Welcome to Day 8 of our LEGO Advent Calendar countdown. Each day, we’ll reveal the three mini-builds from the LEGO Star Wars, LEGO Friends, and LEGO City 2018 advent calendars along with commentary from The Brothers Brick team.
If you’re opening one (or more) of these advent calendars along with us, we’ve made sure the pictures and commentary on each day’s models will be behind a jump so we don’t accidentally ruin the surprise. Will Day 8 be great?
For Day 8, we have a Battle Droid from Star Wars, a candy cane from Friends, and a drone from City.
Dave: I love that we get a Star Wars variant of Roger (RO-GR) from the Star Wars Freemaker Adventures right after a bath in hydrogen peroxide (really, you should watch both seasons of the show–so fun!). And Friends has a lovely red and white letter “J” which probably stands for “Jolly” that is sure to thrill the kids. But the mini Marvel Helicarrier from City just isn’t doing it for me.
Edwinder: Ah, finally, it’s nice to see a modern day inspiration included. I assume that’s a drone and remote controller. Not perfect, but points for trying something different! The Friends candy cane is yet another winner. The Star Wars droid gets thrown right into my minifigure stash without a second look.
Andrew: Like the world needs more LEGO Battle Droids. The candy cane works nicely, and for space builders who like creating candy cane booms on their ships, these are some excellent parts. The drone is an interesting choice, but a fun nod to the kinds of presents kids love these days (who need to get off my lawn!).
Nick: Growing up with train sets from the late ‘90s, I first thought that candy cane was a railroad crossing gate. Good mini build though! The quadrotor is pretty neat as well.
Daniel: Nice quad-copter, even sporting FAA compliant lights!
Bre: Nice drone! This is instantly recognizable to kids because the real ones are a big hit these days. The candy cane is decent. If I were tasked with building one, I would probably go the same route, even though I agree that it looks like a railroad crossing gate. The Battle Droid is a lame addition. When I worked for the LEGO store, droids were something kids traded in on “Minifigure Swap Monday” for a much better fig.
Chris: Battledroid: SKIP! The candy cane is a clever idea, but the color blocking reminds me too much of a train crossing arm instead of delectable holiday treats. The drone is pretty great for the scale, however.
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@Bre:
Is that where they get all the Battle Droids for the Advent Calendars?
Pretty sure the “J” shaped candy cane for Jesus. I’m not even a christian, but even I know that.
@TAH:
There was an e-mail hoax that made the rounds in the early days of the World Wide Web that made several claims about candy canes, including the J-for-Jesus shape, the red stripes (one thick, three thin) representing the spear thrust and three nails, and so on. It really caught on because researching it took much longer than reading about it (and most of what you’d find back then was a string of websites that , but it has been pretty soundly discredited. So has the claim that the shape represents the shepherd’s crook as it relates to the Nativity scene. There’s not a lot of concrete info on the history of the candy cane, but what we do know is that from the earliest known reference to a candy stick, it took a period of about 40 years to add red on white stripes, create a candy cane of unknown color scheme, and eventually be associated with Christmas.
Candy sticks are also a lot harder to make than you might think. My parents were watching an episode showing how they’re made recently when I stopped by, and what starts out looking like a giant peppermint disc ends up being lengthened and twisted until it gets stretched out into several hundred sticks. It’s something that seems like it requires a machine to accomplish. The earliest candy canes were for sure bent by hand, and they had a high attrition rate (around 20%), as well as a very open hook (bent to maybe 120°). Now the mass-produced ones are all bent by machine past 180°.
Here in Sweden, the equivalent to candy canes are often not even cane-shaped, but distributed as long sticks, screws, or as small niblet chunks.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polkagris
The drone – we found it can double up as a spinning top.
@Purple Dave
You really do know everything, don’t you? LOL.
Was the episode from How It’s Made on Youtube? If so, I’ve actually seen that video. Pretty interesting stuff.