Our virtual LEGO Advent Calendar series continues on Day 3 with a new mini-kit from Star Wars and Friends.
We’ll be unveiling the mini-kits or minifigs from each Advent Calendar around this time every day, and we won’t ruin the surprise — you’ll need to click through to reveal the LEGO behind the tiny doors.
Click to see the Day 3 mini-kits!
Because we here at The Brothers Brick have a time machine, we feel that there’s nothing particularly odd about starting our coverage of the new LEGO Advent Calendars a day late.
Each day until Christmas Eve, we’ll be revealing the mini-kits and minifigs from that day’s LEGO Star Wars and Friends Advent Calendars. Why not LEGO City? Because meh. To keep the secret alive, we’ll be posting pretty late in the day here on the US West Coast (GMT -8:00), and we’ll put that day’s reveal after the jump.
This isn’t really a review — we’ll save our thoughts until the end — more of a virtual Advent Calendar we can all enjoy together. So, follow along, and let us know what you think about each kit in the comments.
Click to see the Day 1 & 2 mini-kits!
For 2015, LEGO is rolling out 3 themed Advent calendars: Star Wars, City, and Friends. As with previous years’ Star Wars Advent Calendars, an exclusive holiday-themed Star Wars minifig is included. This time it’s C3-P0 dressed as Santa Claus, riding a sleigh pulled by an R2-D2 with reindeer antlers. The City calendar has a mini Santa train and loads of toys, while the Friends calendar includes parts for a small hockey match and a lot of accessories – both pretty par for the course.
UPDATE: Didn’t get your hands on this year’s Advent Calendars? Follow along with our virtual LEGO Advent Calendar starting December 1st!
75097 LEGO Star Wars Advent Calendar includes 292 pieces (available from Amazon.com and the LEGO Shop)
60099 LEGO City Advent Calendar includes 278 pieces (available from Amazon.com and the LEGO Shop)
41102 LEGO Friends Advent Calendar includes 233 pieces (available from Amazon.com and the LEGO Shop)
For those who’d rather wait to reveal all the surprises inside the Advent calendars, I’ve placed the full set images after the jump. Click to reveal.
The LEGO Death Star playset is an iconic set that has been around for many years and is also the inspiration for this humorous remake by Steve Price in the theme of LEGO Friends. The new makeover includes a beauty salon, candy store, a pet shop and much more. Check out the full gallery on Flickr.
We’ve seen the Friends minidolls show up in all sorts of interesting creations since they were introduced in 2012, including sky-fi airplanes, giant spaceships, tiny spaceships, and mechs. But these anime-inspired hardsuits may just be one of the best uses I’ve seen yet. When paired with the crazy hairpieces from LEGO’s official anime-inspired theme in 2006-2008, Exo-Force, the minidolls look like they’re straight out of an anime. And builder 3D Foundry has done some great work building cool hardsuits for them.
The third Elves set up for review is 41074 Azari and the Magical Bakery. I picked this one up at Toys R Us, and you can buy it online. This set comes with 324 pieces for $29.99.
Last week I reviewed the littlest Elves set. Today, I’ve got 41076 Farran and the Crystal Hollow. I picked them up at Toys R Us; I’m happy to report it is now available on the LEGO Shop online. This set has 175 pieces for $14.99.
I admittedly wasn’t sure how I felt about this one at first, since it’s fairly simplistic. From the box, it looked like a tree with some trans green and trans blue pieces. I found that once I was done, I really quite liked it. Shocking, I know.
The LEGO Elves sets are out in the wild! I spotted some this evening at Toys R Us, and picked up a few. Happy birthday to me.
The first set up for review is 41701 Aira’s Creative Workshop. This set is $9.99 and has 98 pieces. It will be available on the LEGO Shop online on March 1.
Let’s get started!
Amazon.com has kicked off its Black Friday week with some good sales on LEGO sets, if you are looking to do some early Christmas shopping or just want to pick up something for your own collection.
LEGO Friends Olivia’s House 3315
LEGO Kings Castle
Lego Castle Dragon Mountain – 70403
LEGO City 60025 Grand Prix Truck Toy Building Set
LEGO Superheroes 76011 Batman: Man-Bat Attack
LEGO Super Heroes Spider-Cycle Chase 76004
LEGO Superheroes 76017 Captain America vs. Hydra
LEGO Super Heroes Superman Vs Power Armor Lex 6862
A strange alien species deserves a suitably strange and alien-looking space craft. So this star fighter by Tyler Sky is the logical runabout for those mysterious and unfathomable creatures, the LEGO Friends. And it goes great with Tyler’s Friends roadster!
A good indication of a builder’s talent is that he or she attracts the attention of several of our contributors separately. When I first bookmarked this scene by Rickard and Helen, I hadn’t noticed yet that it was the same team that had built the despots and notables (posted by Carter), the South Park characters (posted by Ralph), or one of the top three BRICKNADO winners chosen by all of us.
It’s actually not unusual for a Town layout at a LEGO convention to have a trailer park on the edge (demonstrating that Town builders do, in fact, have a sense of humor), but it’s rare to see such a lovely trailer or range of amusing detail.
41035 Heartlake Juice Bar is one of the 2014 Lego Friends sets. The set contains 277 pieces and retails for $29.99, which you can buy from Amazon.
Here is my summary of the highlights of the set, which are elaborated in the review video below.
Pros:
Cons:
The main appeal of this set to me are the colors. As explained in the video, they are useful for the creation I’m working on. The two main reasons I can think of for buying this set would be for parts or for your kids to play with. In terms of parts, the ones I listed above are interesting and potentially useful, but Bricklink is the better source to get the specific ones you need without buying the entire set. The current price of $29.99 seems a bit high, but Amazon sometimes discount newly released sets by around 20% within the first few months.
