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