It was the Star Wars set, with a C-3PO chasing a mouse droid across the room in front of a Christmas tree, that had been the calendar to stop me in my tracks in Manhattan’s Fifth Avenue flagship store. I had to look at it for a few moments to realize what I was seeing.
At first I thought it was a hint of acknowledgement by Disney of the 1978 Star Wars Holiday Special, which George Lucas had attempted to bury and conceal from existence like a body in a mobster’s backyard.
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Unfortunately it has nothing to do with the Holiday Special. Too bad. Who wouldn’t have liked to see a blocky, little Luke Skywalker with disco hair? Although LEGO hair already kind of looks like disco hair.
may the four-prong block be with you
All four of the LEGO advent calendars include 24 individual gifts, meant to be opened one per day. Some advent calendars cheap out and provide only enough gifts every two or even three days.
The Star Wars set comprises 263 pieces spread across the 24 gifts. Lots of them are droids, with a selection spread across the original trilogy to the prequel trilogy. There’s even a snowman, which I suppose is Star Warsy.
They have snow in the Star Wars universe, so it seems like a natural progression that even futuristic space colonists would stack three big snowballs together and stick eyes on it.
Other pieces seem to be furniture, or space furniture, as we’ll call it in the future. None of the gifts are, on their own, time-consuming to build. You get a little piece each day, and over the course of December you can create a small set from the furniture, with the expanding cast of characters telling a growing story all the way up through Christmas Eve.
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