Ornament Review: Merriest House in Town - 2017 Hallmark Ornament

Stars: 5 out of 5

Pros: Delicious and fun

Cons: Didn’t you see the pros?

The Bottom Line:

Fancy gingerbread

That puts on quite a fun show

Result?  Pure delight

Whoever Created This Gingerbread House Went All Out

A staple of Christmas fun is the gingerbread house.  While I was never that good at creating them, I’ve seen some that were wonderfully elaborate.  However, I’ve never seen any that have gone to the lengths of the one in 2017’s Merriest House in Town.

When you first look at this ornament, you easily see a cute gingerbread cottage.  It’s got brown walls, but it has peppermint candy columns and ice cream cone trees, and wafer cookie steps.  There’s even a gingerbread man standing outside the front door waving at us.  It looks scrumptious as well and completely decked out.

However, this is a Magic Cord ornament, which means it comes with lights and sound.  When you plug it into the cord, you’ll see that the lights in the roof and windows and some outside decorations start to flash.  And when you push the button, the lights in and around the house blink in time to a song.  What song?  “Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairies,” of course.  Could there be a better song for this ornament?  The show only lasts about 25 seconds, but it is a lot of fun.

Really, this is a combination or a completed series and an unofficial series.  This takes the Noelville series, a town of gingerbread houses and adds in the crazy decoration elements that Hallmark has incorporated in several of their Magic Cord ornaments.  The result is fantastic.  I’ve loved all of these pieces.  How can you go wrong with dramatic music and lights flashing in time?

Being a house, this has a nice flat base, so you can set it out anywhere to display if you want.  Or you can hang it on your tree.  You’ll find that it tips forward slightly, which is a bit of a surprise.  The hook is near the front of the roof, and it seems they could have placed it back so that it would hang level.  But this is a minor issue overall.

Truly, I’ve loved all of the ornaments like Merriest House in Town that Hallmark has released, so as soon as I saw it, I knew I had to have it.  And I’m not disappointed in the slightest.

Original Price: $34.95