Thanksgiving based sets. For the Vignettes this isn’t the best on offer, admittedly, however it includes some very good parts and is quite cheap for what it is.

I’d strongly recommend tracking this one down if you love the Holiday style Vignette sets.