So another year, and mostly the same format: Ace handling Star Wars, Eric looking at Harry Potter, and in a shocking turn of events, Nick not having to deal with a Marvel calendar dedicated to causing physical pain – he’ll be handling City this year because while his kids may be into Minecraft he decidedly is not (and also that thing was impossible to find in his area). As always, there will be some extra special bonuses, a lot of cheeky writing, tons of typos and things we miss that someone will demand we go and hire an editor to fix.
We will not do that.
Ace (Star Wars) – 2 Hits / 3 Misses
Eric (Harry Potter) – 2 Hits / 2 Misses / 1 Harry Potter
Nick (City) – 4 Hits / 1 Miss
Nick (Star Wars) – 1 Hit / 4 Misses
Ace – Star Wars
Gonna put this out there right now: this is the worst LEGO Star Wars Advent Calendar ever.
What is this? Some sort of homegrown utility droid? And I don’t mean “homegrown” as in cobbled together with spare parts on Tatooine, I mean it as in these are literally just parts thrown together with no rhyme or reason. I assume this is the front because that’s how the picture looked on the inside of the door flap. But this could have been the front too:
And no one would be the wiser. That black thing is a spoon. I’ve been so out of it, someone is bound to tell me that this droid appeared in some obscure one-shot cartoon and it’s name is X5-D7 or some such thing.
Just the worst.
Eric – Harry Potter
Does anyone remember the Jelly Belly Every Flavor Beans? They allegedly had flavors like “grass” or “stinkbug” or “toothpaste”. I really liked the toothpaste one.
Anyway, this is an extremely straightforward build, but, hey, it’s a box of Jelly Beans. I ain’t looking for Gothic Architecture here. The printing on the tile is great, although this does really pigeonhole this tile from future MOC use.
Nick – City
The micro builds in the city calendar continue on a path to being absolute bangers… even better than the tiny little bulldozer in my mind. I had so many toy tractors when I was a kid, and wish I would have hung on to them because some of those old metal things are worth serious money. Also don’t judge me… I grew up in Iowa. Tractors were everywhere on this little hit. If I had any tiny quibble, it’s that the 1×1 tile over the cabin should be white, and not red. But that’s more of a preference thing.
It was so nice of the designer to let their four year old grab some extra parts and put something together. I still have the first MOCs that my kids ever made with their LEGO, and also included a note so I remembered what they thought they actually were. Is it a GONK that’s been retrofitted to janitorial work? A wildly inefficient toolbox? What you get when you ask Elon Musk or most AI tools to design “the trashcan of the future”? I don’t know, but it’s a miss for me.
Easily my favorite of these little minis so far… in part because I love ramen, especially that little soft boiled egg and the fish cake. I love fish cake enough that I make the long trek to the east Asian supermarket across the street from my house to get a couple of frozen logs of it fairly regularly. I’m not sure the flavor if, hopefully not Axolotl, but this is just adorable.
