While we are still a few months away from the Christmas holidays, LEGO already released all three of the LEGO Advent Calendars for this holiday season. Just like in previous years, the calendars are in the LEGO Star Wars, LEGO Friends, and LEGO City theme. Below we will take a closer look at each of them, and this year we also get an extra special surprise. 🙂
If you are not familiar with the LEGO Advent Calendars, they are much like the traditional advent calendars that originated in Germany in the 19th century. The calendars feature small doors that you can open each day leading up to Christmas. Behind the doors there may be a picture, a poem, a story, candy, or a small gift item. The LEGO Advent Calendars are quite similar, and come in a special box with 24 doors. Behind each door there is a small LEGO set in its own packaging. It is particularly fun for kids to use the LEGO Advent Calendars as they eagerly await the arrival of Christmas.
➡ #75146 LEGO STAR WARS ADVENT CALENDAR: The LEGO Star Wars Advent Calendar is always the most anticipated, and also the most expensive of the three. They usually include micro versions of iconic Star Wars spaceships, and a nice collection of minifigures. And there is always at least one holiday-themed minifigure exclusive to the set. This year Chewy gets the honor. Here is the official description: Take a festive tour of the galaxy with the LEGO Star Wars Advent Calendar. Open up a door each December day to reveal a Star Wars themed minifigure, starship, vehicle or other themed collectible. Once you’ve collected all 24 gifts, unfold the playmat and create your own epic Hoth, Tatooine, Naboo and space-based adventures. This is the perfect holiday gift for any life form. Includes eight minifigures plus a Battle Droid. Vehicles include: Slave I, a TIE Interceptor, AAT, T-16 Skyhopper, Sleigh, Republic Cruiser, Droid Gunship, Jedi Interceptor, Skiff and an Imperial Landing Craft. Also includes a foldout playmat. 282 pieces. Price: $39.99 – BUY HERE
➡ #41131 LEGO FRIENDS ADVENT CALENDAR: The LEGO Friends Advent Calendars are known for interesting accessories and unique and/or rare printed pieces, and this year’s calendar doesn’t disappoint in this regard. We get a cute polar bear and a hamster, various food items, a nicely printed guitar, printed gifts, and lots of little accessories. The two mini-dolls are exclusive to this set. According to the description, you can also visit the official LEGO Friends website each Sunday before Christmas and on Christmas Eve, to find new building instructions for a mini build with all the gifts you have opened that week. Here is the official description: Open the LEGO Friends Advent Calendar each day in December to add a piece to your Christmas party scene. Includes Emma and Naomi mini-doll figures in a calendar with 24 secret compartments, each containing its own buildable surprise. 218 pieces. Price: $29.99 – BUY HERE
➡ #60133 LEGO CITY ADVENT CALENDAR: While the LEGO Star Wars Advent Calendar is the most popular, and the LEGO Friends Advent Calendar is full of cute little bits, the LEGO City Advent Calendar is my favorite. It may not have as many special pieces and minifigures as the other two, but the small builds are the most authentically Christmas-y in both color and theme. Here is the official description: Celebrate the holidays with LEGO City, featuring 24 different surprises, one for each day of the season, including Santa’s sleigh and presents, a snow-scooter, Christmas tree, helicopter, shop, cookie stand and much more. Includes seven minifigures: two firefighters, a volcano worker, volcano adventurer, two ice hockey players and Santa, plus a dog. 290 pieces. Price: $29.99 – BUY HERE
The LEGO Advent Calendars are a fun way to get ready for Christmas, and also make great gifts for any LEGO fan. Even if you know someone who has a lot of LEGO already, because the advent calendars are unique each year, and every LEGO fan likes small interesting pieces, you can’t go wrong with giving these as gifts. While LEGO has been getting better at keeping sets in stock through the holiday season, there is always the risk of the holiday sets selling out fast, or becoming unavailable for long periods. So if you have a favorite that you definitely want to get, or you would like all of them, I would suggest you pick them up before the shopping madness begins. They are not yet listed under the seasonal section of the Online LEGO Shop, but you can find them in their specific themed categories I have included above with each set.
But wait, there is more! This year we will also get a fourth LEGO Advent Calendar! The #40222 LEGO Advent Calendar is going to be free exclusive with purchases of $99 or more from October 1st to the 25th! This set comes with 250 pieces and contains 24 small builds, so it’s pretty much the same as the other LEGO Advent Calendars. Below is a picture of the set from the October LEGO Store Calendar.
So what do you think? How do you like the 2016 LEGO Advent Calendars? Do you have a favorite? Or are you planning to get all of them? Or skip this year and get something else awesome? Feel free to share your thoughts and discuss in the comment section below! 😉
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I always got one for my kids and now I get one for my grandson. Makes the wait for Christmas both more fun and more tolerable (if you’re an amped up 8yo who thinks it will never come). Last year I got my grandson the City calendar and also the Star Wars calendar for his dad so they could open that one together.
This year I’m not so sure. That would be $70. I might have spent that last year but I bought them at Toys R Us and got a free Bricktober building which seems to have acted like novocain. This year TRU has a completely pitiful substitute for the mini buildings so $70 hurts a lot more!
Also, now that I’m excited about the possibility of a reusable calendar https://ideas.lego.com/projects/152012 I might make something to use in the interim. I’ll look at it as saving that money to buy the specific bricks to come up with my own.
I should have said make my own IF Lego doesn’t approve ollie’s. I really, really think he designed a great looking building and a deeply want that as part of my permanent Christmas decorations.
Once you bought a few years worth of calendars, you kind of get a sense how to build small models, and could certainly make your own calendar. And yeah, this years TRU exclusives are terrible. They are nothing but a mishmash of minifig parts. Nothing creative or very useful. You might even come up with your own reusable calendar. 😉
Yes. I was actually referring to the calendar itself rather than the daily builds. But I do like the one ollie has designed. Very classic and stately.
I could use that as a Christmas decoration long after my grandson has grown past Advent calendars.
But, you’re right. I could put together some small builds to fill it from his Lego bin!
Never very impressed with LEGO Advent Calendars. (Why are there firefighters in a Christmas set?) But I love LEGO, I love Christmas, and I love Advent Calendars. Luckily, I have a brother/roommate to split costs with. Last year, we just got the City one and took turns opening the day’s offering. This year, we got both the City and the Star Wars calendars, so we each get to open one each day. It’s more about that than getting cool pieces, etc. Wish they were better, but I’m not going to skip them anytime soon.
I so agree with you that the fun is in the daily appetizer of tiny treats until Christmas comes with it’s feast of surprises.
Why did you say that the countdown calender freebie is available October 5 – 25 when the image you shared shows October 1 – 25?
It was a mistake. Thanks for catching that. Just fixed it. 🙂
Ok. Just wanted to make sure I wasn’t missing something.
Well, so far I think the City one looks the best. Some nice builds and it looks quite festive. 🙂 I say “so far” because I expect the exclusive calendar to be far superior when fully revealed, since it is an expensive promo. The Friends calendar looks disappointing; the pile of tools is the worst gift, as one of those appears in every Friends calendar. But I suppose we can’t expect LEGO to break tradition. 😕 The Star Wars one looks okay; it’s not my favorite of the SW calendars though. And LEGO erred in their set description: there is no T-16 Skyhopper in the calendar that I can see, but the Tantive IV is not mentioned.
Speaking of LEGO and erring, the new LEGO Shop@Home site is in my opinion far worse than the old site. I cannot navigate it properly, either because of site issues or my browser continuing to be outdated. And there are issues everyone else experiences as well on top of that. What are the chances this site improves enough to be better than the old one? 😕
I’m just now working on an article about the new website. Yesterday it threw error pages on everywhere I went, but today it is much better. Try clearing your browser history and cookies and see if that makes it work better. I can navigate around now, but the update wiped out my Wish List, and I can’t add anything new to it on any browser. I have read through the comments on Brickset, and it seems like a lot of people are having problems. Hopefully LEGO will clear them up soon. The new site does look great on mobile though and works well.
The site works fine for my computer, it’s just that I’m having the same off-set images issue I had with the LEGO.com/home page recently, which is a sign my tech is behind yet again. For me, the issue is how it looks and functions. The themes list won’t scroll when I scroll, so I can’t access anything beyond DC Super Heroes, and that is a major issue in my opinion. Since I can’t use that, I have to try to filter everything down to the sets I want, which, as I tested today, is more difficult than it should be. Also, everything is far too big to fit on one page. Of course, that is because of the mobile stuff everyone but me has, and a mobile view of the site is probably the one version I will never use. I guess the mobile view working is good, though. 😕
I will publish an article about the new site tomorrow, so please come and joint the discussion about your experiences. We will likely all need some help. For me the images are also huge, so I have to zoom out to 75% to actually see something useful. Which is okay.
I do think that the mobile site looks nice. You can just resize your browser window on your desktop to access it. I have been actually using that version more often for some of the features.
It adios’d a long order I was still working on and it’s going to be difficult and time consuming to try to recreate it.
I dearly wish they had an option for saving and/or printing these things in process so, at least, there was a way to input it again reliably.
For me it saved my cart, but wiped out my Wish List. I have heard that for some other people it was the other way around. They really should have saved them. In general I found the Wish List to be more reliable to save items, but now I can’t use it at all. I hope they fixed their bugs soon. 🙁
So is the free advent calender in Australia because it doesn’t come up in my cart?
Hm… Jasmine, I’m sorry, I’m not sure. I don’t get any kind of communication from LEGO Australia. Your best bet is to call them and confirm what (if any) specials they have this month.