A charming send-up of Nordic holiday traditions.
TL;DR:
- Original Price: $44.99
- Pieces: 231
- Minifigure(s): Elsa, Kristoff, Olaf, Anna (all microdolls)
- Sticker Sheet: No
- Pros: Cute builds and many good details, special printed pieces
- Cons: Microdolls, un-advertised show tie-in
Assembly:
December 0 - I'll be doing something a bit different from my usual post format for this year's Advent calendar sets: given their setup, I will update this post with each day's builds. In the past, when I've been fortunate enough to have Advent calendars in more than one series, I'd saved them up, doling them out one month at a time (first Star Wars in December, then Disney in January, etc) both as an exercise in patience and to keep the fun going for much longer. It's a fun way to do it, especially if you can find them on clearance after December 1.
You can see my other 2025 Advent calendar reviews here: City, Frozen, Star Wars
December 1 - Elsa microdoll & Sir Jorgenbjorgen (puffin plush). I'm not a fan of microdolls, but the use of trans-light blue feather to symbolize her ice magic is a nice touch, and the little pins fit just as well in her hands or her hair. The stuffed bird is a reference to Elsa's childhood toy, and is just as good a listener in plastic as he was in fabric.
Leftover Pieces
December 2 - Gingerbread Arendelle Castle. I love the printing on the box piece, and the different colors of the plates really add to the cookie-like feel of this little build, while the white pyramids and 1x2 slope feel just like icing. This may very well be one of the highlights of the whole set.
Leftover Pieces
I forgot to take a picture, but this build comes with one extra 1x1 cookie tile and 1x1 pyramid.
December 3 - Olaf & Christmas treats. The size of Olaf here is a bit too big compared with the microdolls in the set, but he seems to be well-scaled vs the more standard Friends-sized minidolls in other Frozen sets, and the iridescent printing on his bowtie is a nice touch (it's interesting to note that with minidoll Frozen sets, Olaf's head piece is the same, but he gets a taller body, again messing with his scale as seen in the movies, where he's only about waist-high). The treats are also great, making use of a new fruitcake-printed tile (only available in this set so far) and a magenta version of the candy cane piece that's appeared in a few other sets (including the Nightmare Before Christmas, CMF 23's Sugar Fairy, and of course this year's hot item, the Gingerbread AT-AT). The candy cane can fit in Olaf's nose, which happens in the 2017 featurette "Olaf's Frozen Adventure."
Leftover Pieces
December 4 - Arendelle house. The green wreath is a nice detail, but the 1x1 round-end tile feels oddly truncated if it's intended to be a door. The bare studs on the ground below also give an unfinished look to the piece (which is either a model/toy or intended to be part of Arendelle itself, viewed from the castle). A few more pieces would have finished it out (a 1x2 tile for the door, for example, or for snow in front of the house) and it wouldn't have been too hard to add an extra building or two to make it feel more involved.
Leftover Pieces
December 5 - Sven with harness. The baby/microdoll-scale Sven is always adorable, and the 1x1 double-curved slope piece fits perfectly in his back. Remove the 1x1 and you can instead place the clip for the harness. My guess is tomorrow's build will be a sleigh of some sort to attach to the harness. It's also interesting that, for a "Spin to Play" set, as shown on the box art, we still haven't gotten the spinner...then again, looking at previous sets it seems like the placement varies wildly (for example, the 2022 Harry Potter Advent calendar had it on the 21st day, while the 2024 Disney Advent calendar had it on the 5th day), possibly depending on how the designers have written the play rules—the aforementioned Harry Potter set required all of the days' builds to be built before you could actually play, for example. So I guess we'll see what this year's brings.
Leftover Pieces
December 6 - Sled. They sure didn't make us wait long for it! This is one of the biggest builds I've seen in the Advent calendars I've been lucky enough to have, at least in terms of square footage; it also has one of the biggest pieces, a 2x6 with double inverted slopes, as its base. My guess is this was used because of the 2x4 with two studs for passengers to be mounted on.
The colors are a bit hit-or-miss, with gold runners, dark tan clip, dark blue front and middle, magenta back, and dark orange underside. Kristoff's sled in the movie is dark brown wood with some minimal crimson and dark teal paint decorating it, so reddish brown would have been much more appropriate. The shape also doesn't match the traditional sleigh look, and could have been reworked to be a little more artistically sleigh-ish, especially given how pretty they look with the recurve front and all.
December 7 - Spinner. Interestingly built upside down, using a 2x2 dome as the dreidel-style point. I wasn't able to find any official play rules, beyond "Box becomes a Disney game: Entertain up to 5 players with the built-in game board." on the official Lego page for the set, so my guess is to use the spinner and move to the next place matching that color on your microdoll's journey from the castle gate at the bottom of the board to the house at the top.
Also funny to notice that two days after I began wondering when the spinner would arrive, we got it! Now, to quote Fender from Robots: "Money should be falling from the sky!"
December 8 - Anna & presents. The printing on Anna's dress is really fantastic (it would have been great to get it as a minifigure instead, but so it goes) and the rubber hair piece has two holes for pin inserts (eg, the bow piece). The two presents are simple but effective.
Leftover Pieces
December 10 - Fireplace. These are staples of a lot of Advent calendar sets, though it's interesting to see one so barren. Given the empty studs on the front and top, I assume tomorrow's build will contain stockings for the mantlepiece studs and probably a chimney stack with a wreath...we'll see in 24 hours.
December 10 - Wreath & stockings. Called it! It feels a bit strange to have them be separate from the fireplace's build, but at least we got them, and they're pretty well rendered, given the small part count. We also get a ton of extra pieces.
Leftover Pieces
December 11 - Accordion and saxophone. I'm not the first to mention the anachronism in Frozen—set in 1843 (Frozen) and 1846 (Frozen II), but the word fractals, as mentioned in "Let it Go", wasn't coined until 1975—and here we have another one. Accordions were first invented in 1820, the first accordion with a piano-style keyboard was created (according to some sources) in 1852; Saxophones, on the other hand, were patented in Belgium in 1846, making it unlikely that one of the new inventions would have made its way as far north as Arendelle.
It's also worth mentioning that the microdoll hands are woefully undersized to utilize these accessories, just as they can't hold the hot cocoa or candy cane from day 3.
That said, it's good to get the somewhat rare sax piece, and I really like how simple-but-effective the 1x2 brick with grille profile is at mimicking the accordion's bellows.
December 12 - Windmill. Another cute little build, designed to fit with the house we got on day 4. I suspect that we'll be able to have a micro-scale Arendelle by the end of this, either gingerbread like day 2's castle, or else toy buildings made from wooden blocks. Not the most exciting of builds, but the grooved brick adds some nice detailing.
December 13 - St. Lucia wreath. I first learned about these when I was a kid and read the American Girl book Kirsten's Surprise (borrowed from a relative, mostly because the illustrations caught my curiosity), in which the Swedish immigrant celebrates Christmas in the tradition of her homeland, specifically St. Lucia's Day, "Luciadagen." This is held on December 13th, the feast day of Saint Lucy (St. Lucia), and involves a procession of children in white gowns bearing candles and stars. The leader traditionally wears a wreath of candles on her head (just as Kirsten does on the book cover).
This tradition is common to all of the Nordic countries, so it makes sense that Arendelle—which is modeled on Norway, both in location and culture—would have a similar tradition. Alas, this build is a bit oversized for the microdolls of Anna and Elsa, and falls off (unless you remove their hair and insert the head-stud into the hole in the middle of the wreath); it is a little ill-proportioned for a table decoration, a 4x4 round plate with a 2x2 cutout would look much more wreath-like and be a more appropriate size for the candles. Still, I appreciate that they included this on the appropriate day, which was a nice touch, especially given how minor of a build this is otherwise.
Leftover Pieces
December 14 - Bell and letter. Mail's here! Not the most exciting or elaborate of builds, but when put with the other microscale buildings it could be a good fit within what's rapidly becoming a tiny village.
Leftover Pieces
December 15 - Kristoff. Looks like he's preparing a veggie stew. It's worth noting that this is the smallest set that you can get the ice cream scoops piece in dark green with. The printing on his body piece is a little dark, which is a shame because it otherwise does a good job of capturing the embroidery of his tunic. Also his hands are too small to hold the pot's handle.
Leftover Pieces - We get one extra carrot top piece, which could also be a bit of greenery to add to his stew...or a leek.
December 16 - Arendelle houses. More for the little toy townscape, and I appreciate how each offering is designed differently. It's interesting to note that they provided two 1x2 bricks with stud on one side (instead of just one of those and a plain 1x2 for the back), likely because it's easier to ensure quality control with two of a thing than with one each of two nearly-identical things.
Leftover Pieces
December 17 - Christmas tree & presents. While not spectacular nor complicated, there's a charm in the simplicity of these little builds that fits well with the microdoll scale.
Leftover Pieces
December 18 - Arendelle houses. As in the previous one (day 16), two 1x2 bricks with one stud on one side are provided instead of one and a plain one. This build also uses a container piece instead of a 2x2 brick for the upper story. It also comes with a satin-trans light blue octagonal jewel, which I suppose could be put in the container, but I'm not sure why; putting it outside makes it feel like a micro-scale placeholder for a frozen fountain.
Leftover Pieces
December 19 - See-saw and kitten. The mitten-like print on its forepaws match the pattern of the sweaters worn by the kittens in Olaf’s Frozen Adventures, which pretty firmly cements this set as being based on that short.
December 20 - Tree and presents. First, it's worth noting some very special pieces in today's build (would that we could get more of them!): two of the new botanical pieces—peony rose in green and sunflower in dark turquoise—and two lovely little printed tiles. The Yule goat (Julbock) design is charming and is the lid for the box that Elsa found in her trunk (with all of those gloves!) along with the tile showing Anna's drawing of Olaf, her first gift to Elsa after their separation. It's a really sweet detail, and was so specific that I ended up re-watching the short (Olaf's Frozen Adventure) to refresh my memory.
Leftover Pieces
December 21 - Kitten and tree. Well, looks like I got my wish! The tree's build is exactly the same as yesterday's, and the kitten is a recolor of the one we got on day 19. While I don't think that kittens eat croissants (which aren't technically Nordic either, perhaps it's meant to represent some similar pastry like kanelbullar), it's still nice to get pieces like this.
Leftover Pieces
December 22 - Dessert table. Another build pulled from the short, this one is a table that Elsa makes from ice to hold the snacks for the kingdom's impromptu new tradition. Perhaps we'll get an icy Olaf tree in one of the next two days?
Leftover Pieces
December 23 - Ice crystal tree. The short wraps up with a party on a frozen lake with yesterday's ice tables and a gigantically-prismatic Christmas tree made of ice crystals, on which is a similarly-frosty star containing a little straw Olaf doll (made by Anna with a similar technique to the traditional Julbock toy goats) is placed as a topper. As overplayed as the movies (and especially a certain song) tend to be, there's no denying their distinct visual styles, and that often reflects itself well in LEGO reproductions; this build is no exception, simple but elegant and eye-catching, especially in contrast to the three other trees we've gotten this year.
Leftover Pieces
December 24 - Arendelle Castle. Similar to the little façades from last year's Disney Advent calendar, this build is meant to be a shorthand version of Anna & Elsa's familial castle (vs. Elsa's ice palace in the 2024 calendar), though the colors don't quite match. The real castle has grey stone walls, pale peach plaster with dark brown wood beams, and roofs of teal or blue tiles; the colors and shapes here seem more like a building block version instead of anything intended to be accurate.
Leftover Pieces
Tomorrow I'll present photos of the whole set, along with my final thoughts...
Final thoughts - This was overall a pretty good set. It would have helped me appreciate the theming earlier if it had been made clear from the get-go that this was all referencing the Olaf's Frozen Adventure short, but once that connection was made it really helped clarify some of the more confusing details, as well as emphasizing just how creative the design team was in setting this all up.
I really appreciate the storytelling that was woven through the builds, and the attention to detail (for example, the wreath and candles on St. Lucia's Day). In retrospect, the little Arendelle houses (in the second photo below) are intended to show the various houses that Olaf goes to in his search for Christmas traditions. They also pair well with the small trees we got on days 20 and 21.
As I'd mentioned on the days in question, the microdoll hands make it impossible for the characters to properly interact with the accessories, which somewhat limits play-ability. The game board is a nice inclusion, but without rules—either on the box or online—it's up to each builder to decide how to play. There aren't any specialty pieces (aside from the floral pieces used in the trees), but there are prints that are really special, my favorite being the julebok box and the Arendelle gingerbread castle.
Minifigs
Leftover Pieces
Score (out of 5 🧱):
- Price: 🧱🧱🧱🧱
- Process: 🧱🧱🧱🧱
- Presentation: 🧱🧱🧱🧱🧱
- Play: 🧱🧱🧱🧱🧱
- Pieces: 🧱🧱🧱🧱
- Total: 🧱🧱🧱🧱🧱
Lego Instructions: here
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