Which is your favourite LEGO Advent Calendar of 2022?
Posted by CapnRex101,
Christmas is almost here and the annual Advent Calendars have now concluded. As always, their quality has evidently fluctuated throughout this month, featuring some outstanding items and a few baffling ones too!
Of course, that invites the question: which is your favourite Advent Calendar of 2022? Give your answer after the break...
I mentioned baffling items in the introduction and these are interesting, as they can sometimes be identified by the number of views certain articles receive. For example, I considered Ollivander's wand emporium to be 'instantly recognisable' on day one of the Harry Potter Advent Calendar, but it seems I was in a minority as that article has now been viewed over 35,000 times! Friends day four also stands out, with an item that remains mysterious.
Which Advent Calendar received your vote and what is your favourite LEGO Advent Calendar ever produced? There have been 64 since 1998, so options are plentiful.
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62 comments on this article
I think out of all of them the Star Wars one is the winner this year.
The Darth Vader and Droid minifigs are some of my favourites. The only down side was the mix up of the missing droid. Which a chat with lego fix that and now they are sending.
The Marvel one I felt was a huge let down from the previous year, which was one of the best. Although the Drax in the Christmas sweater is awesome.
The city one was cool, it is getting a little repetitive over the years now, but it is an advent calendar so it only has so many options.
Well deserved for Star Wars. None could beat it, especially with the disappointment of the Guardians of the Galaxy or Jurassic World or Marvel Star Wars calendar, whatever you want to call it.
I would say that the first two Harry Potter advents were among the best advents of all time, because you could tell that there was a lot of effort there, and also a lot to pull from.
I can't say anything for past past advents, seeing as I didn't care at the time.
I guess that Friends calendar with an ornament every day was pretty good.
Star Wars wins this year, no doubt.
I only had the City calendar, which I quite liked. But seeing the Star Wars one here makes me wish I'd picked that one up. Such excellent micro builds.
Star Wars and City look to be the best to me. I was highly disappointed in the Marvel advent calendar since the last one was excellent. I had high hopes for this years, but alas disappointment.
The builds in the SW one looked cool but I thought it was leaning too heavily on “character…but in a jumper!” gimmick
I see a white foal, I vote city
SW and HP were a disappointment sadly.
Harry Potter all the way.
I'm not really interested in licensed themes, so it's City by default.
SW is the best.
SW and HP had incredible builds and fun minifigs. SW was a little ahead in the build department. SW is way ahead in the minifig category especially with the front and back R2 printing!
This was the first year in like 5 years that I decided to skip the Star Wars advent calendar, since a good chunk of the Micro builds didn't really interest me (though there were a handful of good ones, like the Republic Gunship).
This year I ended up going with the Harry Potter advent calendar, and I'm really happy with that decision. I like how it gave us micro builds and minifigs from across all 8 movies, on top of a simple little board game. The HP advent calendar even convinced me to start a rewatch of the movies, so in my mind it's easily the winner of this year!
I posted final stats for each of the three licensed calendars (and a request for the same for the Friends and City calendars), and while SW was good enough to be promoted from DWAC to SWAC, they spoiled the entire thing, down to the very last day, on the box (even 21330, the biggest PEGO Advent Calendar, managed to leave a few surprises secret until you built it)! That earns it an instant demotion to tied with GotG “I bought it for the minifigs” Holiday Special. City is never that exciting, and Friends is never minifigs, so even though I miss the cohesive themes of the first two over the games of the latter two, HPAC wins in my book. Plus it has Tonks. And the tiniest Knight Bus. And the _only_ Hagrid’s motorcycle.
My brother got the SW Advent Calendar for my kids. We’ve been having great fun with it.
The Gonk droid is the favorite so far.
I voted for Star Wars, and it is the one I have, for all the reasons @CapnRex101 gave in his summary.
But I think the City calendar was a close second and certainly a big improvement over last year's with good minifigures.
I bought the Guardians calendar first since I enjoyed the holiday special. It has been a let down, mostly for the micro builds. My daughter has enjoyed the Friends calendar.
After seeing the fantastic Star Wars reveals I found one left at a discount on the shelf a week ago. It’s by far the best SW calendar I’ve ever opened. Great figs and ingenious micro builds that have much more substance.
I never bought a Star Wars advent calendar ever but I watched each calendar offering on a daily basis and the Star Wars one killed it compared to the others. I bought the HP one since I bought the other two before and it was ok-ish but definitely not as good as the previous two.
That might not have been the case in the past but I think this year, the Star Wars advent calendar did very good if not great.
In general I would rank them pretty much as the poll suggests with maybe Guardian of the Galaxy ahead of City.
Does anyone want to see Lego cut back on the Advent Calendars?
Given how many went on deep clearance this month, I wonder if we reached saturation. Ten years ago, you'd be lucky to still find the calendars in November.
Contentedly, none of them.
I learnt this year, from @legoDad42, that completionism is a folly. This, for the first time, I didn't bother scrabbling to get a Star Wars advent calendar and feel better & freer for it.
I have two this year, guardians of the galaxy and harry potter.
Bought the harry potter for my little kid, and i’d say it is a really great idea to make it a board game.
If you are not hunting for mini figures, i vote for harry potter, we play this board game every day ;)
I'm curious why the Friends calendar is always so much more miserly with the figures than the others. Are minidolls really much more precious than minifigures, even licensed ones?
Friends was great. Star Wars has some nice minifigs and a few good builds of ships, and a heap of boring filler.
HP builds were constantly excellent, and while I'm annoyed they've stopped the one film a year thing, it's easily the best of the calendars this year.
I probably had the most fun playing with City though.
Honestly, I think its a toss up between Star Wars and Harry Potter as to which wins as they're the sets with the fewest disappointing builds, while having desirable minifigs. And really then, its down to personal preference as to which is better overall.
While I like the Guardians calendar, they stretched too many of the builds over multiple days when they could have added other exclusive figs (Kraglin or Kevin Bacon for instance) or some more interesting scale builds.
They need to rethink these. Raise the price and get rid of the trash. Or, rather than have so many incongruous mini builds, create a progressive build across multiple days. And maybe make 2-3 in a theme but make them a mystery so you aren’t sure which one you’re getting.
None. Glad to see the end of the bloody things.
Basically Star Wars and Marvel switched places from last year as far as I am concerned.
SW produced one of the best ACs I have seen period. There were great minifigs with a combination of army builder and special versions. The mini builds were fantastic and had a generous part usage. This was the clear winner to me.
Although I did not buy HP, they seemed strong in regards to minifigs and scene renditions. The notable weakness to HP seems to be that they did not really make it festive.
I think this was one of the better City ones as that is what my son was building this year. There was a nice assortment of useful minifigs and a good collection of festive builds and even some animals.
Then there is GoG. It costs the same and has the same licensing as SW, but feels like it has half of the plastic and even less creativity. It was a huge letdown. You know you are in trouble when every other day, you have to hope the review was posted for that day so you know what it is you built. Wish this was an exaggeration, but it is unfortunately not. My thought this morning was "Nice to get Drax, but wouldn't he die if he ate the Power Stone?
I like the Harry potter one the most, it has the best varitey but also uniformity, With only a few extra parts you could turn it into a cool setup for year round'. I know ships are the normal thing for star wars, but it would be cool if they did a planet theme next year instead using the same 2x4 base as the Harry Potter Calender.
@bananaworld said:
"
Contentedly, none of them.
I learnt this year, from @legoDad42, that completionism is a folly. This, for the first time, I didn't bother scrabbling to get a Star Wars advent calendar and feel better & freer for it."
Thx my friend. This holiday I didn't strive to get everything and I did some selling of sets I didn't want and proved very profitable. Then pick up a couple of sets at big discounts on eBay and Amazon. Way better than using ViP points.
Feels good to be free right? Merry Xmas @bananaworld best wishes.
New Years resolution is the same as this year, get healthier, more time with family and buy ONLY sets I really love to build and display. I hear chicks love us Lego rebels, so we got that going for us ;)
I liked the Harry Potter calendar, a massive improvement over the one from last year which felt a bit lazy as far as the selection of minifigs was concerned.
I dedicated this month to making very short Brickfilms in Blender starring a lot of the Harry Potter Advent Calendar's builds. One of my only friends IRL loves LEGO and Harry Potter so I made these for him but between how much I learned about Blender through the little risks I took making each video and the overall number of these I made, that Advent Calendar is by default the most special one to me. Do I own it? No. Will I ever? Probably not. But I'll have memories of it. Kudos to the person who suggested removing the windows from the Ollivander's build, that single comment got me interested in animating the little builds and here I am.
I feel like a lot of people didn't buy the Friends calendar, because I enjoyed the daily reviews of that one the most. Now, a lot of that was because of us, but it was a very meme-able calendar, and I'm never going to forget how the calendar was dedicated to the Emperor Blood Penguin and his reign of Christmas terror.
Having said that, the builds were all pretty lovely. It was hard to find too much fault with them. Same with the City calendar.
I'm finding it interesting how many comments mention only 4 out of the 5 calendars
I didn’t buy any so I don’t have an opinion, but I was curious to see the results of the poll. Is it possible to see them without voting? I don’t want to vote randomly just to do so.
I was very pleased with Star Wars this year, and happy that I didn't decide to get GotG. Surprised that Friends is so low on the poll, I thought it was great, and even bought one on sale after Advent started.
I couldn't say what my all-time favorite AC is, but I love what 41353 did with the ornaments.
@SmilingCyclops: Friends isn't licensed, it's an in-house IP.
Our household had Harry Potter, Guardians of the Galaxy and Star Wars.
Guardians was clearly the worst and very disappointing.
Loved the idea and connection to the special, but failed to deliver, probably as the designers didn’t have enough access to details before hand.
And no Kevin Bacon minifig ?
Harry Potter had some great ones as well, but didn’t live up to previous calendars.
Star Wars was the winner, love Vader and his sandcastle.
@AussieSamurai said:
"Our household had Harry Potter, Guardians of the Galaxy and Star Wars.
Guardians was clearly the worst and very disappointing.
Loved the idea and connection to the special, but failed to deliver, probably as the designers didn’t have enough access to details before hand.
And no Kevin Bacon minifig ?
Harry Potter had some great ones as well, but didn’t live up to previous calendars.
Star Wars was the winner, love Vader and his sandcastle. "
Damn! Nice handle. If I couldn't be the StyleCounselor, I'd want to be the AussieSamurai or perhaps, VintageDude.
I cheaped out and again missed the SW one ,I won't fail myself again , I had City and HP - both great but I'm a SW fan, and I've enough arrys and santas!
I took a break this year, but the Star Wars one definitely killed it. Would have picked it up if I remembered to buy one.
I’m biased toward Star Wars, but there’s no denying how cool the mini builds are in the Harry Potter calendar this year.
The Guardians of the Galaxy had so much potential, but unfortunately missed the mark for me.
I purchased the Harry Potter, Star Wars, Guardians, and City (don’t worry - all at a discount!). My complete favorite by a mile was the Guardians calendar, simply because I did not purchase 76193. It was a great way to get a new Rocket and the really great Groot minifigs. While I liked the exclusive prints in the Star Wars calendar, they didn’t stand out as much as the Guardians. The Star Wars one also felt repetitive when comparing to previous years. The Harry Potter one was a snooze to me and despite having seen the movies multiple times, I struggled to identify the micro builds. And I really only got the City one for the white pony and the kitten (somehow haven’t gotten that one yet). To me, the Guardians one felt fresh and new, though admittedly, it is similar in ideas to the previous Marvel advent calendar.
I only bought the Marvel one, but the quality of this one was very poor compared to Star Wars and the rest, so Star Wars got my vote. For someone who already owns the large Guardians Ship, 4 of the 6 figures were repeated (or worse versions) based on that set alone. The 2 exclusive figures were very nice, but then your left with the mostly poor builds, with the exception of the Milano and Boombox…what to do with all the other Junk?
@1265 said:
"So predictable, a Friends set always comes in last."
Maybe, but it also wasn't as good. Even though I'm highly unlikely to ever buy a Friends calendar, I'd have voted for it last year as it was easily the best. This year, not so good at all.
I bought the Guardians of the Galaxy advent and found it fun -- it's actually my first advent calendar during the actual holiday season.
Surprised by all of the negativity towards Guardians. I’ve done several Star Wars calendars and the microbuilds tend to repeat. Also, I’m an Original Trilogy fan so half the characters and ships are usually a waste on me. Decided to give this one a chance instead. Totally met my expectations for daily one minute builds. Actually bought it not realizing there was a Holiday Special. Watched it the night before December 1st and thoroughly enjoyed my 24 presents. Merry Christmas!
Friends was the weakest one this year. Especialy compared to previous year.
Best one? City for sure. Getting all those animals and really solid builds was fun!
Last year Friends had best one in my eyes. And that was quite strong year for AC
I have loved to HP advent calendar so far, but this year it went wrong for my taste. I liked it in the previous years because most of the bulids were fit to minifigs, but this year, these microbuilds were annoying. So if TLG go on this way next year, they will loose a customer.
I actually bought all 5 calendars this year. Harry Potter was my favorite with Star Wars coming in a close second. Third choice for me was City, followed by the Friends one. Guardians was the worst in my opinion which I knew going into it, I only bought it to get the minifigs since I don't buy most of the Marvel sets at all. I did buy all sets at a discount, the prices are getting ridiculous.
Hope the Harry Potter sets get rid of the game gimmick next year but glad they used the spinner piece earlier in the calendar this year as it was a big letdown as the final build last year.
The Star Wars ones I get mostly for the Minifigs but I detest the ugly Battle Droids which should be banished from all future calendars. This year had quite a few interesting builds, I really liked the Wampa Cave.
I hope the City one continues with the more festive builds rather than the micro builds they relied on the past few years.
@mrzeon said:
"I didn’t buy any so I don’t have an opinion, but I was curious to see the results of the poll. Is it possible to see them without voting? I don’t want to vote randomly just to do so."
The current result
Which is your favourite LEGO Advent Calendar of 2022?
75340 Star Wars Advent Calendar 45%
76404 Harry Potter Advent Calendar 20%
60352 City Advent Calendar 14%
76231 Guardians of the Galaxy Advent Calendar 13%
41706 Friends Advent Calendar 4
1551 responses.
My son built the City and I built the HP. I have to say, the City AC had great mini builds for the figures to interact with, great animals (kitten, white foal, etc) and some nice figures (the dark red uniformed fig I’d never seen before).
My HP AC included some fantastic mini builds of the Hogwarts Express, Forbidden Forest with micro fig Dementors, the Knight bus and that nice Tonks figure.
Maybe another poll can be started to learn he percentage of Advent Calendars from each theme were packaged incorrectly and had missing bags. My HP AC included a duplicate of the Quidditch Pitch (another nice mini build) but did not include the Snape minifigure.
How many other Bricksetters encountered a similar issue? I know other members of our LUG experienced the same type of issue.
@bmwlego:
I'd also want to know when and where they were purchased, since that may reveal a pattern that helps people avoid these in the future.
If you contact Lego, they will send you one.
@bmwlego said:
"My son built the City and I built the HP. I have to say, the City AC had great mini builds for the figures to interact with, great animals (kitten, white foal, etc) and some nice figures (the dark red uniformed fig I’d never seen before).
My HP AC included some fantastic mini builds of the Hogwarts Express, Forbidden Forest with micro fig Dementors, the Knight bus and that nice Tonks figure.
Maybe another poll can be started to learn he percentage of Advent Calendars from each theme were packaged incorrectly and had missing bags. My HP AC included a duplicate of the Quidditch Pitch (another nice mini build) but did not include the Snape minifigure.
How many other Bricksetters encountered a similar issue? I know other members of our LUG experienced the same type of issue."
Huge drop off in quality for Harry Potter IMO
I would love to see the ranking of articles that received the most views. I had the Guardians one, and I needed to come here a few times to decipher what I was building!
No dubt: the star wars one.
And then, imoho: guardians, hp, city, friends.
@Brent007
I contacted LEGO on Monday-they are shipping me the Snape minifigure!
Thank you for sharing that though.
I'm going with the Harry Potter one this year. I thought it wouldn't be so great, but it was on sale. I love that it's equally split into the 8 movies, with one figure per movie (and Hedwig), I love Star wars the most usually and it's the only one I get every year, but the Harry Potter calendar was very systematic and organized, even including a game! (not a great one, but still a nice option).
My kids finally watched the original trilogy so we broke out the copy of 75056 this year that I've had waiting. We enjoyed it, especially Darth Vader Claus and R2-Tree-2.
To be frank, all of them were subpar.
Still waiting for a Ninjago Calender….. one can dream.
I bought Marvel and Star Wars this year. Star Wars 2022 is probably my favourite calendar ever, Marvel couldn’t hold a candle to last year’s.
I, as ever, loved the HP calendar and have started to distribute the microscale builds around my HP world. The Weasley children's have the Knight's Bus and Hogwarts Express, the mini Quidditch rings are now in the Quidditch supply shop in Diagon Alley.
But I would really love an off-piste HP Christmas Calendar with some bespoke Christmas elements such as the sort of Jumpers you see in SW... or Dobby with Christmas socks.
@Wobette:
They’ve done a really good job of using the HPAC to deliver minifigs that might only otherwise work in a CMF release. The first two years, they were even topical, with Harry and Ron getting the sweaters Molly sent them, and expanding the selection of Yule Ball characters. SWAC has always played into the season with exclusive holiday-themed minifigs, but those have their basis in the old Lucasfilm Christmas cards (specifically Santa Yoda came from one of their more famous cards, and Santa-3PO and Rein2-Deer2 came from another), while others have been drawn directly from animated Christmas specials. HP has a grounded Christmas tradition, where it had to be shoehorned into SW as Wookiee Life Day. I very much doubt they’ll deviate from that format and start making non-canon HP minifigs, and I don’t know that they’d be as universally well-received as you’d probably hope.
to be fair, none of these year's advent calendars were particularly exciting.
my favourite has to be Luke & the Wampa cave, but that's not worth the price.
Anyway, I'd like to see more combinable daily gifts in future calendars