Advent 2011

2011 was the first year LEGO made a Star Wars Advent Calendar, so I was building both City and Star Wars this time around. As usual, 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 2011 edition.

Day 1

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.

Day 2

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 3

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 4

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 5

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 6

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 7

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 8

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 9

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 10

City fails to impress today, giving us a little campfire, and a fish-o-one-tail (as opposed to cat-o-nine-tails). Again with the oddly inappropriate weapons. Merry Christmas.

However on the Star Wars front, we have a mini ship that I would say was awesome, but I’m jaded after yesterday’s super-cool X-wing fighter: the Imperial Shuttle. More mini models of LEGO models built by minifigs.

Wouldn’t a micro scale house or garbage truck be more awesome than a dumb campfire? Who’s with me? C’mon LEGO, you can do better.

Accumulated items from days 6-10:

And as a reminder, here’s days 1-5:

Day 11

Today City brings us the third piece of the police/jail building. I don’t remember ever seeing an Advent calendar from LEGO where a building is made out of several days’ entries.

Over in Star Wars, the cool micro scale ship trend appears to have dried up, and we have a basic battle droid, which doesn’t thrill me. But I do like the extra arms – it comes with two of each type of arm, and bonus arms are always useful.

The battle droid doesn’t really fit with previous days so this time I’ll just show you a picture of the three parts (so far) of the police building put together:

Day 12

For the second day in a row, City provides us with a piece of the police/jail building. It looks like this completes the building.

Star Wars is back to the cool micro ships, this time with a clever little snowspeeder from Empire Strikes Back.

Star Wars doesn’t seem to be following the multi-day themes, so we’ll just show the updated police building:

Day 13

No jail or police station is complete without a cop. He comes with two walkie-talkies, which have been around since 1978, and two baseball caps, which are a new style this year. If he wears a baseball cap on a Tuesday, what do they wear on Casual Friday?

Star Wars provides the anti-R2D2. I’m sure it’s something from Clone Wars or maybe one of the prequel movies, but I don’t recognize it. It’s nice to get those legs in black though.

No group photo today.

Day 14

Today City brings us a crime-fighting desk, with a cute yet simple lamp using a minifig telescope as the pole, and a magnifying glass over a blank grey tile – presumably one being examined for fingerprints.

In Star Wars we have a simple yet effective design for a small droid, or very small scale car perhaps. I think it’s one of the little droids from the original movie that the Jawas were selling?

For a context shot I’ve brought together the police station, the recent police officer, and the new desk; and the recent three droids.

Day 15

In City, we have the chassis of a car, which from looking at the box I am guessing that tomorrow will bring the top of it, making a police car.

In Star Wars, we have a microscale Republic Attack Gunship (an atmospheric ship seen in the prequel movies and Clone Wars).

Thanks to Steven Combs of Bricks in my Pocket, who is also doing an Advent calendar series, though only focusing on Star Wars, I can now sound like I know what I’m talking about. He posted a link to the Brickipedia article about the Star Wars Advent calendar, listing what all the things are. (SPOILER ALERT – if you go to that page you can find out about all 24 days! For me, half the fun is not knowing what each day will bring, so be warned!) According to that article, here are the models we’ve seen so far:

• Day 1: Republic Cruiser
• Day 2: Nute Gunray
• Day 3: Nute Gunray’s walking mechano chair
• Day 4: Homing Spider Droid
• Day 5: Boba Fett’s Slave I
• Day 6: Chewbacca
• Day 7: Tools Rack
• Day 8: Rebel Pilot
• Day 9: X-wing
• Day 10: Imperial Shuttle
• Day 11: Pilot battle droid with gun
• Day 12: Snowspeeder
• Day 13: R2-Q5
• Day 14: Mouse Droid
• Day 15: Republic attack gunship

Day 16

Unsurprisingly, we get some more parts for yesterday’s car chassis today. I didn’t like the fact that unlike the police/jail building, you can’t make today’s parts into a single model… they can only exist as a model when applied to the chassis we got yesterday.

Star Wars gives us a Clone Pilot today, shown below driving the car consisting of yesterday’s chassis plus the new parts from today.

Day 17

Today we get the rest of the police car in the City calendar. It’s just a pile of loose parts pretty much, like yesterday, until it’s placed on the car-in-progress. I don’t really like this approach, as it feels like LEGO is trying to cheat us out of having as many builds as we would if each one were standalone. And it’s not even that good of a car. I’d rather pay $5 more for the calendar and have complete builds in each day.

On the Star Wars side, we get a display rack for Star Wars weapons. I am guessing this must be for the Star Wars fans to keep their collectible models from the movies. The wiki page (SPOILER ALERT) just says “Weapons Rack” so that doesn’t really tell us anything.

Day 18

Today, we have in City a crook with a crowbar, preparing to break into and steal the police car, no doubt.

Star Wars brings us another sweet micro ship – this time the Y-wing…. or maybe it’s another minifig scale UCS model?

Day 19

In City we have a safe, which our crook is undoubtedly hoping to pry open, by driving his stolen police car to the bank and using his crowbar.

Star Wars gives us an Imperial Stormtrooper who has been working in the coal mines. Or a TIE pilot.

Here we can see our crook with his getaway car and stolen goods:

Day 20

City seems to be switching to a new theme, perhaps for the final stretch toward Christmas.

In Star Wars, we have a UCS TIE Fighter at minifig scale. It seems odd to me that LEGO have never produced a TIE fighter UCS set – they’ve done an Interceptor and Vader’s TIE Advanced, but not a bog standard TIE fighter. Leave that to the fans, though… here’s a TIE Fighter MOC that looks just like what LEGO ought to have made as a set.

Day 21

In City, we have a trailer for yesterday’s snowmobile.

Star Wars brings us another nifty micro model… this one is the UCS Millennium Falcon scaled down to the size it would be if a minifig built it. (Well actually a bit too big for that, but scale is a fuzzy thing with LEGO anyway.)

Here we see the snowmobile trailer hitched up:

And here are the last two days’ Star Wars models, ready for combat:

Day 22

Happy Solstice!

City brings us another snowmobile, this one themed in blue and white … a police model, perhaps.

In Star Wars we get another cute little mini ship, the A-Wing (seen in Return of the Jedi) but I don’t think this one is nearly as good as the ones we’ve seen before. It’s just a few parts and I don’t really think it’s as well done as some of the others. Compare it to the Snowspeeder for example.

Here we see the whole family of snowmobiles and trailer:

Day 23

Merry Christmas Eve Eve!

In the City calendar we get a dog and two bones. Three elements and one of them is extra. LAME. I like that it’s the new style of dog, but still pretty lame in terms of parts count.

On the Star Wars side, we get a cute little Christmas tree made out of green plates. If you look carefully, you may notice the jumper plates are the new style, with the fingernail grooves. I guess they’re jumper tiles now.

Tomorrow’s the last day of the advent calendar, Christmas Eve. I’ll be recapping the whole series, so check in to see what we ended up with!

Day 24

Merry Christmas Eve!

Today is the final day of the Advent calendars. Both calendars give us Santa Claus.

In City we have a traditional Santa Claus, the same way that LEGO has been producing him for years in Advent calendars. He has a sack on his back with presents (two 1×2 tiles) and the same hat and beard that they usually use. The torso is not printed, which I found a little disappointing. But we also get a cute little fireplace along with Santa complete with hot coals. Some might say that was cheap compared to the flames that LEGO usually put into fireplaces, but to be honest coals are probably more accurate anyway.

Star Wars brings us a cute Yoda Claus figure. Or is it Santa Yoda? Anyway, his head is very detailed, but rubbery – not the Yoda I have from older Star Wars sets. The cute printed torso is awesome, and they should have used the same torso in the City calendar if you ask me, just without the green hands.

Recap

Thanks for following along for the past 24 days as I’ve opened and built the models for the 2011 City and Star Wars Advent calendars. Now that I’ve opened all 24 days, let’s review what we have got. Click each little image to see a full size picture.

First, let’s review all the calendar items, grouped by days:

Days 1-4:

Days 5-8:

Days 9-12:

Days 13-16:

Days 17-20:

Days 21-24:

Both calendars included a wide variety of minifigs and models. Here you see the models organized by type. There were also a lot of extra parts – LEGO always includes an extra one of each of the smaller parts included in any set, and each of these daily mini-sets always came with extra parts just like any other LEGO set. The combined pile of City and Star Wars extra parts is pretty impressive.

Minifigures:

Vehicles and micro models:

Other items:

City Police Station:

Extra Parts:

This gallery shows all the images from Advent 2011: