LEGO REVIEW: Marvel Super Heroes Super Hero Airport Battle #76051

thoroakenfelder · July 3, 2016

I loved the Captain America: Civil War movie. I loved the chance to get Giant-Man, Agent 13 and War Machine. I felt lukewarm about the chance to add another Iron Man and Captain America to my collection. Here was my chance to recreate the epic airport battle between 3 iconic super heroes and the 9 second-stringers that they brought along. (I say that with love since I have always had a soft spot in my heart for Hawkeye, Winter Soldier and Black Widow.) Wait, the packaging conveys so much depth of scene, but when you take away the graphic, what are you left with? Why couldn't Giant-Man have been released in a set similar to Hulk Buster? I need to look more in depth at this set to answer at least one question.

REVIEW: SET DETAILS
Set #: 76051
Name: Super Hero Airport Battle
Theme: Marvel Super Heroes
Parts: 807
Price: $79.99

BOX CONTENTS

Some people may wind up picking up a set that is open box or, want to verify the box contents before beginning a build. For this set, there are 5 numbered baggies and a bag containing a sticker sheet, a comic book, and an instruction book.

BUILD AND EXECUTION:

BAG 1: We start this large LEGO set with probably the biggest let down. It's a tiny LEGO car that feels like it would be more at home in a $6.99 City set, or maybe a polybag. To add insult to insult, you have to apply 2 stickers within 4 steps. I can understand that they feel that a small vehicle adds some value, but not to me. Especially when it looks like the Mighty Micro's inbred cousin.

It's a luggage mover, so it needs a trailer. Looks like someone jumped the gun and hitched the trailer without wheels.

What makes a tiny baggage cart even less useful? a launching mechanism designed to fling the bags.

I wanted to give you this view so that you could see the play feature lever that is soon to be hidden. You activate this particular play feature by shoving tiny Ant-Man into the mouse hole.

You may recall that I take a strange sort of pleasure from pointing out the ubiquitous fire extinguishers in every Super Heroes set. Well, here it is. Wrench and fire extinguisher. Clearly the only tools you would ever need at the airport.

The entire front of the second level is missing, but with that lever set up, you can tell that it will be wall exploding time before too long. I guess it's fine that the luggage cart is so small since the people going to Wakanda, Socovia, and Bielund are only bringing briefcases. Iron Man and Agent 13 round out this bag.

BAG 2: I didn't do a great job showing it here, but you fill in the wall on floor 2 in 2 chunks. I'm actually somewhat pleased with how that was done. So far that's the highlight of an unexciting tower.

I was trying to show the computer screen stickers, but I don't think they really stand out, which is fine because they're just not that interesting anyway. I do like the window treatment.

It really does look like a very short traffic control tower. It's kind of undersized for a major airport, but really, no one is buying this set for the traffic control tower or the luggage cart.

Add some boxes from Stark Industries, Hammer Tech and A.I.M. as well as a gate, and you are done. Scarlet Witch and tiny Ant-Man round out bag 2. (You may be wondering why I am not talking about the characters. I'll get to them in the summary at the end.)

BAG 3: The bag that everyone was waiting for. It honestly took me a minute to figure out what I was looking at here. I finally realized that the angles corresponded to the angled torso of your standard minifigure. It makes sense, since we are building Giant-Man (I looked it up, it is hyphenated. Stan Lee liked his hyphens unlike DC creators that just made compound words.)

So, the Torso is not terribly complicated, you just need to add some bulk and attachment points while maintaining the roughly trapezoidal shape.

The legs actually require much more work than the rest of Giant-Man. I didn't take any pictures of the build process of them because I was actually enjoying the process. I love how they use the slopes to approximate the curves of the minifigure legs. By the way, yes there are 7 stickers shown here. Sadly, there's still one more to come for this character.

After the legs, the arms are way too simplistic and give a worse approximation of the smaller figure. Even the torso was more interesting to build than the arms.

The inside of Scott Lang's head.

The face is printed. It's a good thing too, because I'd be pretty mad if I applied his face wrong. He's got a flip down mask. The mask is a sticker and for those of you with OCD I am sorry. I think I applied it upside down.

After you complete the front of the head, you still have to try to make the back round, or roundish I guess. Maybe more round adjacent? It's round like. Anyway, don't forget to tack on the "ears" of the helmet.

Ta Dah! Giant-Man. Just for giggles, they threw Captain America into this bag too.

BAG 4: Here, we begin the Quinjet. I could derail myself here by talking about whether it is necessary to release a new Quinjet while last year's model is still filling shelves, but I am going to hold off until the wrap up.

Strangely (to me that is) I realized at this point that I was actually liking the build of this Quinjet more than the 2015 version. It didn't have a big hollow body to accommodate a motorcycle and the techniques used were at least a little more varied.

When I see these long technic bricks, it says action feature. It also says wing stability.

Boom, action feature. Did I get something wrong though? Those stud shooters are facing backwards. No, it's right.

The round brick is actually a knob that will cause the stud shooters to pop out on the bottom. Hooray action feature!

I'd like to take a moment here to point out just how many pieces of Dark Blue are included in this set. I always like to see that color because I don't feel there's enough of it.

Attach your wing and you're done with this bag. Winter Soldier's a little miffed that it's not flyable yet.

Bag 5: I wanted to show off the new 2x2 wedge pieces that are used to fill in the internal structure of the wing.

A lot of pieces stack to give the wings their unique shape.

snap on the wing and add an engine.

lots of rounded slopes to shape the body of the aircraft. It looks a little squat though.

Don't forget wheels. You need wheels because LEGO planes don't really fly.

You extend the wings and add a hatch on the back with a rope. There's no depth to the hold area because of those stupid cannons. Why you need a rope is sort of beyond me. Everyone that I have seen exit a Quinjet just sort of either walks out or jumps out.

Slap on the cockpit cover and we're done. Don't forget War Machine.

REACTION: Giant-Man is definitely the star. If not for him, there would be very little point to this set. The Ant-Man micro figure is nice to have (especially since you get 2 of him.) I'm really kind of irritated by the inclusion of the Quinjet though. It makes sense in that it does appear in the movie that this set is based upon, but it was a very minor part of this battle. Marvel Super Hero sets suffer from a lack of iconic vehicles and for better or worse, the Quinjet is one of the few. However, there's still a Quinjet on shelves from 2015's Avengers: Age of Ultron sets.

Too bad that almost every Super Hero set includes some version of a jet, a helicopter, a boat, a motorcycle or a jeep/truck and the horrible baggage vehicle would never suffice to fill the disappointing vehicle role. A lot of them also contain a disappointing partial building full of play features. I guess we get all the standard stuff. Disappointing plane and partial building to make the Giant-Man set an $80 set instead of a $30 one. I guess they needed to make it a big set in order to justify 6 minifigures. I would have preferred a regular plane that broke up into chunks that they could fight around. The Quinjet is the smallest one yet.

For the minifigures, let's skim past Captain America. This is the same Captain America that they have been making since Age of Ultron. He's in 4 sets at present and will be soon appearing in a fifth.

I talked about this Winter Soldier minifigure previously. Still love it though.

Onto the wholly new and unique. I spun the wheel and landed on Agent 13. Sharon Carter is a character that long time Captain America fans know and if not love then tolerate. To me, the figure looks bad. It's just a weird looking outfit that either needed to be wholly uniform or civilian. It comes across as a mismatch. Plus her hair should be more blonde than strawberry. Her inclusion seems like a knee-jerk reaction to all the #wheresblackwidow from 2015. They included another woman in order to bring the number in this sub-subtheme to 3. (Don't even mention Maria Hill.)

Scarlet Witch is a new costume including a cloth "skirt." The skirt makes the plain black pants somewhat acceptable. I'm not a fan of red eyes. Even though I tend to display my Super Hero minifigures with their scowl faces, I'm just not likely to with her.

Iron Man is Iron Man. He's different from all other versions, but not in an interesting enough way to make him stand out. I doubt I could successfully pin an Iron Man to a set without looking up the subtle differences.

War Machine is nice. I'm a lot happier with him than the silvery version released for Iron Man 3. all the kibble on his back overbalances him though. I hate the stupid giant stud shooter on his back.

Not pictured here is Ant-Man. Ant-Man isn't really a figure in my opinion. It's a nice representation of the character, but it's completely non pose-able and the detail is low.

FINAL THOUGHTS:

Keep checking Amazon for a likely standard 20% discount going forward. Giant-Man might be released again, and if he is, this set will tank. People are less likely to buy a knock off Giant-Man, so he's who you need to keep an eye on for any future viability of this set. I think people are getting tired of Captain America and Iron Man minifigures and none of the rest are good enough to prop up this set. No one wanted a smaller Quinjet, and if they did, another one is probably just around the corner. People have been parting out this set already, they'll probably redouble efforts when the mark downs come. I anticipate rate of growth to be low due to the bloated cost from all the chaff that was included.

COMPARISON SHOTS:

I thought I'd give you a few shots to compare the Giant/Ant-Men and the size of the Quinjet.

EXTRA PIECES:

the only real piece of note is the extra Microfigure of Ant-Man.

If you like Super Hero sets, please check out these other reviews:

76049 Avenjet Space Mission

76065 Mighty Micros Captain America Vs. Red Skull

76022 X-Men Vs. Sentinel

76044 Clash of Heroes

76037 Rhino and Sandman Supervillain Team-up

76047 Black Panther Pursuit

76050 Crossbones Hazard Heist