Culture on My Mind
The 2024 LEGO Spider-Man Advent Calendar
January 24, 2025
It’s time to talk about the 2024 LEGO Spider-Man 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 returned to the LEGO Marvel offering, which is now themed after Spider-Man.
Spider-Man debuted with Marvel Comics in 1962, a creation of writer-editor Stan Lee and artist Steve Ditko. The character has gone through a lot of iterations over the years, becoming one of the most popular and commercially successful superheroes of all time. The character has appeared in comics, animation, live action television, and live action film. Most recently, Spider-Man appeared in Spider-Man: No Way Home, in which three different cinematic Spider-Men shared the screen in a celebration of the last two decades, and the Sony Spider-Verse animated films, in which we saw a lot of Spider-Men from across the character’s history.
The box contained 24 windows with a single LEGO build in each.
Days 1-2: Spider-Man
The calendar kicked off with the titular character and a ton of webbing effects. The minifigure has a box of pizza and a shooter construct to connect the webs. The webs aren’t particularly exciting, but they do add a playability factor to the box for kids who don’t have a separate Spider-Man LEGO set.
Days 3, 4, 6, 7, 8, and 15: City Streets
Five of the next six days were all about building the street. They included a hot dog cart, a lamppost with a camera, a traffic light, and the Miles Morales Spider-Car. Day 15 complimented them with a Peter Parker Spider-Car.
My favorite from the City Streets builds was Day 3’s newspaper vending machine. It included Peter’s backpack, which fit inside the newspaper machine and could be “stuck” there by a web. That’s one of my favorite spider-gags, as if someone in the city isn’t going to try stealing that bag while Spidey’s off doing spider-things.
My second favorite is the camera webbed to the lamppost. As an amateur photographer, I have to marvel at Peter’s skills here. I mean, in the modern era, everything’s digital and autofocused, so depending on the size of the SD card there’s a lot of space for photos on a camera that’s just snapping away. But in the film age, there were only 24-36 shots available on a single roll, and setting the focus in the right spot could make or break the shot. Peter also had no idea what he shot until the roll was developed. He must have been quite the photographer to get pics good enough for the Daily Bugle!
Days 5, 9, and 10: Venom and Spider-Gwen
Two minifigs popped up in the midst of the street builds. Of the two, I was happy to see Spider-Gwen and her drumkit. The figure itself is pretty standard, but it continues the character’s popularity boost following the Spider-Verse films. The drumkit is well-constructed and neat, and is personalized to Gwen.
It would be criminal to overlook the Venom minifig. Again, while not unique, I laughed at the addition of the scarf and hot dog, drawing inspiration from the season and the hot dog cart build that preceded it.
Days 11, 12, 14, 16, 17, 18, 24: Holiday Accoutrements
A good chunk of this calendar was taken up by the LEGO Marvel tradition of random Christmas-themed things. While the LEGO Star Wars boxes focus on minifigs and creative starship builds, the LEGO Marvel calendars fill space with seemingly unrelated constructs. Unless present catapults and candy cane statues have some meaning in the comics that I don’t understand.
The LEGO Marvel boxes have improved over time, this time including builds like the Rhino wind-up toy and a nice fireplace mantel. The pizza and cookie build was whimsical, but I wasn’t impressed with the Electro-themed Christmas tree to close things out.
This mid-month fluff is where the LEGO Marvel calendars have room to improve. The Marvel universe is just as expansive as the Star Wars universe, and some of those mid-range to deep cuts (like the Rhino wind-up toy) would make the box all the better.
Days 13 and 23: Miles Morales and Spider-Ham
Day 13 brought us Miles Morales, but what makes this minifig stand out is the effort. Instead of recycling a Miles minifig, LEGO gave this one an ugly holiday sweater and trousers instead of a Spider-suit. I appreciate that little bit of extra effort to make it a bit more exclusive.
The same goes for this Spider-Ham snowpig build. It made me laugh so hard even though the head is a simple repaint of existing Spider-Ham minifigs. The snowman build around it was just unique enough to make this day fun.
Days 19, 20, 21, and 22: Goblin Claus
Finally, the calendar followed a LEGO advent calendar tradition of making a character into a Santa analogue. This year was Green Goblin with his trademark glider and an additional sleigh, gift bag, and shiny presents. The Goblin minifig is vibrant in its green and purple paint, and it comes armed with a pumpkin bomb. The glider is also pretty fun. This four-day stretch is certainly a better ending than that strange Electro tree.
Overall, this was pretty standard for the LEGO Marvel brand. One thing they do differently than the LEGO Star Wars line is presenting a unique theme – they’ve done the Avengers, the Guardians of the Galaxy, and Spider-Man – and the variety keeps us coming back. It’s also the moment of truth every August when the sets are announced because of how much non-themed filler exists in the month.
If the LEGO Marvel boxes could take a cue from the LEGO Star Wars sets and keep the non-minifig builds on theme, these advent calendars would be top tier. Instead, I have to consider the expenditure every fall. The Avengers calendar was a given based on the minifig selection and the novelty. The Guardians calendar was also a given because of how much we love those misfits in this house. But the Spider-Man calendar was almost a pass.
We’ll see if LEGO learns anything about the Marvel calendars come next August when the theme is announced.
Culture on My Mind is inspired by the weekly Can’t Let It Go segment on the NPR Politics Podcast where each host brings one thing to the table that they just can’t stop thinking about.
For more creativity with a critical eye, visit Creative Criticality.
It’s time to talk about the 2022 LEGO Guardians of the Galaxy Advent Calendar!
It’s time to talk about the 2022 LEGO Guardians of the Galaxy Advent Calendar!
Apparently, the latter days of 2021 and early days of 2022 were chaotic. So chaotic, in fact, that I completely forgot to post my summaries of the 2021 LEGO Star Wars and Marvel advent calendars. So, January 2023 will bring you some late (and even later) gifts as I take a look back at four separate calendars.
9:30pm – New Normal VOD
11:00pm – 1984
3:00pm – Far Beyond the Stars
8:00pm – D&D Tips and Tricks (Player Edition)
6:00pm – NuTrek
7:30pm – Sci Fi Westerns
Creative Criticality 