Finding cool Lego stuff can be a bit tricky if you live in Sweden. There are no official Lego Stores, so it’s usually crammed together with any old toys, although usually in a prominent place. Places that are actually dedicated to Lego are few and far between. I’ve recently heard about Brixit in Örebro, and apparently Lego has a dedicated space at Åhlens City in Stockholm, but the one I visited this Christmas is quite something.
HB Adventure is a store/Lego museum created by Hans Brettschneider after his winning of Robinson Karibien (a 2009-2010 spinoff of the Swedish Survivor TV series). Situated on a backstreet near the center of Skellefteå, it’s a fairly small location but packed to the brim with Lego, buyable sets and glassed displays anywhere you look. Hans is particularly into Star Wars Lego, so there’s a ton of that. It’s hard not to notice the gigantic Millennium Falcon display at the entrance, but around the store you can also find most of the UCS collectible Star Wars sets with all the major spaceships, a Darth Maul bust, the awesome R2-D2, custom displays of the Hoth battle, the Endor Battle and a huge Tatooine scene, as well as a collection of every single commercially released Star Wars set sorted by year, going back to 1999. I didn’t spot the biggest version of the Super Star Destroyer, but apart from that they’re all present and accounted for.
Other than Star Wars the main room offers a few classic Town sets, a big Space monorail display, a generic Castle display with dragons and stuff, as well as a few minor displays below the main ones. There’s also loads of Ninjago, some more obscure sets like Toy Story and Mickey Mouse, as well as a small MOC homage to Hans’ adventures in Robinson.
Passing the wall of regular sets for sale, you also pass another display case which has many of the Architecture series as well as two huge Pirates of the Caribbean ships. On top of the Star Wars series displays there’s also the Tower Bridge which is quite impressive. This area leads to the back room which has a mix of sets for sale but is mostly filled with displays. All of the Indiana Jones Lego is here, as well as all of the Harry Potter sets and some cool builds like the Statue of Liberty, Taj Mahal and the Space Shuttle. The main street with the modular buildings (five of them) finally gave me a good look at them in real life, but I managed to resist buying the Pet Shop which was the only one they had for sale.
There’s also an extended Helm’s Deep display in this area and a winter village, as well as a MOC cabinet which has the local bus, a really impressive water tower (right) designed after a local one, and some random things. Tucked into a corner is also a few classic sets like the yellow Castle castle and a police station.
Even with loads of pictures it’s hard to even take in the entire place. I could probably spend hours there just looking closer at all the sets. I also haven’t mentioned the minifig drawers with most of the collectible sets available, as well as some random spare parts. As mentioned, it’s not an official Lego Store so it doesn’t have quite as much stuff for sale, but on the other hand it’s a fascinating place to visit for all the displays.
It was probably partly due to the season, but there were loads of visitors while I was there, so they seem to be doing just fine. Overall slightly better prices than the general toy stores also help, but unfortunately they can’t compare to online or US retail, obviously. I got the ”The Unexpected Gathering” set since I always wanted a Lego version of Bag End, as well as a few loose minifigs. If you’re ever in the vicinity and have any kind of interest in Lego, it’s well worth a visit. If nothing else, it certainly rekindled my interest back when I first saw it…
You can find the shop at hbadventure.se (in Swedish). The builder of the water tower also has some cool interior pictures here (it’s built as a modular).