Dearest lemmings, I have a prelit Costco tree that changes from warm white to color and several of the lights are out but I cannot for my life find a replacement anywhere. I called Costco/Polygroup (company that made the tree) and they don’t sell replacement led light bulbs but they gave me these specs: LED dual color 3mm Green Base 20MA 1.8-2.4V or 2.8-3.6V. I tried buying a set of lights at Home Depot but they did not fit and my google-fu is failing me.
Find a friend with the same tree in good working order and give them a goldfish then about two or three days later tell them you won a weekend in a nice cabin by a lake about an hour from their place. You can’t go but they can take it a you’ll feed the fish.
When they leave, go in and swap trees.
The great thing about this plan is you don’t actually need to rent the cabin because they will never want to see you again once they figure out what you did, anyway.
Okay this made me ACTUALLY laugh out loud because I have pond goldies and over the summer they made more goldies and I was asking anyone and everyone if they wanted a fishy buddy lol.
Love it. :) lol
If it’s like old standard ones, here’s what you do:
See those metal posts at the bottom? Bend them straight down.
Lift the bulb out of the base.
Do the same to a burned out bulb.
Put the new bulb in the old base and bend the posts back up into place.
This is so clever! I have never heard of doing this, you guys I’m feeling so hopeful right now!! 🤩🤗
Did it work?!
Those look like press-ins, and they’re pretty standard. You could remove the bulb itself like mentioned, or you can remove the whole piece from another set and just press them into yours. I don’t know if you’ll be able to find individual lights though.
This is what we always did to give new life to our rooftop reindeer. They were also from Costco and it seemed like their bases didn’t match any other string.
They could be Phillips dual color mini LED lights. Target currently has a few versions of the strings and the specs list 3mm LED. The exact names on target are “Philips 210ct LED App Controlled Christmas String Lights Dual Color” or “Philips 200ct LED App-Controlled Color Changing Create Motion Dome String Lights” You could probably use the bulbs in your current lights, but the strings are kind of pricey.
There is another maybe from Sylvania that doesn’t list the bulb size. Amazon has “Sylvania Stay-Lit Platinum 100-Count Color Changing LED Mini Dual Lights”. Apparently Costco also used to sell these, but doesn’t have them right now .
It might not be possible to find just a few replacement bulbs, but I wish you luck.
I’m going to give the Target lights a try! They are a little more pricey but hella cheaper than a new tree and then I’ll have plenty of lights to replace for a couple years. I’ll keep you posted! Thank you so, so much for your help 🤗
If you can’t replace the bulbs, could you buy a new string with similar features and run it through the same pattern as the old string?
Could you post a picture of one of the bulbs? It would definitely help narrow things down
I added a picture and I tried searching AliExpress via the app but it’s only showing me trees and I don’t want another tree lol
These look very similar, although the listing is a bit vague on the specifics.
Oh wow! I’ll definitely save this in case the target lights don’t work, thank you so much!
With an image and that spec then you could most likely source them from AliExpress or eBay. It will however be a lot of work changing the bulbs since I’m fairly certain from that spec that they’re soldered on and thus not made to be replaced in a smooth fashion. Still very much doable but the amount of work involved, and the delivery time for the parts / tools you need and it might be a tough ask to squeeze in before Christmas. I’d probably just buy a new tree then if I end up with some free time repair it and sell it.
