It’s Christmas, the time of family, giving, food, and – most importantly, if this TLCB writer’s better half is to be believed – twinkly lights.

An industry devoted to lighting up LEGO sets has boomed in recent times, with many lighting kits for official LEGO sets already reviewed here at The Lego Car Blog.

But good as some of these kits are, what lights us up is builders designing their own creations. It’s what LEGO is all about, and yet there hasn’t been a product allowing builders to easily light up their own vehicular designs. So we asked LEGO lighting specialists Lightailing to make one…

This is what they sent us, the Lightailing Light Starter Kit, containing a power source (USB or coin-cell batteries), two expansion boards, connecting cables, and two bright white LEDs, two red LEDs, and a white self-adhesive strip light, all neatly packaged using the components readily available from Lightailing’s other kits.

So is the Lightailing Light Starter Kit any good, and what creation did we light up? Read on to find out!

OK, we won’t be revealing the creation that we lit up, otherwise we’d reveal ourselves, but we can say that the Lightailing Light Starter Kit is really very good indeed.

Whilst simply a selection of the components already available in Lightailing’s extensive store, the Light Starter Kit allows you to bring head, tail and interior lighting to a medium sized Lego vehicle really easily, with the strong but small wires hidden within the model.

Each component comes individually packaged and labelled so you know what it is, and as the lights are all just on or off, there’s no complicated process to ensure the right wire goes into the right terminal as with some kits; just connect them to the expansion board and switch them on.

Those expansion boards can hold up to seven light cables too (with the eighth slot being taken by the power source), so you can add a more lighting and longer cables to your model if you desire super easily.

Any downsides?

Well as this lighting kit is effectively a bundle of pre-existing components, we still think there’s room in the market for a bespoke starter kit that makes it really easy for children to use. If LEGO were to make such a product it would clearly show the connections, perhaps coloured, and there wouldn’t be the possibility of, for example, pushing a connecter into a slot the wrong way round. For that reason the Lightailing Light Starter Kit is probably better suited to adults than kids.

The Lightailing/Bricksmax booklet translation is also not the best english we’ve ever read, but then nor is anything we write on this site either.

Verdict

Our request was for a product to enable the easy addition of plug-and-play, realistic lights to Lego vehicle creations, and Lightailing’s newly created Light Starter Kit fulfils this role beautifully.

If you want to bring simple on/off lighting to one of your Lego creations, whether that’s just the head and taillights, or a lot more besides through the use of the additional ports, the $27 Lightailing Light Starter Kit is everything you need. Which considering its creation was requested by us here at The Lego Car Blog, is all the more remarkable.*

★★★★½

Click the link below to check out the Light Starter Kit at Lightailing.com. And we’re not even getting paid. Because we’re idiots.

Buy the Lightailing Light Starter Kit here

*TLCB’s product design services can now be requested for the ultra low price of just $1,000,000 p/a or 80% of the profits, which ever is higher. Success is guaranteed!**

**Success not guaranteed.