Friends Advent Calendar - Day 24
Posted by MeganL,
Merry Christmas Eve, everyone! This is one of my favourite days of the year - not the least because we open the last door of the advent calendar, and complete all the builds! Past Friends calendars have been somewhat disappointing on the last day - I've expected a substantial build, and many times the build not been all that exciting. Let's see how the Friends advent calendar ends this year.
Well, I'd say this is consistent with previous years in that the calendar is ending on an anti-climactic note. Don't get me wrong, I think this is a lovely build - maybe the prettiest of the calendar. I think it would have been better suited sometime earlier in the month. I've used a different colour background in order to be able to show the transparent blue pieces. I particularly like the use of the newer transparent blue pieces.
Overall thoughts
This calendar is a little bit of a mystery to me. It wasn't quite last year, which was dedicated entirely to ornaments, though the vast majority of this year's builds could be used as ornaments. However, the size of the ornaments was significantly smaller this year.
I'm really beginning to miss the advent calendars that built out a winter/Christmas scene. To me, that's one of the key charms of the advent calendar - being able to construct a scene and then add it to your winter village, or build a new winter village around it. Having one year of ornaments was fine, but having ornaments for a second year is feeling a bit repetitive. I hope Friends goes back to building a scene next year.
That being said, there were some lovely builds this year! My particular favourites were the penguins on Day 3, the snowman on Day 8, the nutcracker on Day 18, and of course, the two robots, Zobita on Day 23 and Santa Zobo on Day 13.
There are some thing that are still puzzling to me - I still don't understand how two presents represented Olivia on Day 17, and why Santa Zobo wasn't the build for today - that would have been perfect!
Thank you to all of you for sharing the advent journey with me - as always, it's been fun, and I'm looking forward to next year and all the new sets and reviews to come.
Merry Christmas!
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5 comments on this article
Thank you Megan for writing the daily reviews. I've enjoyed reading them!
Great job, BS team!!!
Merry X-mas to all who make this world a little better brick by brick.
Megan, thank you for your cheerful but honest reviews of this Friends Advent Calendar, and so many in the past as well! Reading the Advent reviews at Brickset has become a treasured part of my Christmas celebration. Best wishes for 2020!
Good work Megan, I've enjoyed reading your reviews and I have to agree with you on this one, it is anticlimactic! An exclusive Santa themed mini doll or reindeer themed animal was what was needed today!
I wonder if this is a result of the design team being torn apart in order to quickly come up with the HP Calendar this year? Or do the Friends designers have nothing to do with the others? Either way, I agree with the sentiments. This was a terribly disappointing calendar compared to the heyday of 2013-2016. Even with the bland repeat hair accessories and plates and cooking utensils at least those ones had builds that work in a Friends display.
Aside from a few of the others... yeah, this was really disappointing. But hey, I got it after seeing Day 3, so thanks Brickset. I never would have had those wonderful little models if I hadn't seen the review. And Thank you too Megan. Merry Christmas everyone.