The site hasn’t been the most active lately… 2023 has been a sledgehammer to the face of a few of us and it’s hard to get the time to keep up with everything. I can’t speak for everyone here, but the annual tradition of us opening all the calendars and being shocked at the iffy builds is something that we look forward to.
We’re doing it a bit different this year, or more specifically, Nick just couldn’t find all that much joy in just doing the LEGO Marvel Super Heroes. So he’s decided to do more than that one and compare them all a bit. Ace is going to do his normal review of it as well, and Eric will be covering Harry Potter yet again, for whatever the wizarding version of Groundhog Day is. And double the Star Wars!
We’re also bringing back our “random advent” calendar tradition, because it was fun last year. So tune in to see we go through and talk about. Maybe I’ll even bring in a special guest expert to talk about the one that Nick picked up…
Star Wars: 12 Hits / 9 Misses
Harry Potter: 11 Hits / 10 Misses
City: 16 Hits / 5 Misses
Marvel: 6 Hits / 15 Misses
Bonus Star Wars: 11 Hits / 10 Misses
Star Wars Day 22 – Ace
Not sure when that wedge plate came into existence or if its been used in a larger scale model but they are what makes this the most screen accurate Star Destroyer to ever be built. I’d take this over that $700 UCS model any day of the week. I guess LEGO isn’t afraid of kids accidentally stabbing themselves with the pointy end.
I first thought today’s chocolate advent were the solid milk chocolate balls but once I bit into the first one, I knew by the texture I was wrong. These are in fact “Lindt Mini Milk Chocolate Double Milk Balls” according to the back of the box. And yep, just like the other “double milk” offerings, it’s white chocolate on the inside.
Not sure which is worse, hollow chocolate or white chocolate filling.
Harry Potter Day 22 – Eric
Bench.
The range of quality between these builds is truly shocking. We’ve had some really good stuff, and then they hit us with the six-piece bench.
Getting to the end of the teas, and today’s is LEMONGRASS & GINGER. At the beginning of the month, I complained about how a lot of these teas taste like hot grass water but, strangely, this one does not. The ginger is doing enough work to offset the lemongrass, and the combo is one of my favorite teas of the calendar.
4/5. Solid stuff.
City Day 22 – Nick
Continuing our extreme theme, we get a Sleigh that’s been… kind of tricked out? There’s plenty of parts, and we can see where all the unsorted Chima stuff is going… but honestly, this thing is just ugly. Going to call it a miss, but we’ll see how it looks when we get the inevitable other part, given the clip on the back.
Marvel Day 22 – Nick
Okay, so, getting Wong in a set is cool. He’s not holiday, though, so that’s not cool. Given the character, he would lean pretty hard into Holiday stuff, and they could have gone the phone-in route and just put a Santa hat on his head and it would have been fun.
This is the version of the fig, with the Tesseract, that comes in the Avengers Tower and Sanctum Sanctorum sets – both of which are much more expensive sets. So this is by far the cheapest way to get him. But… it’s still just some random figure thrown into the calendar, that has nothing to do with the holidays. So a miss.
Bonus Star Wars Day 22 – Nick
Is there a term for a chibi micro build? I want to love this Imperial Star Destroyer, I really do… but it just doesn’t look right. It’s too stubby, the bridge is too big, and there’s no color where the engines are (famously made bright in the special edition back in the 90s). Hate to call another micro a miss, but this one looks off. These started so strong and so hot, but have fallen off at the end.
Pokemon Day 22 – Nick & Family
The cardboard stuff hasn’t been all that great, but this one in particular is just junk. The tab to put it into the side was too flimsy, and we couldn’t ever get it pushed in. Which is a shame, because it would have been a great backdrop for pictures. But sadly, it just went into the trash.
Previous Days
- Seasons of Spam 2023 – Day 1
- Seasons of Spam 2023 – Day 2
- Seasons of Spam 2023 – Day 3
- Seasons of Spam 2023 – Day 4
- Seasons of Spam 2023 – Day 5
- Seasons of Spam 2023 – Day 6
- Seasons of Spam 2023 – Day 7
- Seasons of Spam 2023 – Day 8
- Seasons of Spam 2023 – Day 9
- Seasons of Spam 2023 – Day 10
- Seasons of Spam 2023 – Day 11
- Seasons of Spam 2023 – Day 12
- Seasons of Spam 2023 – Day 13
- Seasons of Spam 2023 – Day 14
- Seasons of Spam 2023 – Day 15
- Seasons of Spam 2023 – Day 16
- Seasons of Spam 2023 – Day 17
- Seasons of Spam 2023 – Day 18
- Seasons of Spam 2023 – Day 19
- Seasons of Spam 2023 – Day 20
- Seasons of Spam 2023 – Day 21
