This is it! The FINAL day of the calendar! The day before Christmas, and the last gift this Despicable Me 3 calendar is offering us! It's all been building up to this! So, without further ado, our last present is...
*drum roll*
A PRESENT! ...To the surprise of absolutely no one, seeing as how it's the only thing pictured on the calendar we haven't gotten yet! ...Stupid spoilerific calendar covers...
To this model's credit, this is the ONLY present model of the four I can actually identify as a "present". It's a nice, wide box, with red stripes around the top and middle, showing where the ribbon has been wrapped around this gift. ...It's still blander than any other gift we've gotten from these advent calendars, but I can at least tell what it is! I'm not going to serve it as a slice of cake to a minifigure! ...Unintentionally...
It still has that stupid single-stud plate as a bow, as opposed to the other calendars that either had larger pieces or were a little more creative with their bow designs, but even that looks better on this present! Since the present actually has some "body", it fits well in the middle, and its placement makes it look like part of the rest of the ribbon! ...I would have preferred an actual bow piece, especially since I know they exist in the Mega Construx library, but I can at least say it actually looks like what it's supposed to be! ...And it's not half a stick of Big Red.
And finally, and this is probably the strangest compliment I've given for anything in this calendar, I don't mind getting this as the final model! ...Yes. THIS is the model I think is perfect to end the calendar on!
For the previous calendars, we had another Minion figure and a morbid Christmas tree, respectfully, ending our advent calendar joy. ...And both just didn't feel like final calendar items! The figure was just a general Minion figure wearing the same overalls as the previous two, with a star and trees badly spray-painted on the front. The tree was very nice, and possibly the best model we received from that calendar. ...But, since it was a tree, it would have been nicer to get that earlier, especially with all the presents that calendar included!
This present, on the other hand, works for the final window! It's a present. A GIANT present, clearly wrapping the largest gift the Minions will get(either that, or a tiny present from a classic holiday troll). It represents the unknown, the mystery of presents on Christmas, and what could be under that wrapping. It's the final surprise for the Minions, and another thing to look forward to for the next day, when what is inside is finally revealed!
It's the perfect addition to put under the tree, in anticipation of the following day and the lucky Minion it's for! ...Who may/may not have woken up six hours before all the other Minions to get an "early start" on his gifts!
So yes. For the first time since starting these advent calendar lookthroughs, I've FINALLY found one that ends on a fitting note! While the design's not the most fantastical, the concept is perfect to close out a calendar the day before Christmas! The rest of the calendar order was questionable, but for the final item, they made the right choice. I have no complaints, and what I feel for this decision is pure, Christmas joy!
...Of course, for most of the rest of the calendar, what I feel is disgust and annoyance that this is what we got for this year! The final item might have been a good closeout, but for everything leading up to the final window, the air has been full of an immense feeling of
That expression will never gain meaning, but it will never lose its meaning, either!
With that, the final thing we have left to do is try to recreate the scene on the front of the box!
And no matter how it's organized, it STILL doesn't resemble the franchise it's based on! Take out the Minions, you'd never guess this was Despicable Me!
Case in point! ...Actually, I think I made it cuter. Mega Construx, I have a licensing opportunity for you!
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Quality: We once again get the standard Mega Construx quality brick plastic, which is a little more rubbery than what Lego uses, yet higher quality than most other brick manufacturers use. Everything was well made, fit together nicely, and had no obvious sprue holes, runoff, or color fading! Even the paint was really good, with no scratches or splotches that I could detect! Truthfully, this might be the highest quality calendar we've gotten so far, in terms of materials! ...However, I do have to knock a few points off for not painting the backs of the bricks! I REALLY hoped that I'd only see this with pirate and knockoff toys who don't care what cost-cutting measures they use, so to see unpainted backs of sweaters and trees from a major brick manufacturer and Silver Medalist in the building brick market is PAINFUL! Like I said, I can forgive them for the tree, but there is NO excuse not to continue the sweater patterns all around the Minions! ...Still, I guess in the grand scheme of things, that amounts to barely above a nitpick. This calendar has shown us that there IS a plus side to super-simplistic designs: There's less to mess up!
Design: Unlike last year, where most models included at least one custom/uncommon piece in their builds, nearly every model in this calendar was built using regular building bricks. As a result, everything looks VERY blocky and even amateur, like something I could have come up with and built in a few minutes! We get a few models that use a number of different bricks to their advantage, like the train, the couch, the reindeer, and the tree, but everything else looks like it was built using a handful of tiny random bricks! One of my complaints with the first Minions calendar was that I couldn't tell what I was looking at with a few models, and with this year's offering, it was even worse! Very little looks like it should, and if they weren't used in an example on the front of the box, I wouldn't know what they were for! The drum, toy soldier, and especially (most of)the presents were the absolute worst designs out of the entire calendar, all looking like they had to be made two seconds before the calendar went into production! Even most of the stuff that wasn't bad still wasn't good enough to call "good". Things like the plane, the car, the maracas, the sled, etc. were just... There. ...On the other hand, the few things I liked I genuinely DID like. The miniature house, the custom sheet music piece, the guitar accessory, the skates, the final present, even the Minions themselves all looked GREAT, being built out of a very small amount of pieces, yet being easily recognizable and professionally designed! The Minions especially surprised me, since I wasn't expecting such a different design or superb paint job for these figures! And I legitimately had fun a few days ago, putting the Minion, cocoa cup, phonograph, couch, and fireplace in a scene, and I'll stand by that it's one of the most festive images I've seen this season! So in the instances this calendar does something right, it does it VERY well! ...It's just a shame the "good" models don't balance out the "bad" models.
Creativity: ...There was some to be seen? This is the blandest of all the calendars we've seen so far, as well as one of the most disappointing brick sets I've ever purchased, period! Most of the models included were EXTREMELY generic, not only not having anything to do with the franchise, but being built out of standard bricks that anyone who's bought a brick set probably has lying around their house! I feel sorry for the crap I gave the first Minions calendar, since we at least got some jelly, a fart gun, some models stamped with the Gru logo, and... Whatever that robot thing was. Here, not even the custom bricks have anything to do with the Minions, or even a Christmas setting! You could have included ANY figures from any franchise with these models, and nobody would notice they were out of place! It's PAINFUL that we get some models similar to what we've seen in previous calendars, but in a much more flawed, watered-down format. The milk-and-cookies table is boring, the nutcracker is boring, the presents are boring, the sled is boring, even the fireplace is boring! The only models I can say outdid most other attempts we've seen were the reindeer and the tree, since they looked much more like what they're supposed to be than the last few times they were included in a calendar! Besides those models, the other presents I can say I at least saw some creative thought in were the sheet music, the guitar, the miniature house, the train, the couch, the final present, and the sweater paint jobs for the Minions. Everything else just felt like a rehash, or that they just stuck a couple bricks together and said "It's a drum. Deal with it." On the whole, the biggest compliment I can give to all the models is that they're "serviceable." They work to be general items included in a budget brick advent calendar, and that's it. So while most of the items weren't that bad, they were BORING, and opening this calendar only made me long for the creativity of the other two calendars we looked at! ...Or any other advent calendar in general! ...I'll even take Play-Doh instead of having to do this calendar again...
Readability: As with most other brick advent calendars, the instructions for each model were inside the flap, with a picture of the completed model in the back behind where the model is kept. These were the simplest models we've had from a calendar yet, so I had ZERO trouble putting each one together. Again, there's always some bright point to having models with no creative thought behind them...
Packaging: We get a more energized winter scene than we got with Monster High, but still not up to the standards of the first Minions calendar. The first one had a pretty crowded picture, featuring toys and appliances running amok, while one Minion rode an uncontrollable sled and two others decorated the tree. Here, everything's much more spaced out, with less chaotic action, or even action, behind most of the things that came with the calendar. We only have two Minions, one crashing through an ice wall, and another shaking its maracas as it skates. Unlike the first calendar, they don't seem to be interacting with the scenery as a whole, and, because everything's clearly a model instead of having a few instances of the figures being drawn in a festive pose, it all just feels lifeless. And since the Minions aren't actually interacting with the Christmas stuff, it feels more like a generic winter scene, as opposed to something for the holidays! The tree and presents are just tucked into a corner, while most of the rest of the space is just... Space. Unlike the first calendar, which at least promised me some excitement, even if I don't like the franchise, this scene just does the bare minimum, only one step above having all the models lined up in a row! ...Still, I do like the return of the Minion scenes on the other sides of the box, and how easily you can misinterpret what's going on! Like the Monster High calendar, the doors were REALLY hard to open, and I even ripped a few doors trying! And the order for the items were... Weird! I didn't know what to expect for the first calendar, the second calendar fell into a pattern, and this calendar is sort of a mix between those methods. After the initial figure, we got nothing but instruments the first several days, then just a jumble of unrelated models for the next few days! And when the presents showed up, and we got two in a row, I really thought we'd get them all at once. ...Only to have some other models butt in line and throw off the pattern I thought they were going to do again! This order was decided by either the laziest or the most brilliant designers ever to create a brick-centered advent calendar, and they either don't care about their job, or they're professional trolls! Overall, the scenery for this calendar is mostly boring, save for some scenes on the sides, but the order the models are given to us is the work of a genius! A MAD genius, but a genius nonetheless. ...Maybe Doctor Nefario himself designed this?
Conpatibility: This calendar uses more standard bricks than usual for a Mega Construx project, so there's very little that wouldn't fit with any other brick set. I guess the guitar would be a little unwieldy for other figures, but besides that, go ahead and use these models with any other setting you have on hand. They'll fit just as well there as they do here.
Overall:
This was REALLY hard to get through! Besides my overall indifference to the Minions and the Despicable Me franchise in general, there just wasn't much keeping my attention from door to door, hence why I kept forgetting to open them! The quality of the bricks was nice, but the designs were overly simplistic and there was virtually no creativity with any of them! You could take most of the models, put them in any other set, and they wouldn't be out of place! Unlike the first calendar, there is NOTHING tying this calendar into the Despicable Me franchise except for the Minions! ...And that's pretty much the only positive point about this calendar, that the Minions are cute and different enough to stand out from any other Minion figure I've seen. It might actually be worth getting the calendar just to collect those two figures! However, besides that, the models, and even the calendar itself, are just bland and boring. Unless you have very little kids who are just old enough to play with building bricks and who won't complain about what brick sets they get, I'd give this calendar a pass and select one of the many other brick calendars available. As the Minions say, it was very "Gib, non agei, yee non a leelas banana."
Oh, and MERRY CHRISTMAS!
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