At first I thought this year's Advent Calendar (or rather, last year's) was the weirdest one to date, but I went back to the archive and watched some of the animations for previous years and... it turns out that the AC has always been random and just plain weird. It's just that now that the animations are longer the weirdness sticks out more But it's true that they get cheaper each year.
I feel ya, Robin, I swear at least 75% of the remaining Neopets fanbase is playing the game out of habit at this point, including me.
Best of luck to you!