Getting Pulled Back Into Stranger Things by Remixing the Creel House
/BrickNerd sent contributor Casey McCoy 11370 Stranger Things: The Creel House and 40891 Stranger Things: WSQK Radio Station to write about. Sets provided by The LEGO Group guarantee neither positive nor negative coverage. Opinions are those expressed by the author.
Strange Times
How does one broach the cultural monolith that is Stranger Things? As we try to culturally sunset this beloved 1980s homage with the release of the fifth and final season of the streaming hit, it’s hard to capture just how our society has shifted “upside down” in the last ten years by sending all 80s nostalgia bait into maximum overdrive
With a decade of cultural upheaval under its belt (I was in my early college years when Season One released!), anthropologists, sociologists, and a crack team of marketers will be analyzing just how all-powerful the Stranger Things franchise has been in an effort to replicate its success. And it’s not hard to see why, as the show has garnered millions and millions of fans – including myself.
LEGO Things
I can’t remember quite how I found myself wrapped up in the cultural Stranger Things milieu. A toxic combo of Seasons 1 and 2 in tandem with exiting my college-induced LEGO ‘dim age’ came at just the right time. So my love and passion for fusing Stranger Things and LEGO really hit its stride in 2018 as I had just graduated from college and formally reentered the AFOL world with reckless abandon. I made Stranger Things BrickHeadz, figurines, a logo, a Demogorgon sculpture, and an Eleven mosaic:
It’s almost as if I was running out of different LEGO formats to make Stranger Things builds out of. I guess I never tried microscale or macroscale! However, my zeal culminated in my very own Stranger Things display at Brickworld Chicago 2018 featuring all of the above:
And not yet content, I would double back and make some Season 3 specific figurines in 2019:
Now five/six years removed from my last Stranger Things build, having donated or destroyed my Stranger Things MOCs, I’ve been pretty quiet in this capacity.
In truth, as time has droned on, my love for the show has certainly waned: general 80s nostalgia fatigue, the flattening of characters and pastiche elements of Season 3, and the messy character ‘arcs’ and absurd run time of Season 4 have left me wanting to be left alone in a sensory deprivation chamber. But like a cosmically demonic influence, I couldn’t quite shake the bug forever…
The Infection Returns
Little did I expect that while planning a trip for this October with BrickNerd’s Simon Liu to go to New York City to visit BrickNerd’s Dave Schefcik and AFOL Evan Johnson that my “love” for the show would be rekindled.
Having never seen a NYC Broadway show before, I eagerly anticipated seeing The Book of Mormon and MJ: The Musical. While polling the other AFOL companions in NYC on what they’d like to see, there was a frontrunner I did not care about: “Stranger Things: The First Shadow.” But given I’ll take any excuse to hang out with my AFOL friends, I reluctantly agreed to schedule it into the trip, but to be honest, I dragged my feet to see it. And thank goodness they dragged me there because it was better than the last two seasons put together!
From left to right: Caleb Wagoner, Michael Higgins, Blake Foster, Dave Schefcik, Simon Liu, Evan Johnson, and yours truly!
It’s hard to describe just how incredible the show was as someone who has been a seasoned Stranger Things MOC builder. I tell people, in short, “it made me like the show again.” Probably the tightest ‘episode’ of the show with mind-blowing stage production and special effects. For my money, it was the best Broadway show we saw on the trip.
But I will let BrickNerd’s Dave Schefcik, a Broadway veteran of 10+ years who has seen hundreds of Broadway shows (and never seen a single episode of Stranger Things!) tell you his semi-professional opinion:
“I have no idea what Stranger Things is about, but if confusion were a genre, this would still be a five-star production. At no point did I understand what was happening, yet at every point I was impressed by how confidently it was happening. I didn’t understand the plot, the lore, or the references, but from a quasi-professional Broadway perspective? Phenomenal monsters and effects. No notes.” - Dave Schefcik, 12/14/2025
So, it was a joy to be given a chance to get an early look at LEGO’s latest foray back into cosmic horror with the release of 11370 Stranger Things: The Creel House – an extremely key location in Stranger Things: The First Shadow and Seasons 4 and 5 of the show. BrickNerd was also sent a copy of 40891 Stranger Things: WSQK Radio Station which is the Gift-With-Purchase for the main set. But first! A little history…
LEGO Stranger Things
IMAGE VIA BRICKSET
The last time we saw a true minifigure scale Stranger Things set was with 75810 The Upside Down which was released on June 1st, 2019. I bought this during Brickworld 2019, and in true AFOL style, I still have that set MISB haven’t built it yet! I still intend to build it… eventually.
LEGO has otherwise kept the Stranger Things sets sparse with BrickHeadz 40549: Demogorgon & Eleven, 40801 Mike, Dustin, Lucas, and Will Figures, and a very highly sought-after San Diego Comic-Con exclusive Barb. So how does this haunted house and its paired radio station stack up against predecessors? LEGO Set Designer Mike Psiaki said this about the approach to designing The Creel House at Fan Media Days:
“How do you follow up that awesome, original set [75810 The Upside Down]? And we didn't want to just make another model where we made the right side up and upside down versions of something. And so, I actually got attracted to this idea of Victor Creel’s house, because it exists in so many different modes, right? It exists in the 1980s, it exists in flashbacks. It's going to exist in new ways in Season 5. And then it also exists in the upside down. It also exists as Vecna’s mind lair. I thought maybe there's a way we could make the house transform that could capture all of those things.”
A Quick Look at the Creel House
I’ve done in-depth set content in the past, but today I’ll be taking the Doug Hughes approach to BrickNerd set-inspired articles so I can get to the fun of remixing the set which I’ve enjoyed greatly in the past. In short: the sets are pretty good!
What do they have to offer the average LEGO Stranger Things fan? Let me tell you in 30 seconds:
Creel House Pros:
Central mechanism is so cool and so simple! Doesn’t get old to “tear it apart” and “put it back together.”
Fun room details inside the house are done well with clever techniques that fans of the show will notice and appreciate.
The minifigure lineup is just about everyone you could reasonably hope and want for. Many new prints in this capacity.
Creel House Cons:
House looks and feels just a tad too small and compressed. Lacks presence and playability on the inside as a result. I imagine this is due to the quantity of parts needed to pull off the mechanism and ensure structural integrity, but it comes at the cost of having a miniaturized house.
Significant sticker count, especially on larger elements.
Radio Station Pros:
Neat techniques used to create the furniture.
Radio Station Cons:
Effectively “locks” two desirable minifigures behind a GWP paywall. Expect intense FOMO.
The set itself, beyond the minifigures, is cute but doesn’t stand out in any way beyond its license-specific stickers.
For super in-depth reviews on the set, I recommend checking Tips & Bricks’ for a general overview and New Elementary for an in-depth parts analysis. And if you find the presentation of the minifigures to be slightly ‘wrong’ based on the show, TJ Bricky has done a good job of "correcting" the minifigures, which you can find here and here.
Let’s get on to building a remix!
Setting the Stage
Inspired by Doug’s Snow White project, the main house-splitting mechanism, and many vibrant LEGO backdrops, my idea is to extrapolate the set onto a base and draw out the dramatic visuals from the show by using colorful LEGO gradients. Specifically, the moment in Season 4 where the house splits down the middle:
Additionally, since the set’s main draw is the minifigures, a base will be a way to feature all of them while incorporating the same turntable mechanism that switches Mr. Whatsit into Vecna.
I started by measuring the length of the set to figure out how much real estate I’d need. By using the set’s footprint, I settled on a base that runs 56 studs across in two 24-stud and 32-stud sections (all while guesstimating if this was enough to fit everything). I vaguely plotted out where the house and characters would line up, all the while maintaining room in the back for my backdrop.
It was central at this stage to incorporate the mechanism to have a dramatic turnaround and I did this by copying the same mechanism from the instructions using a splat gear. I would have liked to have all the characters turn, but I found my splat gear reserves to be quite scant. I settled on having Will turn around in dramatic fashion with his alternate head print on.
Once the main mechanism was in place, I shored up the seams in my base and prepared to have plates cover all the mechanical bits underneath. Before covering, I included the first red gradient that would emerge from the ground. A simple SNOT gradient made bricks and plates from coral, the newish reddish orange, and standard red. A few supports on the gradient would rest on tile ‘tracks’ to prevent it from moving off track or hitting a snag while transforming:
Then I could cover and start to lay some literal groundwork incorporating the main two colors of the set’s base: dark tan and olive green. I used mostly tiles and jumper plates over the footprint of the set so I could easily remove and show off the back rooms as needed. The red tiles on the base add just a little more drama for the part of the set where the front porch splits apart:
I then created a second, vertical SNOT wall that would be the hidden part of the backdrop. This once again employed coral, reddish orange, and red. I also created some short and stubby 2x2 supports to help prevent any parts of the backdrop from tumbling over.
Next up were the large, blue backdrops featuring a gradient going from cool aqua, to medium azure, to dark azure, to blue, to dark blue. The blocked out sections of red match to broken up parts of the house when transformed:
With the backdrop and base in place, all the characters and vehicles would line up out front grouped by vague character association (along with the set’s lamppost and mailbox):
And with that in place, the only thing left was to plop the set down into place and take a look.
Before Transformation:
After Transformation:
Conclusion
This was a really fun exercise while homing in on the design mechanisms implemented by the design team. Prior to transformation, I think there’s a serene, spooky atmosphere. Post-transformation, there’s an added element of excitement and drama. After working on this project, I’m excited to see the end of the show!
Thanks to all the BrickNerds and Patrons who help out the site! What do you think of this latest set? How would you remix it? Let us know in the comments and check out more articles about Stranger Things here on BrickNerd.
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