December is here, and it’s time for another round of LEGO Advent Calendars. This year we have three calendars: Friends (set# 41016), City (60024), and Star Wars (75023). This was the year the Star Wars calendar was based on Clone Wars, which I wasn’t very familiar with. 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 2013 edition.
Day 1
Each of the sets gives us a figure: A Friends minidoll (Stephanie?), a City minifig (cop with black baseball cap and red mug), and a droid (R5-F7). They included an extra cap and mug in the City set. Here’s a photo of them all together:
Day 2
Day 2 of the advent calendars gives us a little model for each of the three themes.
Just like last year we have a little snowmobile for Friends, though this one is a lot more elaborate. Last year, City gave us a fireplace on Day 21, but this year we get one right up front on Day 2. And for Star Wars we get the first in what is undoubtedly many micro scale spaceships (Count Dooku’s Solar Sailer).
Day 3
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).
Day 4
Our fourth day in the 2013 LEGO Advent Calendars gives us two figures and a spaceship.
The Star Wars model is the “Koro-2 Exodrive airspeeder” which is of course a traditional Christmas image, unlike the girl in a sweater or a snowman. Oh wait, no it’s the other way around…
Day 5
For our fifth day we get 3 little models, and a lot of parts.
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 in Day 6.
Day 6
Day 6 gives us 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 in Day 5 – 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!
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. (Day 7 ran a bit late, but I added a picture to Day 6 at the same time.)
Day 8
For the 8th day of the LEGO Advent Calendars we get a bunch of food for our minifigs.
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.
(Day 8 ran a day late… a busy weekend meant I didn’t get to posting until Monday.)
Day 9
Day 9 of the 2013 LEGO Advent Calendars.
Friends continues the retail kiosk theme with a sort of pink trough, presumably to hold some kind of merchandise, and a little stool. City gives us a bench to go with the table from the previous day, and Star Wars has a Republic spaceship.
Day 10
Today we get tons of loose elements in Friends and City, and two new minifigs.
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.
Day 11
Today we have a purse, barbecue, and another mini Star Wars vehicle.
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.
Day 12
We’re halfway there! Here are the LEGO Advent Calendar entries for December 12th:
For once we have two entries that work together! In Friends, we have two Christmas presents, and in City we get a traditional Christmas tree. The Star Wars entry is a microscale Dropship.
Day 13
Today is Friday the 13th and we get a weird trio of models…
Friends gives us a sled. It has the new 1×2 panel with the divider which is good for Friends minidolls’ feet, but then it has the stud right under where the doll’s butt would be, so that looks uncomfortable.
Star Wars gives us a battle droid, pretty basic, with two of each kind of arm so you have lots of options there.
But the really weird one is in City. We get a spaceman with a magic wand. Perhaps this is George Clooney’s character from the movie “Gravity”? And just in case we weren’t sure what it was, they included two extra magic wands and an extra helmet. Huh??
Day 14
The 2013 LEGO Advent Calendars give us three nice little models for Day 14. This time we get a water fountain, wrapped gifts, and another microscale spaceship.
Friends brings us a water fountain, built around a 4L Bar impaled through an assortment of hollow-stud parts facing various directions, and capped with a trans-light-blue rock crystal representing the water (I hadn’t realized you could stick one of those on a 3mm bar end, so that might prove useful in something). City brings us two wrapped gifts to go with the tree they gave us on day 12 (and with the wrapped gifts we got in Friends on that day). Star Wars has a Geonosian Fighter (whatever that is … I certainly don’t remember those in the original 3 movies).
Day 15
For the 15th day of the 2013 Advent calendars, we get two minifigs, a park bench, and a boatload of spare parts.
The park bench in Friends is really simple, though anything that gives us parts in that shade of cyan (which is also the new Maersk Blue color) is worth having. The minifigs include a Star Wars Geonosian Pilot and an Octan mechanic from City. The mechanic includes some brick-built accessories (not sure what it represents) and more spare parts than the parts in the actual set!
Day 16
Today’s Advent calendar gives us lots of accessories.
Ice skates, spare tires, and a weapons rack… For Friends, we get ice skates! The model is kind of odd, but I imagine it’s a bench for putting on your skates with a little white table featuring flowers, one of which has a dab of snow on it? Nice to have a bunch of skates though, including one extra. Now LEGO has been giving us two extra of a lot of things this time around, but this time we just get one… wouldn’t two have made a lot more sense here? Sigh. Anyway, City’s model continues the Octan mechanic theme with a set of four spare tires and a barrel of oil or fuel, and Star Wars gives us yet another weapons rack, including a monster gun that looks more like a campy 50s sci-fi movie than a Star Wars weapon but I guess it must be another dumb Clone Wars thing…
Day 17
Day 17 of the LEGO Advent calendars.
The Friends calendar has a boom box with an iPod dock; City gives us the race car that goes with Day 16’s tires; and Star Wars has another mini spaceship from Clone Wars and Episode III, Padmé’s Naboo Star Skiff. The Star Wars model has a ton of small parts and some pretty good SNOT building techniques. I particularly like the telephone piece that serves as a handle for the boom box, the iPod tile, and the green double-cheese slopes (with an extra one!).
Day 18
We get three new figures for Day 18.
In Friends, we get the cutest little snowman! The body is made from a 1×1 brick with studs on 2 sides, allowing arms to be attached, and instead of the customary black top hat, we get a lavender knit cap! City continues the new color theme by giving us orange 1×1 round tiles, which I have never seen before in that color… also a figure with stubbie legs and a cool Classic Space theme torso, and the best part is we get not 1, not 2, but 3 extra of the orange tiles (and also of the antenna/lever part). Finally in Star Wars we get a scout trooper figure.
Day 19
For Day 19 of the LEGO Advent Calendars, we get three little vehicles and a torch?
The Friends thing seems to be like an Olympic torch. It’s a nice construction using an upside-down tile and cone, with a dark brown “flower” piece providing a hole that the flame can connect into. Clever construction but I’m not sure what it has to do with the other models in that calendar. For City, we get two little airplanes, which go along with the Star Wars mini-spaceships we have been getting all along, and Day 19 is no exception (Separatist Shuttle).
Curiously it seems that Flickr has made my life harder yet again… as of yesterday, they changed the HTML they generate to provide links to photos to use an <iframe> tag instead of the <a><img> that they’ve always been using (when I’m viewing a photo and click the “Share” icon, the HTML is presented for copy/paste). So while I’ve been just using that option to share the photos on my blog until now, I’m now being asked to give them a frame which who knows what they might try to use it for – ads? tracking? – and so I have started manually generating the link and image tags. Curse you, Yahoo!
Day 20
Today we get three miniatures in the LEGO Advent Calendars.
The Friends calendar gives us a nice little Christmas tree; City gives us a miniature fireboat; and Star Wars gives us Obi-Wan’s Jedi Starfighter.
Note: I noticed after taking the picture that the 2×4 plate on the bottom of the Christmas tree is on wrong and I missed an extra trans-pink 1×2 round plate, but don’t want to bother redoing the photo shoot. Sorry, I’m lazy.
Day 21
Happy Solstice everyone! It’s finally winter. Or summer if you’re down under.
Today we get a confusing musical thing in Friends, a choochoo train in City, and Boba Fett’s “Slave I” spaceship from Star Wars. The Friends model is really weird – there’s a 2×2 tile with some sheet music (the song is Frère Jacques in case you were wondering) on a clip so that a figure can hold it, but also some kind of strange thing with transparent 1×1 round pieces and a tap which I can’t figure out … some kind of horn maybe? The other models are straightforward: a cute little train with one car, and a nice intricate detailed model of Slave I.
Day 22
Day 22 of the LEGO 2013 Advent Calendars.
Today Friends gives us a medium azure box with a sprig of vegetation coming out from the bottom; Star Wars gives us a minifigure of the young Boba Fett (with torso and stubby legs in a cool shade of blue); and City gives us a micro scale excavator.
Day 23
Penultimate day of the 2013 LEGO Advent Calendars.
Today we get two sleds and a squirrel … Both of the sleds are quite intricate and well designed. I especially like the Star Wars one. And SQUIRREL!
Day 24
The final entry in the 2013 Advent Calendars, on Christmas Eve.
We get two Santas: a traditional one from City (with a cool Santa hat!) and Santa Fett from Star Wars. The Friends entry, however, is a really plain (if large) Christmas gift. I would have preferred a Friends figure with a Santa hat.
That concludes the 2013 Advent Calendar series … look forward to another series of them next December. Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to all!
Recap
Merry Christmas! The 24 days of LEGO Advent Calendars (Friends (set# 41016), City (60024), and Star Wars (75023)) are over, and here’s a review of all that we got…
Here we have all 72 models (3 calendars x 24 days each) laid out on a towel-covered table. The pics that follow show the models and parts in various combinations.
I set out all the models and spare parts for each of the 72 models (3 sets, 24 days) and took this photo, on a towel covered table. Sorry there's no pretty white background...
Just the minifigs.
All the minifigs from the 2013 LEGO Advent calendars
Christmas trees, hearth, lamppost, and gifts.
Friends Advent Calendar models.
City Advent Calendar models.
Star Wars Advent Calendar models.
Finally, we have plenty of spare parts. Whenever there is a smaller part such as a 1×1 round plate or tile, you will often see one or two extras included along with it… I’ve shown you the extras for each day as we’ve gone along, but here they all are collected together.
First, Friends spare parts:
Next, we have the City spare parts:
Finally, Star Wars:
This gallery shows all the images from Advent 2013:
[Day 21] I didn’t know what the thing was in the Friends Calendar either, and when I posted it on a forum, someone suggested that it was probably a lantern, which I thought made sense. So together it makes for a nice little caroling scene.
Happy New Year! :)
[Day 21] Ah, that makes sense…. thanks!