Lego advent calendars should be a great choice to keep your kids entertained on the countdown to Christmas, but this 2016 Friends edition just left us confused and annoyed.
This is a £19.99 set in the and $29.99 in the US, and has 218 pieces. That includes just two minidolls, which is really disappointing considering the price. The rest is a lot of small pieces which are going to be quickly lost after Christmas is over, and 22 models of varying quality.
There’s a few standout days, like the Christmas tree, and the piano, but a lot of them are also difficult to recognise because there’s so few pieces involved. There’s a general theme of a holiday party with singing, and guitars and microphones therefore feature. But there’s also seats, and ice-skates, and a lot of cooking equipment, and it never seems to quite gel together they way it should. The lack of a big finish on the 24th is criminal.
It has an age range of 5-12, but younger kids are likely to struggle working out how to build each model based on just the picture. The larger models also have the problem of having to be printed smaller on the back of the door, which only makes that issue worse. I’m not sure what the alternative would be, short of including a little instruction booklet in every bag, but that does seem like it would be overkill.
You can watch our video if you want to see everything that was included, and see if you think it’s as disappointing as we did. We still have the Lego City Advent Calendar 2016 to open, so hopefully that one is better.
