HP and SW remain close, but seem to be pulling away from MCU a bit early on. Fortunately, there’s still tons of runway left for all three calendars. Let’s see how today played out:

Day 7- MCU

Steve:  On the Seventh day of Christmas the Guardians gave to meeeee…. A gun that goes with someone previousleeee.

(The rhymes are getting harder)

Door 7 for the MCU brings us a buildable weapon for Rocket. It’s no surprise, we saw it on the box, but it is still disappointing when they spread one build over two days. 

The gun is appropriately, hilariously oversized for Rocket, and looks pretty good in his hand. The build has some interesting ideas – using a thicker droid arm as a shoulder stock is nice, something I might try on some other blaster designs. 

Overall, MCU needed a win to stay competitive but I don’t think this door delivers. 

Day 7- SW

Pat: Day 7 for Star Wars brings us the best micro version of a ship we’ve seen countless times before, Luke’s Landspeeder! Like clockwork, it has been 4 years since we’ve gotten our last micro Luke’s Landspeeder (2018), and it was 4 years before that we got the first (2014). Peppered between the years are Luke’s Landspeeders in System scale, macro scale, even Ultimate Collectors Series scale – so how does this Landspeeder stand above? Well for starters, they correctly achieve the busted engine on one of the side thrusters, like Luke’s full sized one has in Episode 4. We also get a little white stud representing Luke, and a little gold stud representing C-3PO, which is cool to see. This version is missing a few of the colours of the other ones, like the dark red used in previous years for the base, and its super hard to say if I think it looks better or worse without it – it looks more accurate for sure, but kinda less Lego-y? Super minor gripe though, solid build all around for what is supposedly the calendar’s stop at Ep. 4 as it progresses through the canon (so far episode 2 builds, followed by episode 3 and bad batch, followed by episode 4, implies the calendar is going chronologically.

Day 7- HP

Andrew: Day 7 predictably brings us back to another microbuild, but this time featuring a Prisoner of Azkaban scene, specifically the Knight Bus.

The build of the bus is quite simple (a stack of mostly 1×2 plates), but brings some much needed colour after 2 days of blacks and greys. The build also makes use of its game-piece base to flesh out the environment of the bus, providing a sidewalk with a lamppost as well as a section of road the bus is driving on. As a result, despite the overall simplicity of the build, I found it very evocative, and looking at the finished build immediately brought to mind the first time I saw the Knight Bus on screen long ago.

While I’m not the biggest fan of microbuilds, this one strikes me as better than average, being an unmistakable representation of an early scene in this story. As such it deserves some praise. But it remains to be seen if it can beat the competition.

Verdict

Two microbuilds for SW and HP again, but this time the edge goes to SW with its landspeeder. A close second goes to the Knight Bus. In third again is MCU with a cool gun for Rocket, but ultimately feels like one gift spread out over two days.

As such, the scores are now:

SW- 9

HP- 8

MCU- 4

To be continued…