Today, we continue our Advent journey, reviewing Celebratory Sets from the Holiday season. Yesterday, we took a look at the first Advent Calendar from 1998.  Today we travel further back, to 1977, when the first Brick Built Santa Sets were released.

 This is set 246 Santa and Sleigh. It is one of the earliest festive season sets produced.  With just 68 pieces, this set is all about using basic bricks to put together Santa, a reindeer and the Sleigh.  The design aesthetic is typical of Scandinavian Christmas Decorations and trinkets of the time, and I could see this happily sitting amongst them on a mantlepiece. Another example of late 70’s design is 245 ‘Two Santas’. According to Bricklink, this set was released in 1978, and was perfect if you had several children in the house ready to come to blows over the presumptive ownership of the LEGO Santa model. Comparing these two sets,  I love the way that two roof tiles are used to make Santa’s hat. I see that by turning them around,  they can be jaunty and jolly, or strictly business-like, depending on whether you have been Naughty or Nice.

Catching up with our Friends #2

Window number two features the ‘Flying Music’ symbol, which makes me wonder if this might be a build associated  with Andrea in some way.

Click below the break to see where the 2018 Friends Advent Calendar takes us today. 

A blur of bright yellowish orange wedge plates, with some magenta highlights.  It certainly looks like Andrea’s colour palette.

And we have a somewhat stylised electric guitar, complete with tremolo bar and tuning peg.  I love the use of the dark blue grille plates as strings. I can see this as being just the kind of instrument Andrea would play to showcase her talent to the world.

Come back tomorrow, when we will continue our journey through LEGO Christmas past…