One of the hugest items this holiday season in the Funko Community besides the 12 Days of Christmas was the Harry Potter Advent calendar. As soon as it was announced online, we had to have it since we have quite the extensive Harry Potter collection to begin with. You can check it out our HP collection and if you missed it! We had skipped out on the Pint Size Mini Freddy Funko calendar last year, and sort of regretted it. This year we were determined not to miss out and this calendar seemed to be the perfect mix of Funko and Fandom for our house. Since we received our Gamestop order in November, we were so excited to start the countdown to Christmas.
The Advent calendar is set up so that the windows are the background. When the kit is opened up at first there is a tree and Hagrid hut that could be put together. These pieces were easy to set up but when you opened each window, you had to pretty much reset the display each day. By mid December we gave up trying to make them all stand and just had them laying down. Just the slightest bump would have them toppling over like dominos. Also if the bottom art part with the snow pattern was bent in anyway, the figures wouldn't stand at all.
The character pieces available each day are absolutely adorable. Some of our favorite of this set has to be Hedwig, Crookshank, Voldemort, and Dobby. Crookshanks and Voldemort both have these look on their face like "Really? Are You Kidding Me?". Dobby is probably one of our favorite HP characters of them all so seeing a mini of him was even better. The detail on Luna's piece is absolutely amazing. Dumbledore, Snape, McGonagall, and even Hagrid make an appearance in this advent calendar as well. I wish they had made a variety of different characters or creatures instead of creating multiple versions of Harry, Ron, and Hermione. When I got to Day 24 and opened up another Harry Potter, I was so disappointed. There were I would have loved to see a Dementor, Sirius Black, Dolores Umbridge, or Remus as a Werewolf. In the end, here is all the Pop Mini's received in this advent calendar:
3 Different Harry Potters
2 Different Ron Weasleys
2 Different Hermione Grangers
Hagrid
McGonagall
Snape
Dumbledore
Luna
Ginny Weasley
Fred & George Weasley
Neville Longbottom
Draco Malfoy
Voldemort
Luna Lovegood
Moaning Myrtle
Nearly Headless Nick
Crookshanks
Dobby
Hedwig
Thestral
Unfortunately, we started to notice early on that some of our pieces were damaged. While we understand these are tiny little pop figurines to begin with but the quality control was quite low. We had multiple pieces who refuse to stand regardless how hard we try. There are also some figures where the pieces aren't glued on correctly or all the way. A couple have huge glue finger prints on the heads. The biggest disappointed had to be the fact that our Nearly Headless Nick was actually headless. I'm not sure if he wasn't produced right to begin with or if he was damaged while in transit to our house. Either way, his head was hanging on by a tiny plastic thread that eventually resulted his head being decapitated. Would we buy another Funko advent calendar? Probably not, unless it was Marvel themed. Due to their stubbornness to stand, we are already having trouble figuring out how to display them after the holidays. Regardless, we are stoked to see what Funko decides to do next year for their advent calendar.