Tag: advent calendars

We’re 3/4 of the way through Advent, and today we find a wrapped gift, a Star Wars rebel trooper, and a dog with fire hydrant.

None of these are challenging builds to say the least, but I like the pairing of the dog and fire hydrant. I wonder what’s in the wrapped box?

And again we get double bonus visors. Can you name some uses for those other than snapping them on a helmet?

The 17th day in the Advent Calendars gives us thee little models

The mailbox from Friends is cute, but not exactly a complicated model. More pink cheese, yay.

In City we get a snowball catapult, with much bigger ammo than yesterday‘s snowball-throwing minifigure. Press the red button!

And in Star Wars we get a cute little vehicle, not sure what it is but FBTB tells me it’s a “flash speeder.” I like the green, it helps me to restock my supplies after building Kermit.

 

For the 16th day we get a very cool Star Wars spaceship, a little girl with snowballs for City, and in Friends, a bucket and broom with … more snowballs?

The ship is nicely made and very swooshable, again Star Wars wins hands-down.

The City figure has a nice torso pattern that I don’t think I’ve seen before.

I’m not quite sure why one would want a bucket and broom for snowballs, but at least we have more ammo for the girl from City.

The 15th entries in each of the three LEGO Advent Calendars give us another vehicle for the Friends snowmobile/sled train, another wall of firefighting equipment for City, and a Star Wars (Empire Strikes Back) Imperial Snowtrooper.

The Snowtrooper has a printed face and you can see through the eyeholes to.. his forehead? Fail.

Day 14 of the LEGO Advent Calendars gives us three pretty simple and unexciting models.

Star Wars has some kind of weapons station, which strangely enough has a light sabre mounted by its blade??? Also there’s an extra blade (trans-red 4L bar), but it’s shown in the instructions so I don’t think it counts as an extra part.

City has a box and two fires. Okaaay.

Friends has a little dog bed and bone. I guess the brackets in dark teal are kind of nice to have.

Overall I’m struck by the variety in complexity in these models. Some days we get some pretty complicated and awesome little models, especially in Star Wars, and other days like today, it seems like they’re kind of phoning it in…

We’re now just past half way to 24, and here’s what I found under flap #13 of the three LEGO Advent Calendars.

For Friends, we have a little stool and a water bowl for yesterday’s puppy. Yawn.

City gives us a desk with a computer and keyboard – printed parts, which is nice. But other than that, pretty unexciting.

Star Wars gives us a droid, I think I recognize it from one of the original movies but I don’t remember what it’s called or which movie. Anyway, it’s a simple boxy shape without any particularly interesting parts.

So overall, today’s a bit disappointing.

For 12/12/12 we get two minifigs and a puppy.

LEGO always includes extras of small parts, but it’s rare to find two extras as we find with the guy’s goggles. Aside from that, I don’t have much to say about today’s models. I like the minifig parts though; they’re all useful. And the puppy is adorable!

Today, we get a Christmas gift, a quad bike (belonging to the fire department?), and an Ion Cannon from Star Wars.

The pink and white box from Friends is a pretty lame model, and the little pawprint round tile can’t be mounted in the center on the provided jumper plate. But if they’d given us a regular 1×2 plate, it would be. The round tile has more ways of being attached to LEGO studs than most 2×2 parts, and in this instance you can see that I’ve attached the stud not in the “corners” of the round tile, where notches for studs are clearly visible, but in the center of the side of the part. (The instructions in the box were not clear about exactly how to attach it, since it showed the tile hovering above the pink and white box.)

The quad bike is a cute little design, and clearly the wheels from yesterday’s entry were meant for this little vehicle:

The Star Wars model is a little unexciting, though I suppose the black 3 stud diameter radar dish is a nice part to have.

Today’s Advent Calendars give us two parts FAIL and one part WIN. In order of decreasing win we have an AT-AT, a hand truck of tires, and a sled trailer that can be towed behind the snowmobile/sled we found in Day 2.

The AT-AT walker in the Star Wars set is absolutely adorable, isn’t it? Awww. And I like the telescopes in light grey, which I don’t think I’ve seen before.

But the other calendars have problems. First in City we have a hand truck for schlepping four tires. But only three tires actually fit on it, so you have to make two trips (at least the diagram on the box shows that correctly). But the problem is that the hand truck barely holds the tires as shown. The stack of three tires is very precarious, and falls over easily.

However, the big fail is in Friends. I’m missing a part!! As you can see above there is a white 1×4 plate missing. I fished out a plate from an earlier day’s entry to build it properly, and you can see the fixed one here:

But isn’t that AT-AT so cuuuuuute?? So far I’m liking the Star Wars calendar best overall, how about you?

For the first time we get models in the three Advent calendars that I can use to compose a little scene:

The Star Wars calendar yielded a Hoth rebel trooper (I think), and we have some kind of repairman in City, and Friends gives us cupcakes and milk for them to share. Aww.