Lego Marvel Super Heroes Spider-Man: Spider-Cycle Chase

Damn you, Lego Movie!

(Is it Lego or LEGO? I can never remember. I’m going with ‘Lego’, because I’m too lazy to type caps all through this review.)

Anyway, again: damn you, Lego Movie! Ever since I saw the first trailer, I’ve had a vague itch to play with some bricks. With the movie coming out in less than a week, it intensified. So I finally broke down and got a set: Spider-Man Spider-Cycle Chase.

Everyone knows me is likely not surprised that I went for the set with Venom in it.

These are the first Lego I’ve played with in about twenty years. While I had some Lego sets (mostly the Castle; I liked anything with horses), I was a Playmobil kid. But oh man, breaking into a box full of brand new bricks? Fun. As you can see from the lighting, I picked up this set during the evening and couldn’t wait until daylight to start screwing around with it.

Packaging is nice. Bright, colorful, good-sized box that shows everything in it and a nice action scene. Opening it up gives you bags, more bags in bag, instructions, and a mini-comic. It’s wordless, but it’s cute to see the minifigures continuing their little adventures. I may take some shots of the pages for the Venom site.

The bags are clearly labeled with 1, 2, and 3, so you can easily sort out which you’re working on. They tear open nicely, and the clear, colored, and simple instructions are a godsend. After years of dealing with Transformers instructions, anything that’s easy to see is wonderful. ...Of course, I still managed to assemble some things wrong on my first go, because even bright, simple instructions meant for six year-olds are too much for me, apparently.

The first build is for the spider-cycle. Think Spidey’s ill-conceived Spider-buggy from the 70s having a fling with a hefty motorcycle. The build is quick and once assembled, the cycle is surprisingly fun to fiddle with. You can turn out the wheels to make it a hover cycle, or you can do what I did and keep the wheels in the rolling position and amuse yourself by rolling it back and forth across your desk. I also showed it to the cat, who seems to like it best when it’s on its side, as then it spins nicely when hit. While it’s meant for one rider, I found that technically, you can fit two on there. However, it’s the most uncomfortably close two person ride since the Mongoose.

Bags 2 and 3 contain the parts for the SHIELD car. Bag 2 contains the basic body, while bag 3 fleshes it out and makes it look like a proper car. One thing that surprised me-the multitude of colors used here. A whole mix of different colors are used in the initial assembly, but these are all covered up in the end, giving a much more coherent look to the finished product. I’m not sure why the basic building pieces are in so many colors. Did they just have a whole bunch of these colors at the factory and decide it would be covered up in the end? It makes for some very piebald creations when you decide to try and build something else, as seen below. (It’s supposed to be a plane. I decided to mess with the bricks a bit, and it’s painfully obvious I need practice coming up with designs.)

The car, like the motorcycle is very nice, but there’s one thing that drove me nuts on both: the stickers. I’m terrible at applying stickers to toys; my Toys ‘R Us reissue Prowl and my Command Wolf both prove this. In the end, all my stickers are a little askew. I did get one license plate on perfectly...only to realize it was on upside down. On the plus side, all the stickers seem to be adhered firmly even after several repositionings, and I expect them to hold up. Also: does anybody have any clue if ‘MB 19 89‘ has any sort of meaning? It’s not ringing any Marvel in-joke bells for me.

The car has some more bells and whistles than the cycle does, being bigger. Unlike the cycle, you can’t really fit two minifigs into the seat, but there is a flip-out platform you can balance a second figure on. Only problem with this: it’s smooth, so your rider calling the backseat is likely to go flying once you actually get the car rolling. The grating there looks nice, but I’d prefer something I could peg a foot to. Also on the back half: a little missile launcher. I’m used to Transformers missile launchers, so the lack of a trigger threw me off a little. However, giving the end a good push with my thumb ended up shooting the missile farther than I’d expected. If you mess with it, try not to play with that feature where there’s plenty of things for small objects to get stuck under. Like beds, desks, large drawers...why yes, I speak from personal experience.

The minifigs are extremely cute. They’re all simplified in the typical Lego way, but even so they’re more expressive than I’d thought they be. The fact that they do well at holding poses and can sit down nicely (a rarity in action figures, in my experience, where sitdown poses involve legs everywhere). Venom was the deciding factor for me in choosing this set; I love symbiotes and an itty-bitty Venom makes up for my current dearth of figures. He’s definitely set in the classic Eddie Brock or Flash Thompson teeth everywhere style, and comes with additional symbiote tentacles and globby...things. I prefer him minus the tentacle cape, and I’m really tempted to get a blank black head so I can make a proper Flash!Venom face for him. Spider-Man is definitely Peter Parker Spidey, with bright red and blue and big eyes. It makes for nice posing into flailing positions, which, if you’ve watched the little Lego Marvel shorts they did...pretty much fits. And then you have Nick Fury, who is armed and has had it with all these arachnid people on his flying car. He looks suitably cranky and I like having a tiny Nick Fury to pose yelling at everyone else. His gun is hilariously oversized; it’s as big as a minifig torso and I’m more tempted to refer to it as a handcannon. Unfortunately, Spidey's web accessories aren't quite as good; I can't really get them to stick to his hands well, which is annoying for photo-taking and play. But that's minor, really.

Overall thoughts? It’s cute, it’s not terribly expensive-a standard medium sized supers set, in between the little budget box or polybags and the larger sets that seem to go for $50 or $60+. The set is pleasant to build even for those of us who haven’t touched a Lego in years, and it makes me want more-I want more bricks, and more sets so I can try to build more things and so I have more minifigures to do silly little things with. As I said above, the minifigures are super-cute, and if you’re a fan of Venom or Nick Fury, this may be your only chance to nab them-while Spidey appears in a couple other sets, this appears to be their only one. I can see this set having a lot of play value for kids and for adult collectors who, like me, enjoy screwing around with their toys and could use very flexible pieces. if you’re considering getting it, though, I would hop on it soon. Based on what I’ve seen locally and online, this wave of sets is due to get replaced soon, and if you don’t want to pay secondary market prices for the full kit or just the minifigs you want, it’s better to buy now.

Now if only I hadn’t skipped over the Deadpool set when I saw it months ago, because now I want to have a tiny Thunderbolts team. But the one set I’m really eyeballing doesn’t come out for a few months yet-Benny’s Spaceship, Spaceship, SPACESHIP! A giant buildable spaceship piloted by an astronaut voiced by Charlie Day who has oxygen deprivation-induced brain damage and shoots missiles? YES PLEASE.

Bonus photos!