Advent 2008

This year was the first time I blogged about the Advent Calendars, a tradition I continued most years through 2024. At the time, there was a lot of sturm und drang on Lugnet.com about how the Castle calendar was only being made available in Europe, until LEGO offered it here eventually as mentioned in the Day 1 post. Each post was originally a separate blog entry, starting with Day 1, and continuing with a daily post about that day’s advent models. However, to clean up the site, I’ve condensed all those daily posts to a single post per year. Here’s the 2008 edition.

Day 1

Thanks to LEGO for relenting and letting us have the Castle advent calendar here in the U.S.! Having both that and the City set, I thought I’d shamelessly rip off the Reasonably Clever annual tradition of having fun with the advent calendars. Each day I’ll be presenting what I find behind the respective door of each.

SPOILER ALERT: Don’t visit this blog until you’ve opened the day’s gift from your Advent Calendar(s) or you may find out too soon what it is! This is your first and final warning!!

However, while I am a little clever, I don’t think I’m quite up to the standard set by “Reasonably” so I’ll just blog about each day’s entry without trying to make a game of it. If you want more cleverness than that, go see what they’re doing over at Advent Wars – for example, you can see what it looks like to open the Advent Calendar boxes for day 1. Plus, the Reasonably Clever comic, BRiCK House, will probably be invaded by Advent madness. It’s all fun and I don’t know where they get the free time for all that cleverness.

Anyway, here’s what I found behind Door Number One on each calendar:

If you look carefully you’ll see it’s the same face in each one! I guess they’re twins.

CITY: Guy with some of the Thanksgiving leftovers (Evil Twin)
CASTLE: Guy guarding the rest of the Thanksgiving leftovers (Good Twin)

P.S.: Yes, I really am waiting until each day comes around to open that day’s box. So if I am ever late with an entry, hopefully you’ll be understanding.

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.

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.

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:

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.

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.

Day 3

Day 2 had barely made it in before midnight, so I jumped on Day 3 right after to catch up.

Day 3 brings furniture and utensils for Evil Twin’s Thanksgiving feast. But it’s a small table for one, a frying pan, and a mug. Clearly the intent is he’s only cooking for himself. I guess that does make him pretty Evil. And doing it right next to his Good Twin, who’s hard at work guarding that arch thingy, is doubly cruel. You know the tourists who taunt the guards at Buckingham Palace, who famously have to just stand there and not make any reaction at all? I imagine it’s kind of like that. Good Twin has to stand there and smell the mouth watering-aroma of plastic turkey leg cooking on the open fire, without being able to make a move, even to wipe the drool off his chin.

At least Good Twin gets some new armor and a sword to fight off the bad guys, while his lazy good-for-nothing twin stands there cooking food for himself. Here he is, trying it on:

He’s lucky to get it on day 3. In WoW, a paladin can’t get armor like that until level 40 or so….

Day 4

Now we come to the real drama. Each calendar introduces a nemesis for our heroes! On the Castle side, we get a demented skeleton wielding a flail (mace and chain); whereas on the City side, we get a girl with ice cream.

Why do I say the fair maiden is a nemesis? Remember that I decided City guy was the Evil Twin, and if she’s pure and innocent and good, then she’s his nemesis of course! Anyway, here’s all the stuff we have so far:

Day 5

So today, we get some accessories for the nemeses (Skeleton and Ice Cream Girl):

How does this fit our story? Well, let’s say that Good Twin defeated the skeleton in combat, and Evil Twin’s hot barbecue melted her ice cream, and they both ran back to their respective home bases:

Here they are, ready for round 2:

Day 6

Today the nemeses get some reinforcements:

Ice Cream Girl, nemesis of Evil Twin, receives some shade and wheels for the ice cream cart. The Skeleton Guy has a reinforcement, who comes with a crossbow weapon for ranged attack. Combined with the previous skeleton and weaponry we now have four weapons for two guys, plus a shield as well. Meanwhile the nemesis of Evil Twin has no weapons at all, just a tasty and refreshing snack.

Things are not looking good for Good Twin.

Day 7

Reinforcements have arrived! Good Twin gets a comrade-in-arms to stand by his side against the evil undead horde, while the innocent Ice Cream Girl gets support in the form of a fireman to put out that nasty barbecue that Evil Twin used to melt her ice cream.

Day 8

On day 8, the City advent calendar yields a mediocre tree with a cat stranded at the top, while the Castle guys get an archery target, bow/arrow, and quiver:

This gives our Day 7 guys ways to practice and hone their skills prior to entering into combat. The knight from Day 7 practices his archery; meanwhile, the firefighter from the previous day practices his skills, honed in years of experience:

Day 9

Today we get two more accessories: a ladder for the fireman to climb, so he can rescue the cat, and a crossbow on a wheeled carriage (arcuballista) for the castle soldiers to ward off the skeletons.

So to summarize the calendars so far, we have three distinct scenes for City:

And in the Castle world, one grand battle gearing up:

My Good Twin / Evil Twin plot will have to wait for now…

Day 10

Today we get new minifigures for each advent calendar:

Fresh from Ironforge, a dwarf warrior joins the human knights in the Alliance to stand against the Horde undead (skeletons). What’s next, a night elf? On the City side, however, we have a chef with an oar.

Day 11

Today is another prop day.

City: Cherry pies for the chef. (I know most of you are thinking pizza, but LEGO has printed tiles for that. Cherry pie sounds more Christmasy anyway.

Castle: Gold Vein (Requires Mining 155)

(Sorry about the World of Warcraft in-jokes… ok I lied. I’m not sorry.)

Day 12

Day 12 brings us more props: a mining cart for the dwarf and an oven for the chef. Hooray for the dark blue jumper plates!

My World of Warcraft analogies are starting to fail on me … oh wait, I know! Deeprun Tram! Well, kinda.

And I guess that must be a pizza after all. Maybe it’s one of those weird Chicago-style so-called pizzas?

Day 13

Today we get a Frogman and a Frog.

The City calendar gives us a new minifig, so now the pie vs pizza mystery is forgotten and we have some kind of fish spear hunting guy with two mask/snorkel pieces, but no flippers or SCUBA tank.

On the Castle side, our intrepid dwarf warrior gets a new axe, a mining shovel, and a box to store them in. Oh, and a frog for a companion.

Day 14

Today the Castle theme gets a new figure – this time it’s a human warlock, casting a shadow bolt spell. She has apparently run out of Soul Shards and cannot summon her Voidwalker. Perhaps Day 15’s set will provide a minion for her?

Meanwhile the diver from Day 13 gets his fins along with a “diver down” flag buoy thingy and life vest. The fins are attached to the sprue from molding. Remember when 1×1 round plates came that way? Ah those were the days…. Anyway, I don’t see how he’s going to dive down very far to use his speargun with that life vest on!

Day 15

No new figs today but more accessories for our previous figs. The warlock now has a cooking fire and cauldron. I guess she’s leveling her cooking skill? I don’t know any recipes that call for snake meat in WoW though.

On the City side, the diver has one of those underwater self propelled units. Probably a good thing because with that life vest he’ll need some help getting down to any depth.

Here we see the figs with their new stuff. The diver had better watch his feet with that propeller so close and unshrouded!

But one thing I noticed just now was that the diver has the same face as the Good Twin and Evil Twin! I guess that means he must be Chaotic Twin. Here’s the family portrait:

Happy Feast of Winter Veil!

Day 16

I guess Day 15’s model represented the Alchemy profession rather than Cooking, since Day 16’s model appears to represent an alchemy supplies shop:

On the City calendar, we are supposed to get a photographer minifig, but I got a mountain climber:

Dark green legs FTW!

Alert readers will recall that I had a mistake in the Day 2 City calendar as well. I wonder if anyone else is finding these errors?

Day 17

Today the Castle calendar yielded up a Scrying Orb, while the City calendar provided some sort of interrogation chair for the missing camera-wielding policeman from Day 16’s set:

Day 18

Today both calendars bring new minifigs. In the Castle calendar, we have a female NPC (non-player character), probably an enchanting vendor, with broom and a rat. I wish it had been a cat instead of a rat, so I could say it was the Crazy Cat Lady from Elwynn Forest. On the City side, we have a suspect for the interrogation chair of Day 17. Will Day 19 bring a waterboard?

Day 19

Today we get a bearded railway maintenance worker for the City calendar, and a bowl of produce for Castle.

Neither is particularly remarkable, though the scale on the fruit & veggies is a bit out of whack with minifigs. No surprise, as they were originally made for Belville. But on the City side we get new minifigures two days in a row! That’s unusual for an advent calendar; usually they’re about every third day.

As for fitting these into any kind of coherent story, I could say that the produce is for sale by a food vendor, so clearly Day 18’s minifig was selling food in Stormwind, but the only kind of apples I’ve ever seen in WoW are red and I’ve never seen a carrot there, so that is tenuous at best.

Day 20

We’re getting down to the wire here folks. Today we get more accessories, but tenuous connection if any to previous entries…

For Castle, we get a really nice table and chair with gold metallic bowl and goblet (plus extra goblet and brown cylinders). So I guess our maiden from a few days ago is an innkeeper after all. Though of course the innkeeper in Stormwind is a blonde.

On the City side, we get a really nice pallet jack. Our train worker from Day 19 is supposed to use it, I guess, so I guess he uses it to load cargo onto boxcars?

Day 21

Today, the Castle scene gets a scary orc warrior, while Town gets an innocent-looking pallet with twelve bottles.

Combining this with the past two days, you can see that the orc is attacking the inn, frightening the innkeeper who has to fend him off with her trusty broom. (As you can see her face is reversible; originally from the Spider-Man sets, it has a happy expression printed on one side of the head, and a scared one on the other.)

Meanwhile on the town side, our villain, dressed innocently as a train maintenance worker so he could get into the warehouse, makes off with the bottles of mysterious and important-looking fluid.

(Twelve trans-smoke 1×1 cones! Hooray! You may recall that when I built my sushi bar I didn’t have enough of those, so I had to use black ones for some of the soy sauce bottles…)

Day 22

Six days ago, we got a bit of a surprise as the wrong minifigure was included in my Day 16 box. I was supposed to get a police photographer but instead got a mountain climber.

In the comments for that entry, we came to the consensus that today, #22, we would probably get the cop at last, as 16 and 22 are adjacent in the grid, and minifigs tend to come 3 days apart. When I opened the box for #22, I found that in fact, the climber is supposed to be in this box. What surprised me was that he actually was there, so now I have two of them, and no photographer.

The Castle set had no such errors; it yielded up a nice little catapult. Nothing terribly remarkable about it, though it is surprising how many pieces they included to make this item, as most Advent days are pretty light in the parts count department.

So anyway, I suppose all hope of getting that police photographer is lost. But really, I don’t mind. The parts included with this hiker are a lot more useful anyway – dark green pants, white backpack, etc. Though I guess I could call Shop At Home and complain, and probably get the missing cop in the mail….

Day 23

This is the penultimate day in the advent calendar… after tomorrow (Christmas Eve) there will be no more advent models to blog about. Happy Christmas Eve Eve!

Anyway, the City calendar brings us a snowmobile, I guess. Of course, it lacks any kind of motor or propulsion system, so I’m not sure we can really call it a snowmobile. Maybe it’s a sleigh and there just aren’t any reindeer? On the Castle side we have a treasure chest guarded by a spider, which translates fairly well into WoW, though in the game most treasure chests are guarded by humanoids, and the spiders you see in WoW would be about ten times that size.

Day 24

Today is Christmas Eve, the final day of Advent. Though I don’t practice religion these days, I appreciate the tradition especially when it involves getting LEGO :-)

Anyway, today’s entry for City is a girl building a snowman; on the Castle side we have the famous Court Jester minifig that people have been so excited about. I put him to work helping with the snowman:

Over the course of the past 24 days, we’ve had a number of extra parts accumulating. LEGO always throws in a few extra items from a few parts which are easily lost. I guess they are worried about reducing the call volume to Customer Service. Anyway, over the span of the advent calendars these pieces have added up to quite a pile:

Finally, remember the Good Twin and Evil Twin? Well, I went through all the models from both calendars and sorted them out into good and evil factions. Here are the good guys first:

And the forces of evil ready to do battle with them:

The snowman, of course, is the king of the evil side, and today’s minifigs are his minions. Mwahahahaha.

Happy Holidays to everyone! Hope Santa brings you plenty of great new LEGO sets!

This gallery shows all the images from Advent 2008: