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PUMA X PORSCHE ICONS OF FAST

FUTURE RIDER

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SPEEDCAT

FOR MODEL CAR FANS THIS SEASON ADVENT

CALENDARS

For those of you who are new to the concept of Advent Calendars they are essentially a daily activity that culminates into a special day like a countdown you have to work for. In this case it’s a count down to Christmas. FRANZIS maybe a name you are not so familiar with, but you should, Especially if you and your children have a serious car culture head. The end result of this (countdown) calendar is a beautiful 1/43 scale model mounted on a base with a built-in sound module that plays the sound of the car starting and accelerating away. But the journey to the end is a fun trip with lots of little Knick knacks to play and fiddle with along the way. This was our first experience with Advent Calendars, and we would like to give a huge shout out to FRANZIS for sending these over to us!

The presentation is amazing, it really excites the user from the start. Our first piece of advice is to be careful when opening your package without damaging the box. The cover is actually a sleeve and you will need to slip the box out. Do this on a flat surface because in the box is a booklet about the feature car and 25 oddly shaped boxes that make up a picture. If you’re not careful the boxes can all fall out and that can be a pain. (take a picture as you open the box for reference)

The main holding box acts as frame for the smaller boxes which make up a picture and under the main box is a fold out stand which props up the main box as a picture frame. The smaller boxes are numbered so that you know the progression of the build.

Diorama Backgrounds for the base. Two pieces, scenic route and race track Wheels, chassis, windows and all the other plasticky bits Free ticket to a motor car museum. Good if you live in Germany. Not so great for international collectors

Electronics to be messed with. lots of plugging and screwing to be done. Car body and base the two most essntial parts of this display Post-it-notes and really cool magnetic book marks are among the things that await you

They are also, printed on both sides, so if you get tired of one picture you an always switch to the other one flipping the boxes.

The idea is to open one box a day for 25 days leading up to Christmas. Our suggestion would be to get a few ones so that you have about 5 boxes a day to open up. Then by the time Christmas day comes along you have 5 new models you can either keep or give away saying that hand built these presents with love knowing fully well all the fun you had doing it.

On the first day understandably you get the base, that’s the biggest box done. After that in subsequent boxes you get various electronic parts to build the sound unit, then you get things to adorn your base with things like interchangeable backdrops and props. There are little gifts like postit pads, bookmark magnets and free tickets. Again, all dispensed daily. Our favorite feature were the little storage boxes that came as a fold out that you could put together and they were used to hold the screws.

This is definitely the easiest and most chilled build up project you can ever do. Friends would be like what did you do over the holidays and you will say authoritatively to them “I built a car model with an interactive audio sample base” and they will imagine you in a Dexter type lab but the reality was, fishing a screw out of a Pringles can on the couch while watching Knight Rider re-runs.

Back to the box, don’t damage it. Once again it acts as frame. Each model has their own style of pictures which is a few different ones would nice. For example, the Mercedes box was a picture of all the latest AMG’s posing but in the Porsche box it was all close ups of Porsche race car numbers which acts as the progression numbers, really clever.

Some of the gifts also differ slightly, some will have an extra gift which is cool. Some will have stickers for the cars if you like to give the models a race vibe. Again, an extremely exciting and complete package that is ideal to give someone as an early present or something to do with the kids during the Christmas holidays. Don’t forget to visit FRANZIS on their webpage to check out other insanely cool serious build ups you can enjoy by yourself or with the kids making a variety of things. But the car culture stuff is out of this world amazing.

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