Day: December 2, 2008

Advent Calendars, Day 2

Behind Door #2 of the Town Advent calendar, we find a grille, presumably for Evil Twin to reheat that leftover Thanksgiving turkey leg. Not sure why they didn’t just use a microwave oven though. On the Castle side, we get a little arch and flag so the Good Twin has something to guard.

Oh wait, it must be a flashback to before Thanksgiving! Evil Twin is cooking dinner – this must be before he went bad – and Good Twin is hard at work guarding the arch thingy. Ah, innocence.

Advent 2

But all is not well in Advent land. The instructions for the town set clearly indicate that there should be a 1×4 grey plate under the hinges.

Town Instructions

However, I didn’t get one! They gave me an extra 1×4 tile instead. That’s OK, because I could use those more in my collection anyway. But for a little kid this would be horrible – they wouldn’t be able to build what’s in the picture! Or if they did, it wouldn’t stay on; it would slide off at the slightest nudge. And little kids are very prone to nudging things, as everyone knows. Here are the parts I got behind Door #2:

Town Parts

So, after adding a 1×4 grey plate from my collection, I was left with a few pieces left over. It’s common for LEGO to give you extras of some small, easily lost parts, like the flame or a 1×1 round plate, but a hinge top?? That’s a weird one.

Town Extra Parts

I’m wondering if it’s just me or if everyone had the same problem? I should confess something at this point… when I went to BrickCon in Seattle, I bought an advent calendar at the LEGO store at a discount, and when I realized I couldn’t afford the baggage space to bring the box home, I had to cheat and open it at my hotel. I’m 99.7% sure that I didn’t have this problem then – I think I’d remember if I did.

Wow, just a few minutes before midnight – not off to an auspicious start. I’d better do Day 3 right after midnight to make up for it…

Santa’s Sleigh with Rudolph and the Reindeer by Vincent Pace

Every year LEGO comes out with an Advent calendar (or two) and most years they include some form of Santa Claus and his sleigh. But usually the sleigh is barely big enough to fit a minifig, much less a load of toys and goodies, and the “reindeer” is actually a single minifig-scale dog with no antlers or anything.

Now Vincent Pace saves the day. He’s come up with a great MOC of Santa, his sleigh, and a whole complement of reindeer – including Rudolph with a trans-red 1×1 round plate for a nose. He’s used white droid arms for antlers, and they’re all harnessed together to an excellent red and green sleigh complete with toys.

And best of all, it can be yours! He’s selling it on eBay with a starting price of about $60 (which is about what it costs to get the parts on Bricklink). There is a link to the auction on his site – use the above link or click the photo.