Some of the most popular Black Friday Lego deals are on the company's popular advent calendar sets - these are your traditional December day-counters, except instead of chocolate, cheese or gin, each door houses bricks or minifigures.
Many people view Black Friday in late November as the best time to buy a Lego calendar, which totally makes sense - not only do sets get some of their cost knocked off during the sales season, but it takes place just before advent begins.
Naturally, then, if you're interested in buying a Lego advent calendar you might be considering waiting until then, or the Cyber Monday Lego sales, to pick up a calendar. However, that might not be the best idea.
What Lego advent calendars are there?
If you search Amazon for Lego advent calendars, you'll find loads of options, and that's because the brick company puts out multiple each year. There are separate ones for different franchises, and many get updated each year.
In 2021, the Lego website lists four calendars: City, Friends, Harry Potter and Marvel, though in some countries, the latter isn't listed, and in many places, we checked the Friends set is already sold out.
To be clear, the Lego Friends we're talking about is the company's line of sets about... well, friends, with camping, shopping and party-themed kits - this isn't about the popular TV show, though there are Lego sets about that too.
A quick Amazon search for 'Lego calendar' will bring up plenty of results, with lots of older sets too (not that age matters - every year has the same number of advent days!). There are a few Star Wars sets available too, as Lego usually makes a new one each year.
Other retailers have stock of previous-year advent calendars too - Walmart, for example, has about a billion from different franchises, at a few price points. There's a $100 price tag on a 2017 Star Wars calendar - presumably, that's a tax leveled against sets from those halcyon pre-Last-Jedi-and-Rise-of-Skywalker days.
You should buy them now
Monitoring Black Friday deals on Lego sets has taught us one thing: the advent calendars sell out fast.
Lots of the time when we include the calendars in our deal roundups, they're the first to sell out, especially on franchise kits.
As we said, it makes sense that these deals are popular, between the late November date for Black Friday and the fact the reductions are pretty sizeable. But it's tough for people who don't have any other form of calendar: if you miss the sales, it's usually too late to buy a backup.
If you can afford it, then, we'd recommend buying an advent calendar early to avoid disappointment. As we said the Lego website shows a few calendars being sold out already, and while you can still get those same sets from other retailers, it does show the general popularity of these kits.
For those who can't justify the expense of these kits: that's totally okay, and you might get lucky with the deals over Black Friday. You'll just have to monitor when the reductions begin, and act quickly.
What else can we expect from the Black Friday Lego deals?
The general rule of thumb for Lego deals over Black Friday is breadth over depth: we'll see lots of kits have their prices lowered, but the discounts themselves might be relatively modest, at 15% or 20% off. Sure, for the expensive brick boxes that can be a fair amount off, but it's not quite the 85% discount we can see on some products.
That's the rule, at least, but there will certainly be exceptions, especially from high street retailers. We often see Walmart in the US and Smyths in the UK do some big discounts on sets, but those usually sell out quickly.
A few retailers have already started on their Lego deals - well, calling them 'early Black Friday sales would be a bit of a stretch, but they're worthy discounts anyway. You can see a few choice ones below for both the US and UK but there are no calendar ones unfortunately.
Over the Black Friday period, we'll be tirelessly hunting down the best deals for Lego and other products, so check back to TechRadar then - and bookmark our Lego deals guide - if you want buying advice when the prices are dropping.
