The great thing about Lego is that you can use it to build almost anything. Lego's used that to its advantage over the years, developing sets to tie in with all kinds of franchises, but fans are wondering if its latest is a brick too far.
Now, perhaps encouraged by the success it had when it fixed the Dune logo last year, Lego's announced a buildable Marvel logo. And it's basically just the logo of the comics brand with a few Avengers minifigures sticking out of it.
Lego's changed a lot since I was a kid. My favourite set was the railway station, closely followed by the fire station. Most sets involved buildings that were recognisable from any town. That's not to say that Lego didn't move with the times. It captured the zeitgeist when it launched an exotic Italian restaurant just around the time that garlic bread was invented.
But the introduction of pirates and vikings started stretching things. Where were these supposed to go in a Lego town? And then suddenly we had Lego Star Wars, Lego Harry Potter, Lego Saw.... OK, I made the last one up. But Lego's been keen to hook up with pretty much any major movie franchise that it deems sufficiently kid-friendly (it apparently drew the line at a Lego James Bond video game).
The Lego Marvel logo could turn out to be a genius move if it works. It would unlock a whole new pipeline of easy hits. It could follow up with the DC Comics Logo, the IDW logo, the Tesco logo...
Only, it seems that fans aren't very impressed with the look of the 931-piece set, officially named 76313 MARVEL Logo. Its costs $99.99 / £89.99 and doesn't do much. I mean, what's the kid in the picture below even doing? How do you 'play' with a logo?
There are minifigures of the original Avengers (minus Hawkeye, for some reason): Iron Man, Captain America, Thor, Black Widow, and the Hulk, but they're not enough to add any real interaction to the set. The figures are stuck to poles so they can move in and out, but that's it.
“Like who is this for?” one Lego fan wonders over on the Lego Leak subreddit. And it's a fair question, because it's presumably not for that kid in the photo above. It's something "to put in the backgound of your podcast studio," one person suggests in jest, but that's probably about right.
Another person summed up the situation by comparing it to another recent set, the Batcave from the DC camp. “The LEGO Group sold us a black DC box, so now they’re selling us a red Marvel box." That DC box was at least a Batcave, though, someone points out. Some fans are even deriding the new minifigures too. “No arm prints, only two on here have prints on the legs. That’s really simplistic. Even for LEGO, that’s pitiful”, one person says.
If you're not thoroughly dissuaded, the Lego Marvel logo can be preordered from the Lego website for shipping from 1 January.
