Advent 2013 Day 11

Today we have a purse, barbecue, and another mini Star Wars vehicle.

Advent 2013 Day 11

The purse in Friends is a simple bag with a printed $100 money tile and a coin (pearl gold 1×1 round tile), with one extra coin included. Pretty sad in terms of parts count, and nothing really to build (again).

The other two calendars have decently complex builds. The BBQ in City has plenty of trans-orange fire bits and a sausage. The flame shooting out the side seems a little unsafe though… perhaps we need the firefighter to come put that out before the fire gets out of hand? The six-legged walker from Star Wars is a nice mini-model with tons of spare parts.

Advent 2013 Day 10

Today we get tons of loose elements in Friends and City, and two new minifigs.

Advent 2013 Day 10

In Friends we get just an assortment of hair accessories in purple, but nothing to build. City gives us a female firefighter with a sausage on a fork and a nearby fire extinguisher – but a plethora of bonus parts! They give us not one but two extras of the sausage, its holder, and the nozzle for the fire extinguisher, plus a bonus fire hat and yellow cylinder. Star Wars has a clone trooper who probably would like to some of that sausage.

Advent 2013 Day 8

For the 8th day of the LEGO Advent Calendars we get a bunch of food for our minifigs.

Advent 2013 Day 8

Friends has a 2×2 plate with two mugs, a carton of milk, and a stack of plates that I think represents a fried egg on toast. Also plenty of spare parts.

City gives us a bunch of loose parts – absolutely nothing to build! There are two wine glasses, two bottles, a pizza, some lime-colored cherries, and two drumsticks. They included two extra cherries beyond the one in the box diagram.

And for Star Wars, we get a birthday cake in the shape of a spaceship. Or maybe just a spaceship. It’s one of those Clone Wars things I think, so I don’t really recognize it, but I saw a big version in the LEGO store yesterday. (OK I looked it up and it’s a Republic Gunship.) I like the way that the hinge plate representing the cockpit lines up perfectly parallel with the angle of the slope piece. Great, if simple, use of LEGO geometry on this one.

(Sorry this entry is a day late – I had a busy weekend and didn’t get around to posting this Sunday as I had planned.)

Advent 2013 Day 7

For Day 7 we get three fairly decent builds to make up for the previous day. Friends continues the retail kiosk motif with another little booth, City gives us a nice table, and Star Wars has a gun rack. So much for LEGO being peaceful. (Sorry for posting this a little bit late. But I took and added a picture for Day 6 at least.)

Advent 2013 Day 7

Advent 2013 Day 6

Today we get minifigs in Star Wars and City, but the Friends contribution is really quite disappointing. Star Wars gives us a Rebel Commando figure, and City gives us the robber who I guess will be using the crowbar and axe (and handcuffs?) from Day 5. But Friends gives us just a handful of parts for making jars and bottles of merchandise to be sold at the vending stand we built yesterday – looks like girly stuff like makeup and perfume, but to my eye it just looks like a very small assortment of not very useful parts. Don’t get me wrong – I like that Friends is providing a product line that appeals to girls, but I’m personally not a fan of makeups and perfumes anyway, and reinforcing those gender stereotypes doesn’t sound to me like a step forward.

Edit: Pictures!
Advent 2013 Day 6

Advent 2013 Day 5

For our fifth day we get 3 little models, and a lot of parts.

Advent 2013 Day 5

In Friends, we get a little booth, such as you might see at a winter flea market. The Star Wars calendar brings us a little Cloud Car (Hey, something I actually recognize from the original trilogy!).

But the City entry is a little baffling. We have a barrel with a crowbar, axe, and handcuffs, and a little wall with a bar protruding from it. Crowbars and axes make sense for fire departments, but handcuffs don’t; and the reverse for a police department. And what’s the little wall for? Maybe we’ll find out tomorrow.

Advent 2013 Day 3

Today’s Advent Calendar entries bring us a lamppost, a cute Dalmatian dog, and an FA-4 droid.

Advent 2013 Day 3

You may notice each day’s entry has a few extra parts. This is normal LEGO practice – they usually include an extra part for any small pieces included in the set, as these are the most common/easily lost by children, and it’s cheaper for LEGO to include an extra one than to have to fulfill a customer service request to send another one. I’ve also heard that it may be because LEGO parts are counted by machines weighing them, including an extra one of the most lightweight elements guarantees that they don’t accidentally short you by one element. Whatever the reason, it’s something LEGO has been doing for as long as I can remember, and I remember even when I was a kid having extras, and having to find a spot on the built set to place them. I don’t understand why they give us an extra cone, but not an extra trans-yellow cylinder, since the cylinders weigh about the same as cones and are a lot more easy to lose since they can roll under furniture easily… Anyway, since each day’s advent calendar entry is its own build, we end up with a lot of these little loose parts by the end of the month.

I really like the Dalmatian dog – I imagine that like last year we’ll be building a series of fire department models in the City advent calendar. The lamppost is not terribly original but is pretty cute regardless. It’s kind of hard to tell in this photo, but the droid is made of dark grey and dark brown parts (the LEGO Star Wars advent calendar models are based on Clone Wars this year, which I don’t watch, so I’m not very familiar with the characters and ships we will be building).