Can’t say I’ve ever seen a 5-10 age recommendation on a LEGO set before

@Mr__Thrawn said:
"Can’t say I’ve ever seen a 5-10 age recommendation on a LEGO set before"

7871-7876 are 5-10 for starters. (7874 never was released, no set exists with that number).

Its a shame. I recall when LEGO advent calendars were good valued set with a decent amount of little sub vignette 'sets' in them, but long gone are those days sadly.

Given Huwbot’s recent streak, I can almost guarantee a self-driving vehicle in there.

Judging from the front picture I’m assuming it’s a lot of animals inside there, not so many builds

An Advent Calendar on RSotD? Sure!

ANother set that has better photos online yet brickset is still behind...

I'm always surprised to learn that Belville was still going strong by 2007; at the time, I wasn't even aware of its existence beyond 2003. I don't know if it wasn't advertised after that year, or if it was and I literally just tuned it out so thoroughly that I don't remember it at all.

Some nice parts in here, though! Several jewels and transparent pieces, that tree... and you can't go wrong with including a Lego puppy, even if it isn't minifigure scale! Not a fan of the fairy; and while modern Lego snowmen are often criticised, I think most of them are still an improvement on this one! ...but on the whole, definitely not a bad parts pack, for sure ^^

Though since this was almost right at the end of Belville's run, I do have to wonder if this wasn't maybe a deliberate effort to use up a surplus of the theme's unique pieces that couldn't easily be repurposed elsewhere...

I also had no idea that Belville had an advent calendar. Most of the builds actually look quite fun and more substantial than what we find in most Friends calendars. And what a great parts pack!

I'm going to posit that the Star Wars and City calendars are suffering from two problems. One, it's probably getting harder to justify the parts-per-price ratio in the sets, particularly with the Star Wars licensing tax. The Star Wars calendar has *always* been $40 US since 2011, even as other sets have gone up in price. Maybe the builds are getting weaker because they have to do more with less (particularly small parts).

Second, repetition is killing creativity. Another X-Wing, another TIE fighter. Repeat builds are fatiguing when you see them again and again. The Harry Potter calendars haven't had this problem--they've all been new and exciting. (Although, they've only had three of them.) I'm betting the Marvel calendar will be pretty surprising too when we see the full thing.

Anyway, food for thought. Maybe it's time for the Star Wars calendar to retire?

@ResIpsaLoquitur said:
"Anyway, food for thought. Maybe it's time for the Star Wars calendar to retire?"

I'd say, there should be more creativity. Let's be honest: The mini builds are not as much fun as something that the minifigs can interact with. So the latter must be focussed on, without coming up with weapon racks at best. Tell a story with your advent calender. I think the best one for City was 7553 , where you were building a complete police station day by day. It's not main line level of detail but pretty impressive given that you have very limited space for parts behind every door.
That's what I'd be excited about.

@jkb said:
" @ResIpsaLoquitur said:
"Anyway, food for thought. Maybe it's time for the Star Wars calendar to retire?"

I'd say, there should be more creativity. Let's be honest: The mini builds are not as much fun as something that the minifigs can interact with. So the latter must be focussed on, without coming up with weapon racks at best. Tell a story with your advent calender. I think the best one for City was 7553 , where you were building a complete police station day by day. It's not main line level of detail but pretty impressive given that you have very limited space for parts behind every door.
That's what I'd be excited about."

I don't hate the mini-models, because traditional advent calendars are known for cheap toys packed into a tight space. I will agree that in the City calendar, they're less appropriate even though they've been around for years now. And yeah, the build-a-police-station was gold. We seem to be well past that model now. Sigh.

They work for the Star Wars calendar, but they're also seriously running out of models unless they start upping the calendar price.

'Traditional' Advent calenders (in the UK anyway) are a cardboard picture of Baby Jesus !!

@MCLegoboy:
I looked through the daily models on Bricklink, and the overall parts list here on Brickset, and I didn’t see a single piece that jumped out at me as a “must have” element. I tend to run into that same situation a lot, where people will be commenting on how amazing the part selection is in some random set, and there’s maybe half a dozen parts total that I’d ever use in my lifetime (and I build some seriously weird stuff at times).

@ResIpsaLoquitur:
By “three HPACs”, I assume you’re including the forthcoming 2021 calendar which we’ve already seen revealed? The first two HPACs have been very different in that they formed cohesive scenes with only a few microscale models thrown in. They’re also very different in that there’s remarkably little opportunity to include microscale builds compared to SW/DW, so it probably forced them to look for other ideas right from the start, where SW had tons of vehicles to draw from.

The flip side of this is that, after only two years, they’re already overhauling the HPAC, since the only remaining major Christmas scene left is from the back half of the movie series (which they still largely avoid tapping into). Compare that to SW, where I know they’ve leaned heavily on some of the more iconic OT vehicles, but there are still vehicles and settings they haven’t tapped into. Once you get outside of the OT, there’s a lot of fresh material to dip into, but, since Disney started cranking out movies, the PT has been heavily downplayed, and the Disney stuff is so forgettable that the only stuff that’s recognizably “Star Wars” is whatever they cribbed from the OT.

That’s where they ended up making an entire DWAC based on a streaming show that barely anyone has watched. Those who have seem to unanimously consider it the best work that has been produced under Disney’s rule, but the general customer base is even more divorced from the material, and will likely only recognize Slave I, and maybe some of the things they’ve seen produced as minifig-scale sets.

@PurpleDave
I've got to disagree with the last bit, it's not earth-shatteringly good television but Mando has wide appeal to general audiences as well as hardcore fans who go way back. It's just about the perfect middle ground for the people who hate the Disney Star Wars productions and the people that love them

https://www.businessinsider.com/mandalorian-tops-nielsen-list-of-most-watched-streaming-tv-shows-2021-1
https://www.starwarsnewsnet.com/2020/12/the-mandalorian-was-the-most-watched-streaming-title-in-november.html
https://www.syfy.com/syfywire/mandalorian-most-watched-series
If that's something that barely anyone watches then I can't even fathom how big a successful one would be

Yeah, I'm including the third HPAC, which...yes, is very experimental and maybe it'll be a hit with the kids, maybe it won't. I'm not hating the vignette format and it's still new enough not to bother me, but it's also possible that they're drying up the Advent format way too fast. This might be another one worth retiring.

And yes, the Star Wars calendars are exhausting their product as well. I don't hate the Mando one, but I enjoy the show. (And it's got at least *some* OT draw even if it's not explicitly referencing the OT--two Stormtroopers, an IG-unit, an X-Wing, a TIE, an X-Wing, a Tusken, and Slave-1. That's 8 builds or 1/3 of the calendar having at least the appearance of OT material.)

Anyway, I would continue to advocate for rotating Advent themes. I can't tell if Lego is winding down DC Comics, but I'm disappointed we've never seen a DC Advent Calendar. The lack of a Ninjago one by now is also surprising.

@ResIpsaLoquitur said:
"Anyway, I would continue to advocate for rotating Advent themes. I can't tell if Lego is winding down DC Comics, but I'm disappointed we've never seen a DC Advent Calendar. The lack of a Ninjago one by now is also surprising."

Some of the appeal to people who have collected the past 10 calendars might be drying up, but there are plenty of kids out there who are all about an X-Wing behind door 8. Retiring a holiday product based on one of their most successful themes probably doesn't have a great ring to it

DC would be interesting, although they did get three more rounds of CMFs than Marvel has gotten so far

Also @Huw it looks like this set doesn't currently have the "Advent Calendar" tag weirdly enough https://brickset.com/sets/76390-1/Advent-Calendar

@PurpleDave said:
" @MCLegoboy :
I looked through the daily models on Bricklink, and the overall parts list here on Brickset, and I didn’t see a single piece that jumped out at me as a “must have” element. I tend to run into that same situation a lot, where people will be commenting on how amazing the part selection is in some random set, and there’s maybe half a dozen parts total that I’d ever use in my lifetime (and I build some seriously weird stuff at times)."

The dual-molded, snow-capped spruce tree is quite possibly my favorite element ever, and absolutely perfect for snowy or mountainous forests, but if that’s not your thing then it’s not that useful. To each their own! Though I personally adore it :)

I don't think our timeline is too many jumps away from the one where Belville still exists, but I swear I grew up in the timeline where it ended in 1998.

That is a really good advent calendar. It contains that very awesome tree with snow on top piece.

@fakespacesquid
https://news.yahoo.com/tv-hit-isn-t-just-171727752.html

Let’s put that into perspective, shall we? You hear tons of news about various streaming hits, or premium cable hits, and it turns out most of them aren’t pulling in enough numbers to cut it on broadcast TV. D- has, according to the third article you posted, 10 million subscribers (and by no means should you assume that every one of them watches The Mandalorian). Young Sheldon, according to the link I posted, dropped to under 10 million viewers* from 15 million two years ago.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/NCIS_(season_18)

NCIS, in its _18th_season_, still draws more viewers than D- has total subscribers, and that’s with less than half of their peak of over 25 million viewers. As noted in the article I linked to, streaming services use garbage metrics that make it hard to get a real objective view of their shows’ true popularity, at least when trying to compare them against anything but other streaming shows. The Office has been off the air for years, is widely available in both season and series box sets, and is competing for market share against tons of new shows that are coming out all year long, so the fact that it was recently the most popular streaming series makes me wonder how small the viewership numbers for original streaming shows really are.

That’s what I meant when I said, objectively, that barely anyone has watched it. That’s not to say it’s not popular with those who have watched it, or that it’s not widely regarded as the best piece of Disney Wars (even by those who have never watched a single episode). It’s just that it’s paywalled, which really cuts down on the potential viewer base. So, when they make an entire advent calendar based on this series, there will be a lot of buyers who have no idea what they’re building, and there will be previous buyers who skip this one because they haven’t watched the show.