Adventures in Advent: Advent 2024, Day 16

 It's Monday and that means Monday Night Football. Unless the schedule changes drastically, the Chicago Bears are expected to head to Minneapolis to play the Minnesota Vikings (I write my Advent posts a few days in advance. So if 2 different teams are now on the schedule to play instead of Bears/Vikings, I'm sorry.)

Since there's football today I thought I'd look at an Advent calendar devoted to the pigskin. The one I selected is the NFL Funko 24 Day Countdown Calendar. Each corresponding day you open up the correct door and unearth a miniature vinyl figure of the most popular players in the league. There's a Patrick Mahommes, a Lamar Jackson and a T.J. Watt among the players to be found in this Advent. 

While you don't know which player you will receive, you do know which team that they play for. That's because each door is designed to look like a Christmas ornament with 1 of 24 different teams logos on it. You might be wondering 'aren't there 32 teams currently in the NFL?', and you'd be right. If you are a fan of the Carolina Panthers, Washington Commanders or the New England Patriots, you are out of luck. Sorry, no Bears either.

You've got to really be a fan of the league to enjoy this set. What true Steelers fan is going to want a player from divisional rivals, the Cleveland Browns? 

Don't expect custom work either. While the D.K. Metcalf figure is black, there are no distinguished features among these Funko Pops unlike their regular sized counterparts who has a ton of tattoos on both arms. 

For today's Batman Advent, I received a very tiny fabric patch of the emblem of Nightwing, the heroic ally of Batman who lives in neighboring Bludhaven. It's extremely small and it was extremely difficult to extricate from the Advent calendar sleeve.