Culture on My Mind
The 2024 Star Wars Droid Factory Advent Calendar
January 17, 2025

It’s time to talk about the 2024 Star Wars Droid Factory Advent Calendar!

My family has been doing the LEGO advent calendars since 2015 and I chronicle the daily builds on Instagram. Each of the annual box sets has been spotlighted on this site. This year, we saw a preview of the Droid Factory advent calendar and decided to add it to our lineup.

The droid builds are from the Disney parks Droid Factory action figure series. Each is scaled to the 3.5″ action figure lines and this set is Christmas themed. I’ve been collecting the Disney holiday exclusive droids, and these will be a wonderful addition to that set. My wife is a big fan of the astromech droids, especially R2-D2, BB-8, and Chopper from Star Wars Rebels, so this box was smack dab in the middle of our interests.

The box contained seven different droids of varying complexity. Unlike other advent calendars we have done, this one had 25 windows instead of 24.

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Droid #1: Gingerbread R2 unit (Days 1-5)

The first droid was a spin on the classic bartender R2-D2 from Return of the Jedi. This one came in five pieces – the drink tray, the left leg, the right leg, the dome and front tripod leg, and the drink dispenser – and the drinks were colored like milk (or eggnog). This correlated well with the cookie aesthetic, including frosting-like highlights. The droid sits well except for the tray which is tricky to balance correctly.

It’s an obvious repaint of the R2-S4M figure from 2023, which was released as part of the Return of the Jedi 40th anniversary celebration. Luckily, they secured the drinks to the tray this time so they don’t fall off as easily. That’s one of my least favorite aspects of the bartender droids.

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Droid #2: Snowman BB Unit (Days 6-10)

This BB unit was adorable. The paint job really sells the snowman concept, down to the buttons on the body and the carrot nose. The body is a reuse of the standard BB-8 body that Droid Factory has used for years, but I couldn’t find the small top hat or scarf in the previous releases, so I think they’re unique to this build.

I have never torn apart a Droid Factory BB-8 before, so I had no idea what was inside. This build showed it clearly on Day 7.

Basically, this Borg sphere-looking thing fills the BB body. The sphere is weighted, so no matter how we tossed it around, it would always land right side up, thus ensuring that the BB-unit doesn’t tip over. We thought it was pretty cool.

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Droid #3: Candy Cane R1 Unit (Days 11-12)

I’m not as familiar with the R1 units since they don’t really appear that much in the movies. (No, you can’t have my Star Wars fan card because I burned it years ago.) Once we figured out how the pieces went together, the build was interesting, though not our favorite.

This is a repaint of the R1 droid from 2021’s The Mandalorian 4-pack, though the R1 first appeared in 1977’s Star Wars.

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Droid #4: Gonk Package (Days 13-16)

Who doesn’t love a GNK power droid? This one is pretty neat with a wrapping paper appearance and a Santa hat to cap it all off. The Gonk has been in the Disney collection for a while, starting in 2018 with the Droid Factory playset that accompanied opening day at Galaxy’s Edge in Disneyland. It returned in 2019 with the Jawa sandcrawler vehicle, and again in 2020 with the Droid Depot 5-pack. The droid in this advent calendar is a repaint of the 2020 EG-01, which introduced the accessory hole on the top of the figure, and was previously used in the 2022 Droid Factory advent calendar.

The Santa hat, which we moved to another droid later, comes from 2021’s R2-H15 holiday figure.

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Droid #5: B2EMO Gift (Days 17-19)

Coming from the Andor series, this version of B2EMO is designed to look like a package. It’s not much of a stretch for the boxy droid, and it was fun to see him in this lineup because he was a favorite from the Andor show.

This is a repaint of the 2022 figure, though the expansion joints to make B2 taller have been removed. The feet still slide around, though, so not all of the functionality has been lost.

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Droid #6: Holiday D-O (Day 20)

I absolutely loved D-O from Rise of Skywalker, so this was a nice surprise. I love the colors and the fact that added a stand to balance him. This is a repaint of the D-O from 2019’s Droid Factory Disney Parks 4-pack.

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Droid #7: Penguin Chopper (Days 21-25)

The final figure in the box was this C1 (Chopper) droid dressed as a penguin. We love the paint job and the beak. The wreath comes from the R8-H23 carded release, and the C1 itself has a long history with the line – Chopper’s initial 2017 release (and 2024 re-release in the Ahsoka 4-pack), the 2019 color-changing version, the C1-4B from 2021, the C1-940 from the 2022 D23 expo, the 2022 advent calendar version, and 2023’s C1-MNST4 Halloween release.

This version did not include the dish on top of the head, so we transferred the Santa hat from the GNK. It looks better, honestly.

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Overall, this was a really fun box. We chose it because it looked better than the droids in the 2022 box and there was a sale just before December at the Disney Store. The base price is $80, which is about $13 per figure (if you count D-O as a pack-in), but a good sale is obviously better. If you’re a fan of droids, we recommend this set. The first was released in 2022, so it seems like a new box comes out every two years.