Tag: star wars

For Day 20 of the Advent calendars, we get a cool (and very detailed) Star Wars microscale spaceship, but the other two calendars are a little bland.

The ship is General Grievous’s Starfighter, from the prequel movies, so blah, but it’s a nice little piece of LEGO construction and SNOT (Studs Not On Top) design. For City we get a wheelbarrow with an extra wheel hub, for cleaning up the mess created by all those snowball fights, and for Friends we have a Shrubbery.

Day 19 of the LEGO 2012 Advent Calendars.

For City, we get a fireman. For Star Wars we get a microscale Trade Federation Shuttle. But where’s the Friends model, I hear you cry? Look closely in the fireman’s left hand – a handbag. Just one part. Really, LEGO? One part???

But we get tons of extra fire hats and coffee mugs. Speaking of which, has anyone else noticed that minifigs drink a lot of coffee? Seems like every set nowadays has one … every truck driver and heavy equipment operator in LEGOLAND is apparently sipping coffee all day long. I think LEGO may be working their set designers too hard, they need more sleep…

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.