Season’s of Spam 2024: Advent’s Galore Day 10

This has been a quiet year for the site… for some documented reasons for some that will probably be documented later on in this whole thing. But we’ve all been looking forward to doing the Advents, our yearly tradition that still happens to be a thing despite the fact that the internet is dead and it’s just bots talking to bots now. Beep boop.

Originally, we were going to mix it up this year but… things didn’t work out. Scalpers went hard in Dallas and the Star Wars Advent disappeared within a few days and never came back in stock, so Nick’s plan to do the Star Wars calendar fell through. We’re going to go with it just being the universe punishing him by making him do the Marvel Advent yet again. Something that just might finish him off this time.

We’re also going to do the newer tradition of going with non-LEGO calendars, because Advents are the new socks are the new ugly sweaters are the new yearly ornaments. Okay, that joke got away, but the point is that everything has an advent now.

Even Rocks.

That’s a hint, LEGO… bring back Rock Raiders. The world needs them now more than ever.

The scores so far:

• Star Wars: 8 Hits / 1 Misses
• Disney: 7 Hits / 2 Misses
• Marvel: 1 Hit / 8 Misses

Ace: Star Wars Day 10 (and Disney)

I never watched the Clone Wars cartoon so I don’t really have any feelings one way or another for Ahsoka. I did watch the Mandalorian where she had a small story arc. Haven’t gotten around to watching her standalone series yet but maybe this winter break I’ll sit down with the kids and binge it. So more or less this is basically a brand new character for me and I gotta say it’s really nice. The level of detail is just right on the torso and it’s nice to see the legs all printed up. The facial markings are also on point and true to source character. And the headpiece is just the perfect cherry on top. However, I take issue with the lightsaber blades. They are clear, or in LEGO AFOL terms, “trans clear”, which always seemed stupid to me because clear implies transparency. Ahsoka’s blade colors have gone through a a couple of iterations from green to blue to white. The minifigure we get today is sporting transparent blades, which tracks with her white blades from her live action series, and I hate them.

Lightsabers in the movies and small screen are always a solid color. You can’t see through them. Since day one though, LEGO has decided to make the toy counterpart from a transparent colors. My guess is so that any potential light coming through the transparent ABS could give it a glowing effect with mixed results. For those of us old enough to remember the LULS phase of minifigs (LULS: Light Up LightSabers), the addition of an LED light at the base created an effective glow effect at the cost of a minifigure that you couldn’t dismantle (and if the batteries died then forget it, no more glow effect and your LULS minfigure just became worthless). Other than the LULS phase, there hasn’t been any other practical reason to use translucent plastic for blades. But we are so used to seeing the transparent colors that at this point it would be considered sacrilege to switch to solid colors. Picturing a Darth Vader minifig with a solid red blade instead of a translucent red one is jarring but it’s only because we’ve only ever known it to be transparent. Translucent color blades worked well enough for years up until now. To keep things consistent, a translucent white blade is just this: transparent, so it makes sense that we get these clear blades, but I would argue that solid white would look a whole lot better. Clear blades have no hint of color and will be tinted by any color light that hits it. So depending on the color temperature of your room lighting, it can be whitish or even yellowish. Got some kind of colored indicator light nearby? That’s the color you’ll see, if even just a tiny ray of it warped by the blade. A solid white blade though? No chance it would be anything but white. Clear blades makes her lightsabers look like props that haven’t been turned on yet.

They should be white.

A snowgie (yes that is what they are called) see-saw, or catapult depending on how you’re feeling. It’s a thumbs up because by itself it is something that you can actually play with without depending on another day’s advent offering to have it make any sense.

But I do want to call out the fact that one side of the axle isn’t attached with a pin to a brick with an pin hole. Like, what the heck? It still works but it just doesn’t feel right. It feels like LEGO got lazy AND cheap.

Eric: Disney Day 10 (and Hot Sauces)

I am also doing the LEGO Disney Advent Calendar this year. I am not in the target demographic for this advent calendar, and that is okay. I am also eating a hot wing every day, tossed in one of 24 random hot sauces. Enjoy my pain.

WATCH ME EAT AND BUILD THIS ON TIKTOK

I LOVE this build. The little seesaw, the little snow guy – both great! For as much as I dislike Frozen, this little snow fella melted my heart.

But not even his little smile could save me from today’s hot sauce: MANGO MILD. Genuinely the worst sauce I have ever had, hot or otherwise. It was not spicy at all, of course, and it tasted of sour lemons mixed with garlic. Absolutely disgusting. 

LEGO Day 10: 5/5

HOT SAUCE Day 10: 0/5

Nick: Marvel Day 10 (and Rocks and Dice)

In the comics, Gwen is the drummer of the band the Mary Janes, named after… well, you get it. Kind of obvious when her name is in the band. Of course, if she brought this particular garbage drum set, they’d be the worst band this side of Oasis (who sucks, has always sucked, and will always suck – I will die on that damn hill).

As an actual build, it’s kind of fine, a weird mix of actual drums and electric drums, rather than the full size toms. But it matched her colors, rather than the colors we saw in Spider-Verse or in the comics (which were blue or black). The main problem, though, is that there just aren’t enough things to make a good drum set. At the very least, she needs another hi-hat or cymbal to make this anything other than some garbage toy drum set you get at Walmart for the kids of someone you actually hate. No actual drummer is just playing with a single cymbal or hat, rather than both. And in everything we see with her, she’s using a full kit with a third tom, three cymbals, and a hi-hat.

This has been drummer’s corner* with Nick, and this thing is a miss because it just looks wrong. Not even bashing the lack of holiday theme here…

This die is… one that I’m sure I have several of that already match. So I guess and advantage d20 for another set? Absolute solid mix of color and contrast for it, which as I’ve said is the most important thing.

I think this is Red Stripe Jasper, which is obviously the basis of the architecture of our new Rock Raiders theme. Even their ships use this rock to build everything, because they are going to use Rocks and raid Rocks. It’s a fine little stone, but they only use this sparingly on the ship for counters in the galley. Gotta keep it classy.

* I know a weird amount about drums for someone who can barely do anything with them. I was a saxophone and tuba player… and player of five chords on a guitar.