That’s me. Classy all the way.
Well, we’ve reached the end. The final day of Advent has both calendars giving us a Santa.
CITY gives us a chimney in addition to Santa – a nice touch. Too bad LEGO wasn’t as generous with the parts in previous days.
Star Wars has a unique to this set “Santa Yoda”. Well, it’s a new torso at least. And the short legs in red are also new with this set.
Since we’ve opened all the doors I thought I’d write a few words about my overall impression of this year’s Advent offerings.
CITY had more parts and a lower price point. They tried something new this year with the “build bits of scenery” idea. I have to give them credit for trying, but the execution was really lame. Did we really need another police station? Why didn’t we build something that would have fit in with the other winter village sets? And why the cops and robbers yet again anyway? Those winter village sets show that someone at LEGO understands the concept of “holiday”…why not apply that knowledge here in the Advent Calendar???
Compared with previous years this CITY Advent was about par. Some bright points combined with a lot of disappointment. A solid 6/10 “meh.”
Star Wars….I’m a bit more mixed on. I really liked the mini-model approach to the spaceships and some of those models were quite clever in their construction. The mini-figures were pretty sad, though. Why didn’t they load up on more iconic characters? I see the Advents as “gateway drugs” to bring in new people to the LEGO hobby… there should have been a Vader (or even an Anakin) and most obviously a Princess Leia or other female character in this set.
And the price point on the Star Wars set was WAY too high for the included parts. It felt like a gouge when I bought it, and I wasn’t even paying Toys-R-Us markup-of-death prices.
Compared to the other “specialty” Advents (Pirates, Kingdom, etc.) it came in a little lower in my opinion. Still, better than CITY at 7/10. A solid “C”.
Ah well. Maybe next year will be better.
My vote is santa yoda. City santa is really overdone. Yoda is a lot cooler.
My personal preference for an Advent calendar would be for them to bundle it with a big parts pack of at least 100 basic pieces that can be used any way the kid wants. TLG markets these items to appeal to the kids market, and it would seem that every time they do this they invariably aim for the kids. Right now though, I can’t see this having that much appeal to kids, they will invariably want more than just an Advent calendar anyway.
Well it’s not Yoda in a cristmas hat, but that is one cool Yoda. I hate to admit it, but despite my previous notes Santa Yoda clinches the victory for me (darnit~).
Yeah, these were very lame calandars. Last year was so much better, what with the castle stuff. Still, I like that bag Santa’s using.
And good joke, Doyle.
Thanks for the advent comparison. I’d been debating whether or not to get the calendars (and yes, there was the price difference between the two) – and in the main, my response was “meh” also. I was surprised that the focus was on cops and robbers for a “season of goodwill” event. Hey ho… perhaps I’ll get one next year… or not.
Santa Yoda is just awesomeness squared
The only reason I bought the Star Wars calendar was for the Santa Yoda. The printing on that torso is the best Santa torso I’ve seen, and I wish they’d used it on the regular Santas too. I anticipate that the figure alone will be hovering around the $10 mark on BrickLink – meaning you get more for your money by buying it as part of the Advent set (and even better if you can get in a sale).
^This
I basically went into a rant about how Santa Yoda has a better torso then actual Santa. I don’t really care if the beard covers up the torso, I think Santa deserves an epic torso to make up years of mediocre City Advent Calenders.
I personally think that last years City calender was best. It was a holiday-family theme throughout (Naked Santa being a bit iffy) and gave us some good models. This calender was completely lame. More cops and robbers, LEGO? Please, make this calender worthwhile and not just a part-pack to toss in the bin when finished.
Yes, that torso is great. I’m going to get it and the red short legs off of Bricklink.
All I need to do is replace the hands with white ones, put on some red legs (or red legs with white hips) and a CM gnome head and short beard with the standard Santa hat. There, a much better Santa. I’m using all the Santa minifigs from the past City anvent calendars (except for “Shower Santa”) as bad-imitation department store/mall Santas.
I’m getting the red short legs so I can make a kid version of one of my characters in my Lego animated series, Bricks.
I vote star wars because it is just the most wacky and bonkers star wars thing EVER
Someone has obviously not seen the Star Wars Holiday Special……
Totally agree on the female characters. This ugly trade-fed guy intent on war profiteering or whatever is hard to warm to… I’m repurposing him as a zombie soon enough. But wouldn’t a Christmas-themed slave Leia be adorable?
Next year it looks like Darth Maul gets to play Santa. I kid you not.
THE HELL DOYLE!Actually that makes alot of sense they got porn.
Also WTF!!!!!A SANTA YODA!WTF WTF!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! COOL!
In addition to the Yoda/Santa comparisons that Yoda wins handily, City Santa suffers the gross defect of having brown eyebrows. Actually, eyebrow-hair disagreement is a problem I’ve had with a lot of city figs, but Santa having brown eyebrows is more egregious than most.
I think it’s because that isn’t Santa, but a police officer dressed up as the prison santa, who gives presents to “good” criminals. Makes sense if you put the theme into context.
So…… “Officer Kringlepants”?
I’m not overly impressed with either calendar. I have to admit I actually liked the approach the City one took with the slowly-assembling police station, but I was really put off by the way they handled the car. Not to mention TWO half-ass ice-mobiles. The overall appearance could’ve been saved by a really special model (heck, even something the likes of Shower Santa’d been welcome at this point, if it were just for the surprise-factor) but unfortunately such never happened.
Speaking of surprises, Star Wars at least got that right. Santa Yoda really saved what would else have become a very poor calendar indeed. Even though it is way overpriced, I like the Star Wars sets Lego’s produced so far, but really. Almost no interesting characters (save for Chewie and Yoda), MULTIPLE builds that were unrecognizable, and let’s face it, that T-Wing was a bit easy, wasn’t it? To compensate, there were some pretty decent micros in this set. I’d give it a 6/10, but then I saw this calendar was more expensive than the city one.
So now both get a 5.5/10. Sorry.