19 December 2019

10267 Gingerbread House: Designer Interview with Jamie Berard

Posted by Elspeth De Montes
Tomorrow we will publish our review of this year's Winter Village set - 10267 Gingerbread House - but back in May in Billund we chatted with LEGO® Creator Expert Design Manager Specialist Jamie Berard  about it. It has 1477 pieces, including three LEGO minifigures, and is priced £84.99/ US $99.99/ CA $139.99/ DE €89.99/ FR €94.99/ 799DKK/ AUD $159.99 and is already available directly from LEGO.



Hey, Jamie, this set looks adorable! Tell us about it.

This is our upcoming seasonal set, the Gingerbread House.  There are a couple of figures that are new, and a few new elements – as I know that will be of interest to you.

Who lives in a Gingerbread House? Well, a gingerbread man with his snowblower and wild moustache, and now he has a wife. Her dress has a new print as does each of their torsos plus she has some pink cream inside. 




What happens when you have two Gingerbread people come together?  They make a Gingerbread baby, freshly made, just out of the oven and still on the baking tray! You can put the baby inside the pram of course, but you can also put it on the rocking horse.

We have a nice little house with the light coming down, some spice in the windows and the 'Home Sweet Home' sign and a bench that the Gingerbread Lady can actually sit on while wearing her dress.

So then we have a full downstairs with the stockings on the fireplace and the couch, plus a nice little kitchenette.

We also have a bathroom upstairs – we don't get to do those very often – with a bathtub and chocolate milk to fill it up. The Gingerman fits in the bath but obviously you have to take off the Gingerbread Lady's dress before she goes in the bath.

Once done, she can get into her vanilla-wafer bed and the light translates to the inside so you get light on both sides.

Who designed this set?

We had a good sketch model by Daniel Florian and then Tiago Catarino did an amazing job with the actual product. Tiago also designed the Ship in Bottle set, amongst others.


I built the snowblower, that's about it! I don't get to build very often.

It looks like you all had a lot of fun... did this set start out with someone taking a Sharpie to draw a moustache on the Gingerbread Man?

Tiago actually doesn't like the moustache, he wanted to use the old head but we said 'no, they are neighbours, so you could get the Collectible Minifigures one showing up, and he has to look different somehow. We wanted to give him a different decoration... plus he has all the testosterone after having a baby...


... or perhaps it is a hangover from Movember! What other interesting elements are in there?

This is the first time for the unprinted trans-yellow kite-shaped tile and we have new prints on the characters, plus the Gingerbread baby is new. The Home Sweet Home, Candy Lane and the Family portrait are stickers - so not too many stickers.

We even managed to use the new 1x1 heart tile, which I am wondering where else we will be able to use this again in the future but it is still fun to get them in where we can.

We are actually using them in our Parts Festival.

It would be good to see what you guys do with them. I imagine you could make some trees or greenery if you get enough of them and depending on the colour you get.

We like to focus on new elements here at New Elementary but we do get comments about LEGO making too many new elements now. What's your take on this?

Right now I think we are kind of in a heyday with elements. Some elements that for years would have been a no-no and it would just be "whatever, move on". All of these new elements are wonderful but it is almost hard to focus. In the past there used to be focal point, for example a Modular building could be around that one cheese wedge or something, and then we would actually base a design around a new element that we knew could do a particular pattern. Now there are so many it's like, oh I want to use this one and oooh perhaps that one...

I think the pendulum swings both ways and I am imagining the focus will be on something else soon, but for now I'm happy to take them.


We had a period of time that we only had a couple of options for the half-plate on the side and then all of a sudden we have the 2x4s, the 1x1, the 1x2 - we have so many variety of half plates that you can build sideways whereas before it was a family that only had two.  Now you can build so much more because now you have a bigger family and I see that as a benefit.

Well we look forward to building the Gingerbread family with them! Thanks Jamie.




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