LEGO reveals 31209 The Amazing Spider-Man was once customisable

While 31209 The Amazing Spider-Man doesn’t include any alternate builds in the box, the LEGO Group says it was actually customisable at one stage during its development.

LEGO Art sets are famed for including multiple images in the one box, at least where its mosaics are concerned: rearranging 1×1 tiles or plates to build different images is relatively straightforward, after all. But recent models such as 31206 The Rolling Stones and 31208 Hokusai – The Great Wave have eschewed that approach for something more singular.

31209 The Amazing Spider-Man combines the style of both those sets to portray its three-dimensional superhero crawling from the frame, bursting from the confines of his comic book panel. But while the level of customisation out of the box essentially consists of turning Spidey’s head left and right and manipulating his fingers, designer Nico Vás did at one point toy with even deeper personalisation.

“We were exploring during development the idea of Spider-Man having a speech bubble built next to his head, and potentially you could have tiles to write whatever message you want on to it,” Vás tells Brick Fanatics. “There are a lot of things that Spider-Man says that could have been there.”

The press release for 31209 The Amazing Spider-Man suggests the tile in the bottom-right corner of the finished product once read ‘with great power there must also come great responsibility’, which was ultimately replaced by the Amazing Spider-Man logo. That particular quote comes from Spider-Man: No Way Home, and is a twist on the classic ‘with great power comes great responsibility’. 

That’s easily the most iconic line associated with the web-slinging superhero, but Peter Parker has plenty of other memorable lines that could have appeared in a speech bubble: ‘It’s the choices that make us who we are’; ‘Your friendly neighbourhood Spider-Man’; and, erm, ‘You killed the woman I love – and for that, you’re going to die!’ (Okay, maybe that one’s a bit too macabre.)

In the end, Vás and the design team decided the speech bubble wasn’t the best use of the canvas available to them – but that shouldn’t stop anyone else from having a go. And the designer even has a top tip for anyone contemplating a Spidey quote…

“We ultimately traded it for the [Amazing Spider-Man tile] to help make a little bit more space for Spider-Man, so maybe that’s something that people might try modifying back in,” Vás says. “The DOTS letter tiles were quite nice for writing speech bubbles.”

31209 The Amazing Spider-Man launches August 1, 2023 for £169.99 / $199.99 / €199.99. For now, check out our review, and learn why even Vás doesn’t understand the complex maths behind the model.

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