REVIEW: Advent calendar 11 December 2021

I love weekends – as it means more time to enjoy the morning ritual of opening the calendar. The calendar so far has had mostly average builds. Will today bring us the first model to get awarded five House points? Read on to see what we got…

Opening today’s door, I see – not surprisingly – that we are still in Gringotts Bank.

11 December model

Today’s model is a minifigure of Griphook – the head of the goblins working at Gringotts bank. He’s the one who served Hagrid and Harry when they arrived at the bank in the first movie.

In this year’s calendar, he is the first minifigure to come with an accessory – a set of golden keys.

Here is the completed minifigure. The torso is nicely printed, with a formal red jacket you’d expect from a high ranking bank official. He comes with two facial expressions – normally that would be smiling and angry/upset. Not quite some what the emotions are here. You can decide yourself…

His torso is also printed on the back.

Here he is manning the desk we got yesterday.

Griphook is a nice addition to the calendar. We did get him with the Harry Potter Collectable Minifigure (CMF) Series 2 last year as well, though that version represented him in the Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows movies.

So is the version in the calendar then a good representation of Griphook as seen in the first movie? Actually not – as we was wearing a black jacket in that one. The torso used has actually been used twice before – for Ollivander in the exclusive 2020 Diagon Alley set and for an unnamed wizard (probably Dedalus Diggle) in this year’s Wizarding World Minifigure Accessory pack. While the torso, hair and legs have all been used before, the head is unique to the calendar, as the CMF series 2 version only had one facial expression printed on the head.

It is surprising that none of the two face prints in today’s model has him wearing glasses, as he did in the movie.

Anyway, with the desk now manned, Harry can ask to see his vault.

Summary

The minifigures have so far been a highlight in this year’s calendar and Griphook is a another great choice of minifigure to include – given the focus on what appears to be Harry’s first journey to Hogwarts. Including accessories (keys) lifts the score too. But I wish they had created a unique torso for him. It is not that the version is bad in any way, but it is only enough to award 3.5 out of 5 House Points. With a new torso that matched the movie appearance and one of the face prints having him wearing glasses, it could have been the first model to score five points this year.

So will Harry get to his vault tomorrow? And is there any money left in it? Another sleep and we will find out, so check back tomorrow on the Advent calendar review page.

Till then, Build the Magic!