'The Bradford Exchange Thomas Kinkade Christmas Village Illuminated Musical Snowglobe, Featuring 8 Christmas Melodies

The first one I bought had to be returned. The replacement worked well for the first year, but the liquid had become slightly cloudy after the that, and a small bubble had appeared: this despite it being carefully packed away after Xmas. Over the next couple of years the bubble increased in size, and the motor stated to make a grinding noise. This year the motor stopped working (but not making its grinding noise). I appreciate that it’s now 6 years old, but at a price of over £100 I’d rather hoped/expected it to last better than this. Meanwhile, the cheaper (clockwork) snow-globe that I bought at much the same time works perfectly. Not only is this poor value for money, it’s also poorly made.

My Mum just loved this. It made her cry. So worth the cost. Working fine upon arrival and through Christmas.

It’s a shame that there is no charger with it

The product images for this haven’t been photoshopped as another review indicates. In a way, it’s even more misrepresentative. The images are stylised artist’s impressions of the snow globe rather than real (or even manipulated) photographic images.I knew to expect this as I have bought Bradford Exchange Christmas ornaments for my Mum before and always do a web search for real pictures before buying as there can be quite a gulf between the depicted item and the real life thing. I have added pictures of the snow globe I received.In this case, the scale and detail is less good in real life, and the colours significantly less vivid. The quality of the painting is nothing like as clean as the depicted snow globe, and there is a lot of plain, white space to the parts inside the dome which is not at all how this is shown in the images. The globe isn’t well decorated in all 360 degrees either - there’s a definite front/back distinction, where the back is distinctly lacking in ornamentation (mostly just plain trees).However, Mum is desperate for one of the snow globes with self-moving snow and she loves this stuff - so that’s Christmas sorted.I was disappointed to find that although this has the capability to run on mains power, no power adapter was included. At almost £140, I really think one should have been there - this is a lot smaller than the animated Christmas trees I have bought in the past, and there’s not a great deal of price difference. Instead, unless I can find a suitable adapter, this will have to be battery powered. I don’t like this much: the snow globe is quite heavy, and the battery compartment is in the underside of the base - considering all the small resin components it’s quite risky turning this over to replace batteries. Especially for a pensioner with arthritic hands like my Mum.

Everything in this picture has been photoshopped. The item received looks nothing like the picture - the shape of the snow globe is different; the positioning of the actual snow globe is different; figurines depicted in the picture don’t exist; you’d get more illumination from a dead firefly; the snow collects on the tiny house in the snow globe after 30 seconds so you end up with only four bits of snow floating around... I could go on. A complete rip off, really disappointed. This was also delivered in just it’s polystyrene packaging with the certificate of authenticity slapped on the side for all to see. Cost vs quality is extremely unbalanced. Will be returning.