One of the collections I parted with before moving was my small seasonal collection. LEGO still produces the seasonals, but in the early 2010s most of their seasonal collection were vignettes. I loved them! Not only were they a gateway to buying larger sets, but they were perfect for me to have on display at work. I had coworkers tell me they always looked forward to the seasonal changes to see what was new.

I sold all my seasonals (or so I thought) during my first refinement period. I loved them, but without an office to display them and coworkers to admire then, I figured I wouldn’t need them any more. I’d amassed over 30 of them.

Imagine my surprise when, while searching for another set, I found a plastic yellow LEGO bag. It contained mostly polybags that I’d wanted to keep (such as a new 30201 Ghost!), but in the bottom were three of my seasonals.

40097 is one of those. It’s a charming scene, but not much in the way of building. The entire bag takes 7 steps! Plus, it’s one of the few sets that has a step that’s basically “scatter extra parts around”.

I like the variety of the minifigs and that there is a woman with overalls, something traditionally associated with men.

The reddish brown pieces are a little creaky, but handled with care they survived assembly and disassembly.

The only problem is that now I wish I hadn’t sold some of my other seasonals….