#lemax

Lemax makes really cool Christmas and Halloween village pieces which are unfortunately very prone to audio issues and delicate pieces breaking off. The one that I have here plays the audio but very softly as you can hear in the video (So you can just pretend that it's Erik rambling dramatically to himself- it's canon!), and has a few of the more fragile pieces that are broken off or have been glued back together.

My favorite parts:

- At the very top, there is a little viewing window complete with the boy himself aggressively clutching the chandelier. This is supposed to rotate. Regrettably, on mine, the Erik stripper pole extravaganza does not work, so you'll have to use your imagination (preferably by writing fanfic on Ao3 and linking to it in the comments) 👀

- The very welcoming red death figurine at the front, complete with a sign advertising 'Music of the Night'. I wouldn't imagine that this is an ALW official licensed product since this is the only reference to the musical, but I think it's really funny nonetheless

- The "Closed Forever" sign, which I want for my real life house

2025 Halloween Lemax Spooky Village Tour:

"Haunted Museum"⁠

Sammlung Collection

so Michael's (the craft store) sells collectible town miniatures from a brand called Lemax. they (michael's) sell two seasonal towns, christmas and halloween (lemax has other towns but they seem to be something they don't make/sell anymore). i don't care about the christmas one so i'm gonna talk about the halloween one but i'm sure this also applies to the christmas one. (i've also found a place online called eerie emporium that sells spooky town, they're much better than michael's about holding onto older stock of it)

i started collecting spooky town in college, when i found a graveyard gate piece that lights up and some figurines on mega sale the day after halloween. i've really gone ham with it ever since, but i need to find an alternative. the price keeps going up (ONE building this year costs $200, which is absolutely outrageous, esp since it isn't a very good looking one) and the quality keeps going down.

they used to make a lot of their buildings out of a ceramic-type material (i think it was a plastic ceramic, but it still feels and behaves like ceramic) and the ones that weren't ceramic were a sturdy plastic, but now they've moved to all flimsy plastic all the time.

i understand that certain parts have to be made of lighter materials, particularly if they have moving parts, but even the ones that just have a nightlight bulb in them are oops all plastic. (though they do have led nightlight bulb replacement things that don't get nearly as hot, so that's nice)

another drop in quality is the paint jobs. they used to actually have some detail on the buildings and the figurines, but now it's like they just took a big brush and went "splort splort splort that looks fine". some of the people don't even have eyes and mouths anymore, just flesh toned molded plastic. i hate this. i shouldn't have to repaint things this expensive just to make them look good. i've modified pieces before (i was weirded out by the grocer having a (human) body hanging in the window so i made essentially a new sticker without the person and figured out how to remove the meat display thing and put in the new sticker), but i shouldn't HAVE to modify them to make them look even passable.

the figures are stupid expensive too, but not nearly as bad as the buildings. i've found out that if i stop caring about the scale being exactly right, i can buy the michael's in-house brand (ashland tiny treasures) of figurines for much cheaper (which are back after a couple years, no idea why they stopped selling those for a little bit but i was upset about that but i'm having trouble finding them their website). i also have designed some minis in HeroForge that i'll do up for spooky town one day when i'm rich and famous and buy a 3d printer, so ultimately the figures aren't something i'm terribly worried about never being able to find again, i'm just frustrated about them.

i love things about the lemax spooky town like the colored lighting and the moving parts, so i can't just move to only ones with nightlight bulbs in them. i certainly have no objections to ones with nightlight bulbs and no moving parts, i have several that are lemax and like 3 that are little houses from some unknown brand that i thrifted that don't match the lemax at all, but i still love them. i've thrifted vintage lemax pieces (for the human town portion of spooky town), but they're hard to find bc resale value is high for older pieces, but that's a whole other issue.

YET ANOTHER issue with lemax is the mechanical parts just straight up not working. i've got this one piece that's a skeleton and grim reaper in a hot air balloon that's supposed to spin, but it completely stopped working after like 2 years. i managed to pop it open and fix it, but the next year it wasn't working again and i couldn't fix it. there's also a pretty big facebook group about fixing specifically lemax pieces, since lemax refuses to offer repairs or replacements for broken pieces, which is pretty stupid, but that does mean that there's been an opportunity for a few people in that fb group to actually get paid to fix them (so i guess one nice thing coming out of corporate greed). i do have a piece that i intentionally broke, the ghoulish gourd, which has a jack o lantern on top that sways back and forth and the top half of it with the eyes spins 180 to have evil or happy eyes and makes the LOUDEST snapping noise when it does that (i just cut the wire on it so it doesn't have power to the spinning mechanism). the spinning/snapping also knocks the jack o lantern off its base, which i have to re-seat every year because it was previously holding on with sheer willpower, since glue doesn't seem to be very good at holding it on.

there are absolutely things i love about the lemax spooky town, but i need to find an alternative, because i'm just starting to get to the point of being over it, and i don't want to lose another thing i love (namely, having a little halloween town) to corporate apathy.