Tag: lego advent 2012

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.

For the eighth day of Advent we get three nice little models.

The Star Wars spaceship is one I don’t recognize, but I like those curved parts on the wings. The Friends set is a little table and stool, with a 2×2 round brick and 2×2 square tile in lime green and a pink mug. The most elaborate is the City model, a little wall with skis and poles, which matches the wall we saw in Day 5.

Day 7 brings us two very detailed models in City and Star Wars, and a great accessory pack in Friends.

Especially compared to yesterday’s small parts count, this is a pretty big haul. The Naboo space ship has 16 parts plus the 3 extras, and the little remote control fire truck and remote control has 17 parts and 4 extras. The space ship in particular is a pretty detailed build, and involves some really clever SNOT techniques. I especially liked the use of the two clips behind the cockpit to hold the tail in place.

Here we have three figures for Day 6 of the LEGO Advent calendars. Star Wars gives us a battle droid, Friends gives us a girl with a Christmas sweater, and City gives us a kid throwing snowballs with a safety helmet.

 

Since it was after midnight when I posted Day 4, I’m going to put up Day 5 now too…

In Day 4, we got a staircase with a magic wand in City, so now of course a brick wall with an axe hanging from it is the obvious next step… Obviously. I suppose these are all related in some way to firefighting? The yellow thing could be a fire extinguisher, and firemen use axes, and brick walls are fire-resistant…

I don’t know what the brown thing is in Star Wars… some kind of land-based vehicle I assume. I don’t really know much about Star Wars outside of the original three movies, and I don’t think this was from those.

The Friends set has a lovely little snowman – finally something that makes sense.