Most licensed advent calendars end where they started, and the last door holds a slightly bigger version of whatever was behind the first. Blokees has built one where the twenty-fifth door completes a combiner. Its Transformers Defender Version Christmas Advent Calendar is up for pre-order at BigBadToyStore at $79.99, with an October arrival on the listing and no payment taken until it ships.

Twenty-five doors, numbered across the lid in green on red, each one holding a model kit that goes together without tools or glue. Blokees is drawing on its existing Defender Version range, so most of what falls out has been sold before in blind boxes. Among them: Ultra Magnus, Astrotrain, Jetfire, Shockwave, Sunstreaker, Galvatron, and a Beast Wars trio of Optimus Primal, Cheetor and a Megatron who is very much the purple crocodile. But the figure standing in the press shot is new, a Christmas exclusive Optimus Prime in red, green and gold with a green helmet where the blue one should be.

The Christmas exclusive Optimus Prime from the Blokees advent calendar, in red, green and gold with a green helmet, holding a glittered red rifle capped in frosted grey.

Look at what is printed on his chest. The windshield panels that are normally two flat blue rectangles carry a snowy scene with wrapped presents stacked in the foreground, a gift ribbon and bow is tampoed onto the left shoulder, and the rifle is a glittered red tube capped with frosted grey. There is no Santa hat anywhere on him, and the figure is funnier for it!

Onslaught, Brawl, Swindle, Blast Off and Vortex are all on the contents list, and so is the Bruticus combining accessory that welds them together [1]. The calendar is a combiner sold one door at a time. Hasbro had been selling gestalts a limb at a time since the Constructicons, and the Combaticons arrived on that model in 1986: all five were needed, and the big robot did not exist until the last of them had been paid for. Plenty of us never finished the set. On a shelf in 1986 the waiting between limbs was the problem, since the shop had what it had and a missing Blast Off could sit missing for a year; on a calendar the waiting is the format, and Blokees has spent it deliberately. Its own listing promises the combine as the final reveal, behind the twenty-fifth door [2]. Our own entry on Bruticus covers what he then did with that body.

The advent calendar packaging, showing the numbered doors one to twenty-five across the lid and the printed character line-up along the side.

Two Special Chase Versions are on that list as well, a Galaxy Type Rodimus and an Armor Type Grimlock, and Blokees states plainly that a full box contains no duplicates. The no-duplicates promise is worth more on a calendar than it is on the blind-box packs, where a bad pull can be re-rolled by buying another box. But a calendar gives you one door on the fifteenth, and whatever is behind it is the morning you get.

On the practical side, the BigBadToyStore listing takes no money until the box is ready to go out, and the order can be cancelled at any point before that. It qualifies for the store’s $6 flat rate US shipping. Blokees also sells the set direct from its own store, where it is listed in stock rather than on pre-order [3].

The rest of the Blokees range sits on our shelf here, built, for anyone who has never seen what these kits look like off the sprue. The Christmas Prime is the figure on the box, and he is not the reason to buy it. The reason is that the twenty-fifth door finishes something the other twenty-four started, so the last morning is the only one that could have been the last. Most calendars in this hobby just stop.

Notes

  1. Blokees sells the Bruticus Combining Parts Kit on its own, and BigBadToyStore carries it at $9.99. The calendar folds it into the twenty-five.
  2. Blokees’ product page heads the section “25 Days. One Final Combine.” and describes combining into Bruticus as the last reveal. The door-by-door order behind the numbers is not published.
  3. Blokees lists the set at 8 years and up, in ABS, with a set box measuring 17.72 by 9.57 by 3.86 inches, under item number 71498.

Sources