James Reviews the 2015 Marks and Spencer Chocolate Advent Calendar

Every year, without fail, my mum buys me a chocolate advent calendar. I would genuinely be upset if she didn’t. Yes I’m 36 years old but frankly if it’s wrong to have a chocolate advent calendar in your mid-thirties then I’m not sure I want to be right.

I’m delighted, of course, with whatever choice my mum makes when it comes to the picture on the front, but I was more than a little elated to discover that she had gone for the Marks and Spencer Star Wars Advent Calendar this year. Pleased with the choice of Marks and Spencer, because the quality of the chocolate in some advent calendars can be a little poor, but M&S make no such concessions and I was confident from the outset that my daily chocolate treat would be of a high standard. I was not disappointed in this respect.

But really I was excited because, as I’ve mentioned before on these pages, I love Star Wars. And obviously with a new film out this year I’ve been a bit Star Wars crazy of late.

I have, of course, seen “The Force Awakens’ by now and I loved it. But this is not a review of that, this is a review of a Star Wars themed chocolate countdown to Christmas.

This is what the calendar looked like on the outside.

Darth Vader looking ominous and threatening, backed by a legion of Storm Troopers. Frankly an awesome image and exactly what Christmas is all about.

I’m not sure if you can make out the numbers on the doors on the above image though so below I have provided a handy ‘map’ to guide you.

As is the tradition with advent calendars, there was an image behind each of the doors. Previous advent calendars that I’ve had have not always honoured the theme of the cover, so I was heartened to discover a picture of a Storm Trooper behind door 1. Alas the chocolate was not Star Wars themed, but it was delicious so I found I could live with the Christmas themed shapes quite easily.

In other respects this was your standard 24 door advent calendar. I have come across 25 door versions in the past and I can’t say I’m a fan. Christmas Day has enough going on without the added pressure of opening a superfluous calendar door.

Below are the pictures in door order.

By day six I was getting a little concerned that 50% of the pictures so far were of Yoda, but as you can see things did balance out later on. There is a reasonable variety of characters on display. There are quite a few missing though, so I’m not entirely sure why there needed to be quite so many Darth Vaders, Yodas and Storm Troopers. I can understand why the characters that look like real people didn’t make the cut but Jabba the Hutt and Emperor Palpatine seem like obvious oversights.  Days 15, 16 and 18 were also a bit of a strange choice, imagewise.

Day 24 is a reasonable pun but obviously if Sithmas does exist, it’s probably a very different ‘holiday’ to Christmas in almost every respect.

On balance I’d have to say that I thoroughly enjoyed my M&S Star Wars Advent Calendar and I’d heartily recommend that you buy one today.

Except that you can’t because they aren’t selling them anymore.

I’m not entirely sure why.