Advent 2013 Review

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. Click each image for a larger view (on Flickr).

Just the minifigs.

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:

Advent 2013 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! I’ll be back tomorrow with a review of the things we found in the calendars.

Advent 2013 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.

Advent 2013 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.

Advent 2013 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.

Advent 2013 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 today 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!

Advent 2013 Day 18

We get three new figures for Day 18.

Advent 2013 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.

Advent 2013 Day 17

Day 17 of the LEGO Advent calendars.

Advent 2013 Day 17

The Friends calendar has a boom box with an iPod dock; City gives us the race car that goes with yesterday’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!).

Advent 2013 Day 16

Today’s Advent calendar gives us lots of accessories.

Advent 2013 Day 16

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…