Pixie Town is back at the Toitu Otago Settlers Museum, but in a slightly edgier format, partly inspired by American film director Tim Burton.
The show, featuring mechanical pixies, started last Saturday and runs until January 3.
Adding to the usual attractions this year are a five-minute-long musical composition by museum exhibitions designer Tim Cornelius, and a visual display, showing pixies in trees with a full moon above.
Mr Cornelius said he sought to increase the show's circus-like atmosphere, including through the music, and the show was always "a bit of fun'' for museum staff, as well as for visitors.
Part of his inspiration in the changed format had been Tim Burton's musical fantasy thriller The Nightmare Before Christmas, he said.
Dunedin resident Michele Rodger and daughter Ruby Duncan visited this week and Ms Rodger said it brought back childhood memories of seeing the mechanical pixies in Dunedin in the 1980s.
Museum visitor experience manager Kirsty Glengarry said she had heard many people fondly recalling their memories of Pixie Town as children and "they all bring their own children back to visit the pixies'', she said.
Pixie Town will be open between 10am and noon and 1pm and 4pm until January 3.
The first Pixie Town was made by Nelson man Fred Jones in the 1930s.
It became an annual Christmas event at the Dunedin DIC department store for about 40 years from the 1950s. After DIC's closure in 1991, some of Pixie Town found its way into the collections of the settlers museum.
In 2004, the museum re-established the tradition of bringing the pixies out to play at Christmas.
