Month: December 2011

Day 9 of the LEGO City and Star Wars Advent Calendars for 2011.

In City we have a minifig dressed for the Arctic. Or Denmark, at least. And he’s armed. Axe murderer or tree chopper? You be the judge.

Star Wars has the best day yet! This microscale X-Wing Fighter is all kinds of awesome. Or maybe I should say, a minifig scale model of an UCS X-Wing Fighter?

Accumulated items since the current story arcs started on day 6:

Day 8 of the LEGO City and Star Wars Advent Calendars for 2011.

City provides us with a bed and nightstand. Easily the lamest entry so far in either calendar. At least we get an extra mug.

Star Wars has a Rebel pilot – just the bare minifig, without any accessories. The orange visor is printed on his head, which limits that part’s usefulness, but then it’s a “flesh” colored head and I only use yellow ones in my models anyway. From my point of view, this is a pretty lame entry as well.

Accumulated items since the current story arcs started on day 6:

Day 7 of the LEGO City and Star Wars Advent Calendars for 2011.

In today’s City calendar entry, we get stuff to put beneath the Christmas tree: two wrapped gifts, a skateboard, and a helmet for the skateboarder.

Meanwhile, the Star Wars entry features a crossbow, hammer, and wrench, with a display holder. I’m not quite sure what this has to do with Star Wars, where blasters and light sabers are more the norm, but whatever. Tools for Chewbacca to play with, I suppose?

Since yesterday started a new story arc, and to avoid getting the “accumulated items” picture from getting too crowded, for now I’m just showing days 6-7.

Day 6 of the LEGO City and Star Wars Advent Calendars for 2011.

After the first five days it looks like we’re starting a new story arc. Now we have Chewbacca in the Star Wars realm – finally, someone I recognize! – and a nice little Christmas Tree in City. There was a glitch in the instructions for the tree – one of the trans-yellow 1×1 round plates was not shown in the picture under the flap, and I initially had two leftover of those… but I looked at the box art and found where they intended it to go. There’s still one extra, but LEGO usually does that.

Speaking of instruction mistakes, yesterday’s Slave I had one… a commenter pointed out to me that the two tiles on the top (the dark grey grille and the light grey smooth tile) were transposed. I built it to match the instructions, but the box art disagreed. Or rather, some of the places where it was depicted had it one way, and some the other way. For today I swapped it around as I agree with the commenter that it looks better this way. I did some Google Image Search investigation into what the original one from the movie looked like, and I don’t see a grille there at all, so it’s hard to say. Many of the images did have a darker part in the middle of the craft, and lighter grey towards the tip which matches the way I have it now, but I question LEGO’s choice to use a grille tile there.

Here are the accumulated items so far:

Day 5 of the LEGO City and Star Wars Advent Calendars for 2011.

Another piece of the City hoosegow has appeared, and LEGO has kindly given us a bonus 1×2 “POLICE” tile and for the second day running, an extra 1×1 brick! Usually the extra parts do not include bricks, so that’s generous of them.

This time I actually recognize the Star Wars thing, for the first time… it’s Boba Fett’s ship, the Slave I! I am beginning to get the picture here … the minifig we got on Day 2 is a kid (with really bad skin and hair) who builds models of Star Wars ships! So this isn’t a microscale ship at all … it’s a minifig scale model of a minifig scale model of a ship!

I must say I’m really pleased with the parts selection in the Star Wars calendar so far. There’s a lot of good parts and clever building techniques used in making these little ships. Kudos to the LEGO designers… hope the level of quality doesn’t drop off as the month goes by; they’ve set a high bar in these early days.

Here are the accumulated items so far:

Day 4 of the LEGO City and Star Wars Advent Calendars for 2011.

Our City miscreants have their marshmallow shooter ready, but now they have something to shoot at. The prison wall! If only they can knock it down, freedom awaits!!!

On the Star Wars side we have a very nice parts pack that builds what is obviously the legs for a lovely dining room table. Perhaps the table top is coming in the next day’s kit? (Seriously I guess it’s a battle droid, or perhaps a microscale space station)

Here are the accumulated items so far:

Day 3 of the LEGO City and Star Wars Advent Calendars for 2011.

Today, from the City calendar, we get a confederate for our convict, this one dressed in a cop’s uniform, the better to sneak them out of prison. That’ll probably work better than the marshmallows.

Star Wars gives us a giant foot from some kind of giant monster or dinosaur. I don’t remember dinosaurs in Star Wars, but it’s probably from Clone Wars – at least that’s what I always say when something I don’t recognize from the original Star Wars movies turns up.

Here are the accumulated items so far:

Day 2 of the LEGO City and Star Wars Advent Calendars for 2011.

The City box reveals a little catapult. Perhaps instead of a shiv, the convict is using the marshmallows as ammunition to try to bust a hole in the wall.

On the Star Wars side, we get a minifig having a really bad hair day.

Here are the accumulated items so far:

Day 1 of the LEGO City and Star Wars Advent Calendars for 2011.

In City we get our first minifig, a dangerous convict holding a marshmallow, which he is obviously planning to turn into a shiv.

The Star Wars box builds a nice little spaceship. I’d like to tell a little story about it, but I got nothin’. I am assuming it’s from Clone Wars, but I’m not familiar with that part of the canon. But it’s not a bad little collection of parts.

I reshot the photo to fix the white balance on 12/2, but it’s still really dark.