Playmobil dilemma [S. Worthen | Weblog]

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Until this year, Playmobil has only come out with one advent calendar per year. This made it really easy to decide which advent calendar to buy. This year, they've obviously gone with dividing up their market along gender lines. Thing is: I really don't know which one I would prefer to own! I already own at least a third of the objects in each set, so there's some duplication either way. Do I need peacocks and unicorns in my life? Or do I need more jousting paraphernalia?

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There are 41 comments on this entry. (Reply.)

What a dilemma! The rose arbor is rather off-putting--it's not even a hortus conclusus, sadly--but the peacocks are gorgeous. The knights have an appealing absence of pink but are otherwise the same-old. Maybe you could get both, and let the knights lounge in the garden while the women get to camp out and joust!

I was going to yell "Jousting! Jousting!" but your suggestion is far more fun :-)

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Of course, I could just buy a dedicated jousting set, without the distraction of cardboard framing and spectators. But it's not an advent calendar.

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I could actually buy the peacocks separately if I really started to feel compulsive about owning peacocks. But I like your suggestion even better.

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Knights really need garden-lounging time. It would be like the scene in Chretien's Yvain in which he enters the garden at the castle of Dire Adventure and sees a gentleman being read a romance by his daughter. The jouster can take some time off and enjoy hanging out with the unicorn himself, for once.

I've got my mind of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight right now because I was just listening to an NPR article about Simon Armitage's new translation. Armitage wants to view the Green Knight as a kind of global warming parable or something--so the Playmobil Advent knight hanging out with the unicorn could be a symbolic gesture towards the preservation of natural resources and endangered animals. No more unicorn slaughter--these days it's about unicorn conservation!

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It all becomes clear. That unicorn is pink because it's sunburnt.

Your literary contextualizing of my prospective Playmobil acquisitions is exactly the sort of thing I find most persuasive. Recreating literary and otherwise allusive scenes in it enabled user picture creation and vignettes with which to thematically welcome friends to my hallway. (The hallway being where the Playmobil is mostly kept at the moment.)

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That's where it was when I visited, right? In a little niche of some sort, I think?

On the subject of allusive scenes, I bet you've enough Playmobil foods to do scenes responding to this lyric near the end of Advent! (I hope the link works, as I'm not sure if Google Books allows for hotlinking; if not, it's James Ryman's late fifteenth-century lyric "Farewell, Advent!")

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Yes, that's right. This is silly - we've now had enough houseguests in the last two years that I forget when not thinking about it who has and hasn't been here!

The hotlinking didn't work, but you gave me enough information to find it. (The link went to the book's index page.) I have a smaller variety of Playmobil fish than you give me credit for. I am plaice free. I do have both skeletal and fleshy fish, however. I have two scallop-like sea shells (technically meant as soap dishes for the fairy tale bathtub). I'm fine with bread and random meats and puddings. My ale is all back in the states, but I'm going there at Christmas and can retrieve my overflowing mugs. Hmm.....

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Okay, now I am thinking that I need to get these for my kids.

Vic is wild about knights and I can't resist re-creating scenes from "Lancelot" (the 13th century prose version).

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Have you read Edgar Eager's The Knight's Tale, part of his "Half-Magic" series? In it some kids re-enact scenes from Ivanhoe with knight figurines and stand-ins (including a can of peas that they decide should represent a Sir George Peabody) before getting magically caught up in the story they've modified.

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If you do get them, be aware that they don't come pre-assembled and allow a good 45 minutes for doing so before you want to begin your advent calendar. It's usually fairly efficient assembly, but there are 24 boxes to fold up and the odd thing to click together. The diagrams are normally good though. Note how it's more exciting to have somone other than the person opening the calendar boxes assemble them. I usually end up doing both.

Also, they're 24 day ones, so nothing on Christmas proper; the finale is the day before.

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Armitage wants to view the Green Knight as a kind of global warming parable or something

Bwah?

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That's the same response I had! I skipped ahead rather than spending time listening to it. But if you want to hear more details, the broadcast is here, and the global warming connections are laid out in the first twelve minutes through the first caller's response, and reoccur intermittently thereafter.

(The medievalist called about thirty minutes into the program is a professor of mine from my MA at UVa, which is how I heard of this broadcast to begin with. She reads some of the ME text aloud with a lovely accent.)

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Get both? The peacocks and unicorns could be a gift to

colinsjournal that you will selflessly offer to look after.

Selfless devotion, as expressed through Playmobil! With your approach, it's not even as if I'm buying myself two. We each get one.

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i second the 'get both' suggestion, but i say keep both calendars proudly and without shame! :)

or get the animals one!

That was last year's. I already have it.

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Get the jousting one! Defy gender roles! And plus...jousting!! :)

It's only one half of a joust though, if you look carefully. It's one jouster, equipment, and support camp. I'd have to buy (oh, the hardship!) the jousting set if I wanted there to be an actual competition.

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Well, there's your answer, then! :) Of course you need to be able to hold actual Playmobil jousts!

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But does that I mean I should just buy the jousting set for completion purposes and for advent make use of peacocks and unicorns? if I buy only one support camp, one of the jousters will have an advantage over the other.

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I'm really behind - I had no idea that Playmobil made advent calendars. so, so cool.

Are you strict about celebrating on the 25th? We have two Christmases here in Lebanon + a third in Jerusalem (to express disaffection, not theological disagreement with the calendar). You could have one Orthodox and one Catholic advent calendar :)

That's a brilliant idea! Given how thematically tangential these particular calendars are, I could even just use them as countdowns to other things I'd be celebrating anyways.

Yes, they've been doing them for perhaps seven years now.

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They are too, too adorable! I love the peacocks!!

I feel like you made the descission already. "Do I need peacocks and unicorns" vs. "Do I need more jousing paraphernalia."

Get what you don't already have.

I haven't, really. My phrasing was entirely misleading. I have no jousting paraphernalia (I think?), just lots of other combat figures from various historical periods. I have one unicorn, and two of the fountains from the pink set already, plus the bird cage and one of the figures. There are more things I don't have from the jousting set. But I do sort of like the garden background better on the unicorns - although it's very pink. Based on the discussion so far, I'm almost thinking I should skip the advent calendars and just buy the peacocks and a dedicate jousting set. But then I wouldn't have an advent calendar, and it seems traditional to get one now.

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You know me--usually I would say unicorns, hands down. But these unicorns are a bit too cutesy even for me. I think I like the jousting set better. :)

I'm feeling a little better about one of the unicorns being pink now that I'm thinking of it as sunburn.

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I'd go with jousting, myself -- even if you have to buy more jousting camps, you can justify the disparity by recreating scenes from Froissart.

Very true! And there really are some lovely scenes to recreate in Froissart.

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Something I thought about just now (after totally bombing in my "your questions? Let me answer them." attempt to change things up in my composition class today) is that there doesn't seem to be a Santa in either of these. I thought the Playmobil advent calendars had Santas?

Also, for an amusing look at advent calendars (he's done a little story for 2003-2006) look here.

Until this year, they have all come with a Santa. I have quite a santa collection now. In previous years, they were all Christmas-themed vignettes of various sorts - parades, kitchen baking, Christmas market. But not this year. This year they've gone for calendars which are far more derivative of their usual range and Santa-free.

Storytelling with Playmobil! I approve.

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Playmobil has advent calendars? I had NO IDEA. Do they have drawers or little windows to open? (I couldn't tell from the photos.)

Personally I'm a fan of the jousting one.

They have little cardboard boxes to take down and open for each day. (Although it doesn't come pre-assembled, so it's more of a surprise if someone else assembled it for you.)

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is the kinder creche available in the uk or should i put in an order for it with my italian friends? i meant to get it last year but was too poor at the time and then they all sold out never to be restocked! :(

I don't actually know. I remember Christmas-themed Kinder gift boxes here, but an advent calendar? I can't tell you one way or another. I suspect you can, but I can't promise.

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Peacocks and unicorns!

I love your icon! As for the advent calendars, the jousting one does have the advantage of looking much less scary. Though I do like the one peacock.

Read all the comments - buy both. Otherwise, buy the unicorns for advent and the dedicated jousting set..for jousting.

We have got nearly all of them anyway, as we got them from Granny when she buys them in France (cheaper over there). The sets are not actually new this year, as both have been available for a couple of years.

I would suggest that you go to the website, pick out some nice things you don't have and pop them in bags and number them - then you really can create your own scene and expand your set.

You may possibly spend a little more than necessary, but I find that always happens when on the playmobil website.

October