REVIEW: Advent calendar 13 December 2024

Now half way through this year’s advent calendar, there has been a degree of pattern emerging. So yesterday I speculated on what could be coming today. Was I correct? Read on to see what we got…

Yesterday, I had correctly assessed that we might be up for a “Christmas themed” model, and the two gift boxes (and Hedwig) did fit that overall description. And then I speculated we might be due for another Hogwarts student minifigure, so with some excitement (after having been so often wrong this year) I did open door number 13.

I could quickly see this was indeed a Ravenclaw student along with the bricks required (four of them, including a tile with the Ravenclaw mascot printed) to build the base of the Ravenclaw statue.

The minifigure included is Cho Chang, one of the most prominent Ravenclaw students in the movies (along with Luna), and she has therefore been included quite often in sets recent years.

It is a good minifigure though, with the same torso design as the other three students we got already, just with the Ravenclaw colours.

Cho seems to like the stand for the statue. While I might have hoped for some other (more rare) Ravenclaw student, Harry certainly don’t mind Cho’s presence at all (though also hoping for a mistletoe to appear later in the calendar.

Summary

As with the other Hogwarts student minifigures, it is pretty good design. It is rather generic, but hopefully, it will be available at a reasonable price on Bricklink.com in due course, so you can stock up to make other characters too. The downside of this particular design is the prominence of the scarf, which makes it great for spectators of a Quidditch game, but less realistic for Hogwarts normal classes.

With the addition of the stand and the nicely printed tile, I will give today’s model four out of five house points. This is consistent with the scoring of the other students, though I must say that the excitement is down somewhat getting the fourth variation of the same generic torso design, so I was certainly tempted to score it down.

With this, tomorrow ought to be the Ravenclaw statue, but maybe they will try to sneak in the Slytherin table first? Check back tomorrow on the 2024 Advent Calendar page to see what we got.

Till then, Build the Magic!