It’s the most wonderful time of the year! Yes, it’s the holiday season, but it’s also the return of our annual LEGO advent calendar extravaganza. We’ll be opening our calendar windows every day in the run-up to Christmas. Our team will also share their thoughts, comments, observations and jokes about each day’s builds!
We have five advent calendars this year, across the City, Friends, Star Wars, Marvel (specifically Guardians of the Galaxy) and Harry Potter themes. It’s Christmas Eve, which means we’ve reached the last of our daily builds! Read on to see what our team makes of this last hurrah, and the calendars as a whole…
The Friends and City calendars have sometimes been guilty of copying each other’s homework this year, but since it’s Christmas, the fact we get a pair of Santa Clauses today should come as no surprise.
It’s a full house of figs, with minifigures appearing in the last day of the licensed calendars. It’s the second time we’ve had Christmas sweaters in both the Marvel and Star Wars calendars too – this time adorning Drax and R2-D2 respectively. Drax comes with a sprue of four purple Infinity Stones for good measure. Harry Potter has saved the true hero of Hogwarts for last; Neville Longbottom and the sword of Godric Gryffindor was totally unexpected for me, and I genuinely laughed out loud when I realised who it was.
Bart: That is one hot looking Santa on the left.
CJ: The dancing baby Groot sweater is a great recovry for GotG, and R2’s isn’t bad either. The contrast between the City and Friends Santas is… Striking? Yeah, let’s go with “striking”.
Kyle: I wonder how they landed on that specific colour of plate under Neville.
Ben: I think they may have saved some of the big draw figures til last this year: Christmas jumper R2, Christmas jumper Drax, two Father Christamases and Neville Longbottom in his Christmas cardi-er… Never mind, just Neville. Still a great and useful figure outside of Harry Potter though.
Chris: I’m not much of a fig collector so I’ll be honest in that these don’t hold a lot of draw for me, but all the Christmas sweaters are cute and well done. I have to say that the Friends Santa looks more like a doorman though. And while this isn’t new to this year, can we all take a moment to appreciate that we finally have a proper minifigure Santa Claus that’s not wearing a red pirate rag?
So that’s our lot for this year’s advent calendars! The group shots are below – what did we think, team?
CJ: It feels like there was something to recommend in each of the advent calendars this year. To me the standouts are the holiday variant minifigures in the Star Wars and Guardians sets, always a festive treat. City was the usual mix of generalised holiday fun, and Friends had the best tree. Even though I’m not a HP fan, I have to admire the micro builds in that set – the designs there were really spectacular. All in all, a pretty good year for advents!
Ben: No weapons rack in Star Wars! The holiday variant figures across the board are on point this year. With the GotG Holiday Special now out there are a lot of call outs to the one shot featured throughout these (no Kevin Bacon though).
The winners for me are the micro builds across the board. It’s always interesting to see what the LEGO designers can pull off with limited parts and I love this. It shows the masses what can be achieved through inventive parts usage – who uses roller skates as roller skates anyway?
[Ben raises a good point – by my count there were 9 roller skate pieces, plus spares, across all the calendars, and not once were they used as actual roller skates!]
Chris: Oh there’s that rocket sleigh! It’s not a horrible build I suppose, but taking up 3 days for that? What a waste.
Anyway, I think the Star Wars and Harry Potter calendars are the clear winners here with loads of amazing models. Guardians and Friends were a mixed bag, with some lovely models and also some distinct duds. City fared the weakest this year, with just a few really good builds and lots more forgettable ones.
Getting into the festive spirit, it’s nice to see that Raze, Rocket and Roger have all forgiven each other. It’s a good job Neville has that sword as well – Drax only has a fork and spoon, and someone needs to carve the turkey!
It only remains to wish you a happy holiday season, dear reader, on behalf of the whole team here at The Brothers Brick! Thank you for reading and building along with us this advent calendar season, and may your presents rattle when you shake them!