Marvel Advent Calendar - Day 24
Posted by CapnRex101,
While there have been several excellent models and fun minifigures, I think 76231 Guardians of the Galaxy Advent Calendar has been decidedly underwhelming, on the whole.
See whether the calendar improves on the final day and find our summary below...
Drax at last arrives today, thus completing the current Guardians of the Galaxy team. Similar to Nebula from day nine, the minifigure wears a detailed Christmas jumper and this one features a dancing Baby Groot, flanked by musical notes. As always, I love the blocky designs that capture the knitted aesthetic associated with Christmas jumpers.
Unfortunately, this design does not actually match Drax's attire from the Guardians of the Galaxy Holiday Special, which features a cat with lasers shooting from its eyes. The bright green colour is accurate though, probably coincidentally, while Drax's skin tone has also been updated for his latest appearance.
There has been debate concerning Drax's skin colour since his first minifigure was released in 76021 The Milano Spaceship Rescue, in 2014. I can certainly understand why light bluish grey was chosen and retained in 2017, but I prefer sand green. The minifigure comes with a fork, a spoon and a ring of four Power Stones. Their purpose is not immediately clear, but attempting to eat an Infinity Stone seems like something Drax would do!
Overall - Despite differing from his recent Disney+ appearance, Drax looks marvellous in festive garb.
Summary
I love the Guardians of the Galaxy was excited about the prospect of an Advent Calendar solely dedicated to these characters. Ultimately though, I think 76231 Guardians of the Galaxy Advent Calendar demonstrates the limitations of Marvel Advent Calendars. The minifigure selection has been good, but the accompanying models have varied wildly in quality and their order has been less cohesive than the other licensed calendars.
Additionally, this Advent Calendar has little relationship with the Guardians of the Galaxy Holiday Special, likely because the designers had scant access to information about its content. While I understand that constraint, it remains disappointing. I still think Marvel or DC Advent Calendars could be enjoyable, but this one is pretty lacklustre, on the whole.
What is your opinion of 76231 Guardians of the Galaxy Advent Calendar and how would you approach a Marvel Advent Calendar? Let us know in the comments.
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Minifigures and prints was all this Calendar brought out, but as far as a building experience I nominate this one for worst set of 2022.
I didn't get this one, it didn't look as good as the previous Marvel advent calendar and from many of the comments over the month it definitely seems like this one was a step down.
It's... the Grinch Kratos played by Kevin Bacon with a matching sweater!
Is it a christmas miracle!?
Ehm... no.
For this calender it's been one of the more mundane builds, but it's one of the few that are remotely christmas-y.
Looking back, the calender has been the wildest Jurassic World calender I've ever seen. Outside of Owen the few robot dinosaurs and a weirdly high amount of birds it wasn't very thematically relevant. What do a Kratos Grinch, horned rocker girl, Bart Simpson ent eldritch god monster with eye-studded tentacles and humanoid hybrid dinosaur that looks like a rabbit have in common with Owen Grady?
Oh and I forgot the humanoid blue girl who was a fan of a bald purple man.
Maybe we got a humanoid Blue and Delta because this isn't a Jurassic World Calender. Maybe it's not even Jurassic Park 4. Maybe it's something else.
It must be, right?
I have been unable to find this elusive Parts & Re-creation so I will most likely never know.
There have been some hints this has something to do with TLM2. There's been robots, dinosaurs, spaceships (some even in Systar System colors and one a weird combination of Emmet's and Sweet Mayhem's ships.
But overal the calender has been... fine. Lots of times we got builds that kept being added to. The backside fire exhaust with turkey was a particularly lackluster day. And despite its existential terror the eldritch god's tentacles really shouldn't have surprised us being part of a second day. But most things are servicable.
I think the main problem here is that it doesn't feel like it's focussed all that well on one source material and instead vaguely alluded to things from various loose moments. Poorly.
Wait, I think I got it! Robots, people with technicolor skin tones, birds, Bart Simpson-like ent eldritch gods spaceships, gratuitous bisection, humanoid rabbits...
All are related to one thing...
And that Marvel logo I keep seeing when I open the calender... it confirms it!!!!!
They just put someone who looked like Owen in there to trick us:
This is a Star Wars calender isn't it, but the Marvel continuity. You know, the one that continued the story from the 1977 film in case there would be no sequel. It has a talking rabbit and -being star wars- it probably has one-armed-one-legged robot dinosaurs. I'm sure the robot dinosaur's behind flaring at a turkey is a claddic scene in there somewhere.
https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Star_Wars_(Marvel_Comics_1977)
The humanoid hybrid rabbit must represent Jaxxon:
https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Jaxxon
I think they're just not very good at making it represent the source material.
Parts & Re-creation must have paid homage to the well-known classic that is Marvel Star Wars.
And as we all know other sci-fi has been based Star Wars, so that explains the similarities with the other classic that was TLM2 and even Jurassic Park 4.
It's all due to the influence of Marvel Star Wars!
It's a miracle that we even got a Jaxxon minifig!
I finally solved the enigma! It truly is a christmas miracle!
Merry christmas!
In the comics, Drax DID eat the Power Stone (Gem). In fairness, he thought it was a jelly bean…
Maybe that's a zarg-nut he was able to rescue from Mantis before she ate them all?
Overall, I'm very glad I decided on the Star Wars calendar this year. While the Benatar and Milano builds were very nice (even if the former couldn't dock with its escape pod), and the minifigs were good (I want that headphone piece of Quill's), I agree that this one was underwhelming.
@Rimefang said:
"Minifigures and prints was all this Calendar brought out, but as far as a building experience I nominate this one for worst set of 2022."
Yep. I really appreciated the Drax and Nebula figs. My favorite build is Rocket's gun. This is easily the worst of the 5 ACs. I am actually thankful that it's over and my wife (who had to build it and endure endless sardonic laughter) hasn't divorced me.
I remember glancing at the promo photos before buying it. The whole idea was basically to get some of the minifigs I did not have yet, some of which were festive. I really did not pay much attention to the builds and was hoping to be surprised each day. My thoughts echo most of what has already been said. They really skimped on the parts. The Star Wars builds seem much more coherent and complex compared to this. Rocket Week and a three day build of Sweet Mayhem's ship really left a bad taste in my mouth. It was definitely the weakest calendar this year.
...I've been so puzzled by green!Drax since I first saw this calendar's pictures, I thought maybe he'd dyed his skin just to be more festively-coloured for the last day of the calendar, or that it was a reference I was missing, and was awaiting this review to explain it to me. It's only now that we've got to that day that I went to check pictures of him and saw that he actually does look green in several shots in the movies and I hadn't even realised.
I'm observant sometimes. This was not one of those times xD;;
By the way, if you've been reading and maybe even looking forward to my comments, thank you!
It was nice to discover that some people missed my totally-not-insane ramblings yesterday. I hope they brought some extra joy or at least amusement this year.
Happy holidays everyone!
The purple things are Zargnuts. Keep them hidden from Mantis!
It’s been a great 24 days reading these but my one complaint would be that you don’t have an image of all 24 days together on the actual calendar display itself like in the Friends and City reviews.
Merry Christmas everyone!
@imemine98 said:
"It’s been a great 24 days reading these but my one complaint would be that you don’t have an image of all 24 days together on the actual calendar display itself like in the Friends and City reviews.
Merry Christmas everyone! "
Indeed, I wanted to take the usual photos of everything together and shown on the calendar mat, but ran out of time before going to family for Christmas.
Having seen the Christmas Special, I think LEGO could've tried to add more Christmas-related items, even without having access to MCU material while the special was in production. After all, the basic premise is to recreate the Christmas festivities especially for Star Lord. A Kevin Bacon minifigure would've been perfect.
Drax is also green in the comics!
That said, it's too bad Drax didn't get his Little Funny Man™ with him in this calendar. MANTIS STILL GOT HER SWIRLY RED AND WHITE CURLY MAN.
Drax' Stones: The only stones strong enough to eat other stones.
So, statistics on this aren't great. Of the 24 models, 16 are fully revealed on the sealed box, and components of three others (robot leg from the trash box, Mantis without her guitar, and Nebula's present) were shown as well. The last day you could open and find a surprise was, of course, today. The first such day was the 3rd, with that weird upside-down security drone.
It was disappointing. I got this one on sale and I’m glad I didn’t pay full price for it. I can understand wanting to stretch things out but stretching things out while leaving core builds out was annoying.
It’s supposed to be based on the Holiday Special but didn’t give us Kevin Bacon, Draw’s toy or even the Bowie? They couldn’t give us a brick build model of the current ship? But we get Rocket’s box of junk. It had some bright spots but could have been better and probably would have been better if they had decided whether it wanted to be either be for the guardians as a whole or just the holiday special. Because a mix of the two just didn’t work IMO.
@PurpleDave said:
"Drax' Stones: The only stones strong enough to eat other stones."
He used the stones to destroy the stones
^ @MisterBrickster didn’t get the reference…
Drax wearing a Mr. Hankey sweater
In the comics Drax held the power stone and did indeed swallow it to keep it safe
Friends, it's been a ride.
Shoutout to the absolute lads Binnekamp and Ridgeheart who made this calendar far more fun than it had any right to be, and as always. thanks to the good Captain himself for calling it like it is.
I did buy this calendar a month or so before December and so opened it out of raw curiosity (and so to write a review before our beloved Brickset crew could, heh heh) and I wasn't very impressed, especially in comparison to last year's awesome Avengers calendar. Here's hoping that if a Marvel calendar is in our future that it'll be far more enjoyable.
And that my Day 1 minifigure will be there, and NOT a copy of the Benetar mini-model!