City Advent Calendar - Day 8
Posted by MeganL,
So far in this calendar, there have been two minifigures and five microbuilds. I've used to having more festive builds in this calendar, but it seem this one will be more focused on the microbuilds.
I've liked those microbuilds, so I think it's time to embrace that's the direction we're going to take with this calendar. Let's see which build that we have for Day 8.
Well, it took a week, but we finally have our first festive build! This is a very servicable Christmas tree. Plenty of detail is provided in the branches, along with some red and yellow ornaments, and the gold star on top. I really like the choice of dark green for the tree, and the cheese slopes are used to good effect for the lower branches. I empathize with the designers having to come up with new ways of building trees ever year, and I think they've done a good job with it here.
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14 comments on this article
I'm not a fan of the wing plate design for Christmas trees. It doesn't look symmetrical enough.
@Judgeguy said:
"I'm not a fan of the wing plate design for Christmas trees. It doesn't look symmetrical enough."
It just works better on bigger trees
Festive enough and a decent model in the lower half, but things fall apart once you get higher than that.
Nice tree, but the hollow-stud plate at the top should be green. If there's that much wood showing at the top of your tree, something's wrong. And the piece does exist in green, I checked.
I'm going to throw out there that I wouldn't mind if Lego just re-used an old tree design. (Hey, that might be a nice article someday--comparisons of brick-built pine trees.)
I'd also be OK with them just throwing in a small plastic tree element, although I don't know if there's a way to make it festive since it can't accommodate studs.
A green 1x1 cone on top would really help this little guy.
@ResIpsaLoquitur said:
"I'm going to throw out there that I wouldn't mind if Lego just re-used an old tree design. (Hey, that might be a nice article someday--comparisons of brick-built pine trees.)"
Especially since some calendars (coughStarWarscough) will happily recycle models. Several times.
And I'd love to see a tree comparison too, that's a great idea.
@TheOtherMike:
It’s a brick...but it does exist in dark-green in 2020 sets.
Should’ve been purple
If they’re comparing trees from previous years then maybe they can do the same for the various snowmen we’ve had over the years? There’s been some good ones and some not so good ones too.
festive comparisons sound good :)
@GeordiePaul said:
"If they’re comparing trees from previous years then maybe they can do the same for the various snowmen we’ve had over the years? There’s been some good ones and some not so good ones too."
There was an article about this in 2017 but we might be due for an update:
https://brickset.com/article/25843/the-frosty-review
@ResIpsaLoquitur Rebrickable did a comparison of some brick built christmas trees in 2018: https://rebrickable.com/blog/168/lego-christmas-trees-good-bad-ugly/
(Different sizes though, maybe it would be more interesting to compare all the calendar-ones.)
I prefer my Christmas tree. In the summer of 2007, I think, I snagged five copies of 10069 on the cheap at the NMRA’s annual train show, and I used every single part, and nothing else, to build a giant Christmas tree. Every year since, including this year, I’ve put that tree in at least one MichLUG layout during the holiday season. A few years ago, I even made two copies of the original so I could put it on three layouts simultaneously, and I’ll be building a fourth version in dark-green before Christmas next year.
It's an inventive tree, but it's not as good as the previous trees they did.