24 Days of Lego Fun With The Lego City Advent Calendar

Author's Rating:

Pros: 24 mini builds, can be used as ornaments, great gift

Cons: Lots of pieces to lose, overzealous kids.

The Bottom Line: 
24 Days of Lego Fun

Author's Review




Most people won't associate Billy Bob Thornton with advent calendars but if you saw the movie "Bad Santa", well, you can understand how the two can go hand in hand. After I saw the movie I had a hard time getting into the holiday spirit and dragging out the older Lego advent calendars. So far we have six of them and five of them still have all the original builds inside the box pods. Unless you are a total Lego fanatic you might not have all the original pieces but if you do, they make for a nice way to use them as decorations for the holiday season.

Lego Christmas ornaments? You can turn just about any Lego item into an ornament by using fishing line or jute. If you don't use any type of glue to stabilize the item to keep it from flopping around then when you are done with the season you can just remove the string or fishing line and use the figure or item as it was intended. The figures in this advent calendar can but used as ornaments if you want or you can stick with the traditional Santa, snowman, Christmas tree and snowflake designs that Lego has released in the past.


Lego City Advent Calendar 7724

If you are getting this to give as a gift you will want to give it to a child at the beginning of the month so that they can open one door a day. Each one will have a small plastic bag inside it with an image on it; they are easy to build and only take a couple seconds to complete. The Lego City version is a little different, it has a total of ten mini figures to it and fourteen City themed items. Like what you ask? A mini cement mixer, snowmobile, work bench, grill and accessories, seasonal items like a Christmas tree and other items that you can use with almost any type of Lego set up.

One thing that did not set well with me is that Lego really pimped this out as a City themed set. For younger kids or those that are not all that into Lego, they might not understand that the City theme is pretty broad and that if you don't like the overall look of something you can change it to whatever you like. The accessory pieces in this advent calendar are nice but how many times are you going to have use for a grill or some of the tools? For as much as I love Lego, I can admit when sets are rushed though production and when the almighty dollar is what dictates what makes it into the box and what doesn't.

What figures do you get? The new and improved snowman has a cool look and comes with a black broom but most of the other typical figures are run of the mill and boring. None of them are set exclusives so you aren't getting anything that is super rare. You do get a Brickster figure but he has a slightly different uniform than the original. One nice but strange figure is the deep sea diver; he doesn't really match up with any of the other AquaZone divers but because he's done up in blue, he is passable for an add-on figure. All of the accessories that come with the figures can be used on or with other characters so there is a lot of replay value but if this is the only Lego item a kid has to play with, don't expect them to get all that excited about it.

Prices on these types of sets are hard to peg accurately. Since they are a seasonal item some stores will start selling them for half price a week or so before Christmas but that sort of defeats the whole purpose of it since it is something that you are supposed to stat opening at the beginning of the month. The average selling price is about thirty dollars but you can get them for as little as ten dollars if you get them after Christmas. Sure that sounds cheap but you can get three of them on sale and toss them in the closet until next year.

For me, a Lego collector, this is a great way to get a lot of cool pieces and figures for a cheap price. Since this has the City theme to it the figures are all workers of sorts so they are a nice find if you need to beef up your city workforce but don’t want to invest in the City Community Workers Collectors Pack. You can also take the bags out of the advent calendar box and put them in stockings. This will take away the temptation that some overzealous kids have to tear into the box and open all the packages on the first day.

There are a lot of small pieces in the advent calendar so it isn't something that you are going to want to give to kids under the age of five. This would however make for a great gift for a group of kids; they could take turns opening the doors on the calendar and building the accessories [the mini figures are already built]. My brood liked to keep track of what item came in each pod / on each day but that's not necessary. You can store the built items inside the advent calendar box for the following year or if you want to use them as Lego ornaments.

Name: Lego City Advent Calendar
Set Theme: Lego City
Set Number: 7724
Piece Count: 196
Age Recommendation: 5 and older
Difficulty Level: Easy
Build Time: 1 minute per piece
Price: $30.00 - $35.00


As always, thanks for the visit…

~^V^~ Freak ~^V^~

© 2008 Freak369


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