REVIEW: Advent calendar 4 December 2022

Looking at the icon on door number 4, we should now have moved on from the first movie. So I expect a micro-scale model or minifigure from Chamber of Secrets for the “photo album” that seems to be the theme of this year’s calendar. Read on to see what we got and how I rated it…

The basilisk on today’s door suggests we’ve now moved on to the second movie.

4 December model

Not surprising, given we had a minifigure yesterday, we are back building micro-scale models. But what a nice iconic location that is – the Whomping Willow with the flying Ford Anglia nested in it.

Today’s plastic bag contained 23 parts – somewhat better than 2 December, but less than 1 December. What was most surprising though was that 7 out of the 23 parts were spares! (though I realise that others might have had 22 parts with just 6 spares – more about this below)

Here you can see how it is built – with a few more steps than the instructions, which can be hard to read…

Interestingly, I had two roller skates as spares. I assumed they have done that consistently, but based on subsequent comments I can see that it may not be the case. That’s nice, as you then have a full set of roller skates to give any of your models.

A micro-scale model of the Whomping Willow was also included in the 2018 Hogwarts Castle set, though that was somewhat bigger as seen below, with the 2018 model to the left in comparison with today’s model to the right.

Summary

The Whomping Willow is a great, iconic location, and it has been rather well captured in micro-scale. It could have been done better – in particular I wish the tree had been a bit more “bushy”. But with 23 parts it is pretty good to be honest. Overall, I’m leaning towards 4 points today, but given the extra set of roller skates (at least for me) – and my good Sunday mood, I’ll lift it to 4.5 out of 5 house points.

Wonder if we’ll have a consistent sequence of two micro-scale builds and then a minifigure for each movie. In that case, 5 December will have another micro-scale build, but who knows for sure. Check back tomorrow on the 2022 Advent Calendar page to see what we got.

Till then, Build the Magic!

3 thoughts on “REVIEW: Advent calendar 4 December 2022”

Thanks for the great reviews of the HP advent calendar. I’ve really been relying on you this year to figure out the builds. My bag had only 1 spare skate today- I double checked the trash after reading your post. I’m still on the fence about this year’s micro scale. While some, like the Whomping Willow, are quite fun to look at, they don’t fit well with my mini fig sets. Perhaps they are toys modeled after iconic locations that wizard children play with.

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