2014 Advent Calendar Roundup
Posted by CapnRex101,
So there you have it, our reviews of the 2014 LEGO Advent Calendars are complete! In past years people have complained due to a lack of scores for each build, so this year we decided to rate each gift, which will allow us to take an average for each calendar and compare them.
City:
(3.5 + 4 + 3.5 + 4 + 3.5 + 4.5 + 4 + 3.5 + 3.5 + 3 + 4 + 4.5 + 3 + 3 + 3.5 + 4 + 3 + 2 + 5 + 1.5 + 3.5 + 3.5 + 4.5 + 5) ÷ 24 = 3.625
The City Advent Calendar has been much as it always is. For every good day there is a mediocre one and it is best described as a mixed bag. Having said that though there have been some excellent minifigures, loads of brilliant accessories and best of all for me, a turkey!
Friends:
(4 + 3.5 + 2 + 4 + 5 + 4 + 3 + 3 + 3.5 + 2.5 + 2.5 + 1.5 + 3.5 + 3.5 + 3.5 + 3.5 + 4 + 3.5 + 4.5 + 2.5 + 2.5 + 4 + 5 + 4) ÷ 24 = 3.292
LostInTranslation commented: 'There have been some really great models, in particular of furniture and kitchen accessories, two nice minidolls and a couple of rare animals. The fixtures and fittings make for a nice playset combined with the calendar box packaging. However, some days have been disappointing in terms of the amount of building and in general I think it has not been festive enough overall.'
Star Wars:
(4 + 3 + 4.5 + 4.5 + 2.5 + 5 + 3.5 + 2.5 + 4 + 4 + 4.5 + 5 + 3.5 + 3 + 4 + 4 + 2 + 4.5 + 4 + 4.5 + 4 + 5 + 2.5 + 5) ÷ 24 = 3.875
There have been very few poor models in this year's Star Wars Advent Calendar unlike in previous years. I wonder if this is perhaps due to better decisions on which vehicles to recreate in miniature as some simply do not work well at a small scale. The minifigure selection has been great including plenty of rare minifigures as well as some we might like to build an army of and I was delighted to build a brilliant little model of Luke's Landspeeder on day 12, which I consider one of the best mini models of the last four years!
I think it is fair to say that both LostInTranslation and I found it rather difficult to apply a score to such insubstantial models, so in future we will probably not be rating them in the same way.
All that is left for us to say thank you to Huw for providing his brilliant photos to accompany our reviews daily and thanks to you for reading! We hope you have enjoyed the Advent Calendar reviews this year and that you have a Merry Christmas!
Update (by Huw): Because I was away at the beginning of December I didn't open my calendars as I was supposed to so have been able to photograph the 'instructions'. If you didn't have the sets they may be useful to you. High resolution versions are available at Flickr:
Many thanks to Chris and Lucy for posting the reviews and Happy Christmas to you all!
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17 comments on this article
At the friends calendar since there is a TBC instead of a number, the sum should be divided by 23, not 24. Am I right?
^ Sorry, I forgot to switch the 'TBC' to a '4.'
thank you so much for the reviews i really enjoyed them. nice to see how other people see them. =)
Great review of the reviews.
Thanks for taking the time to do them, and Huw for the photos. :)
Great Calendar Reviews this year! :-D
To all Brickset's members and staff, happy Christmas! :-)
NOTE: Probably won't be on here tomorrow, busy building LEGO sets. ;-)
Thanks for the instructions.
And Reviews.
Eh , none of the calendars did it for me this year. Except maybe Star Wars , so I'll try to pick it up.
I think overall the star wars one gets a 3.997 from me (that droid is just TOO awesome)
I haven't done an Advent Calendar for years, so I picked this city one (to add dressing to my Winter Village), and I'm mostly pretty happy. I don't think I'll do it again next year, though (I remember that the Advent Calendars mostly end up with the same things each year, so I'll wait a few years before I do it again).
Thanks to all three of you for doing the reviews!
And Merry Christmas to everyone on Brickset!!!
I think that some lego city instructions where bad...
But overall it was a good year :D
I really enjoyed the advent calendar reviews
I had the star wars one and it was nice to see what was in the other calendars and done days check which ship/vehicle it was seeing as I am not up to date in the clone wars ;-)
Great to have the instructions for all of them, gives some nice ideas for Mocing.
Happy Christmas everyone!
Ooh, please please please upload those to the info pages for each set here! I was contemplating if I wanted to cut off and keep all the doors.
BYE ADVENT CALENDARS!
Thank you, CapnRex101 and LostInTranslation, for doing the Advent Calendar countdowns this year--they've become one of my favorite holiday traditions! Some day I hope to have assembled enough of my favorites from these tiny sets to be a custom calendar!
I have 3,875 for SW! thanks for instructions
The daily posts were outstanding, especially for those of us who spent our holiday budget on other LEGO sets! It really was fun reading what was behind each door each day. And a lot of work for the reviewers and staff. Thanks for all of the posts and great photos! Micro builds definitely are gaining a lot of attention, and any photos and reviews of them are quite helpful to those of us planning to do more of them this year. Happy New Year to all!
Thanks for these reviews an pictures.