Review: LEGO Star Wars 75366 Advent Calendar 2023

Today we take a quick tour of the content of the LEGO Star Wars set 75366 Advent Calendar 2023, a box of 320 pieces sold at the public price of €37.99 on the official store and around €20 elsewhere. If you don't want to see in advance what's in the box that you probably bought just because you know what it contains, don't go any further.

I'm not going to lie to you, I set out to unpack this calendar as it should be by opening one box per day. Tired of the mediocrity of the contents of several of these boxes, I finally unpacked everything at once so I could move on to something else by eating my daily Kinder.

On arrival, once free of the product packaging, the new interior cardboard insert and the 24 plastic bags, there remained 143 grams of LEGO bricks, I weighed everything. It's a lot of packaging for little content, but it's at this price that the marketing has its effect on the shelves and that LEGO can sell this small batch of parts at full price.

This calendar is broken down into four categories of mini-things of varying interest depending on your affinities with this type of product: vehicles and other vessels, accessories for the characters, some reproductions of more or less recognizable and emblematic places from the saga and some figurines. We're not going to lie, many here only buy these calendars for the few new and possibly exclusive figurines they contain.

As for ships and machines, I must admit that this calendar is not the worst of what LEGO has marketed in the same format so far. Some are quite successful given the scale imposed and it's easy to get into the game of assembly. It remains to be seen what to do with it afterwards, but the micro-things offered this year more than do the trick.

As for accessories and mini-micro-nano-dioramas, we feel the need to fill boxes with additional elements which for the most part do not add much to the project.

It is sometimes extremely symbolic and possibly useful to showcase the figurines provided and give consistency to a product which lacks a little and even if the flying wing of the Ewok is intended to be placed in a slightly strange due to the limited mobility of the associated figurine or that the battle station intended for the Clone Trooper is a bit ridiculous and that the STAP is relatively stable. We'll make do.

Upon arrival, there remains a small handful of characters who will probably not end up at the bottom of a drawer or a toy bin. Most of the elements used for these figurines are, however, far from new and LEGO does not really make an effort to reward those who spent €38 on this box.

The Omega figurine is also in the set 75323 The Justify, that of the Clone Trooper of the 212th is in the set 75337 AT-TE-Walker, Leia is in the set 75353 Endor Speeder Chase Diorama but it is delivered here without his helmet, Palpatine uses elements already seen and there are only the Ewok and Palpatine's sweater that are completely new and undoubtedly exclusive for eternity to this box.

I'll spare you the Battle Droid without any special pad printing, it's just a box on the calendar that can be quickly filled in at a lower cost. The festive Pit Droid and the Gonk Droid disguised as a reindeer don't really count, they are just assemblages, certainly interesting, of very common parts.

In the end, I came for the figurines but I especially remember the few rather well executed ships this year, this 2023 calendar having at least the merit of offering some interesting and original constructions.

€38 is obviously much too expensive for what it is, even if some will see it as a tradition that extends over 24 days and which would almost justify this incredible price. For around twenty euros, it's already more acceptable but the supply of figurines is still sparse and in my opinion once again lacks panache.

For all practical purposes and if you do not want to ruin the product packaging by taking out the interior insert from the side rather than opening each window, please note that the assembly instructions are available in PDF format at this address.

Note: The product shown here, provided by LEGO, is as usual involved. Deadline fixed at December 18, 2023 next at 23:59 p.m. Simply post a comment below the article to participate. Your participation is taken into account regardless of your opinion. Avoid “I’m participating” or “I’m trying my luck”, we suspect that this is the case.

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