76281 X-Men X-Jet is under fire for its profiteering price tag, but it’s not the first LEGO Marvel set to play fast and loose with our wallets. Here’s a brief history of the theme’s most outrageous RRPs…
Flying on to shelves in January, 76281 X-Men X-Jet is the first dedicated LEGO X-Men set in years. But it’s also the most egregiously-priced, from a price-per-piece perspective, in the theme’s entire history – at least once you discount accessory packs and 4+ sets, none of which traditionally operate within the parameters you’d expect for a regular LEGO set.
Price-per-piece isn’t everything, of course. The X-Jet has its share of bigger elements, so the overall volume of plastic is pretty good. But it’s not £74.99 / $84.99 / €84.99 good – which is why the LEGO Marvel 2024 set has already attracted criticism from all corners of the internet. Twitter users have drawn a damning line between the set and its contemporaries, for example, while even pop culture site Gizmodo has picked up on the fact that something isn’t right here.
For your money,
76067 Tanker Truck Takedown
Price: £39.99 / $29.99 / €34.99 Pieces: 330 Minifigures: 4 Release date: August 1, 2016
One of the earliest examples of LEGO Marvel taking the mickey with our money, 76067 Tanker Truck Takedown asked way too much of UK consumers. Its US price of $30 was about right for the volume of plastic in the box, which is not very much, with its minifigures doing most of the heavy lifting – three of the four were unique at the time of release, and both Spidey and Hawkeye variants are still exclusive to this Captain America: Civil War set.
But £40 for a yellow tanker and a few accessories was too much to ask on this side of the pond, especially as the set was exclusive to a single third-party retailer (so discounts were pretty much off the table). And it was a tell-tale sign of the brazen direction the LEGO Marvel theme would take in the years to come…
76175 Attack on the Spider Lair
Price: £69.99 / $69.99 / €79.99 Pieces: 466 Minifigures: 6 Release date: March 1, 2021
To its credit, 76175 Attack on the Spider Lair includes an exclusive Spider-Man suit and Peter Parker minifigure among its six characters, and the large elements used as the base for each of the lair’s sections are probably pretty expensive. But that still doesn’t excuse the price tag the LEGO Group slapped on this otherwise underwhelming mish-mash of ideas, which together comprise Spidey’s answer to the Batcave.
And even if the bigger pieces hint slightly at the reasons the LEGO Group wanted £70 for it, they mean that the building experience here is over in a flash – a not-insignificant counterpoint to detractors of the price-per-piece algorithm.
76210 Hulkbuster
Price: £474.99 / $549.99 / €549.99 Pieces: 4,049 Minifigures: 1 Release date: November 4, 2022
Until 76269 Avengers Tower debuted last month, 76210 Hulkbuster was the biggest LEGO Marvel set of all time. It’s now been surpassed by a model that includes an extra 1,152 pieces and 30 minifigures – but is still the most expensive LEGO Marvel set ever released. That should go some way to illustrating just how egregiously-priced this much-maligned set is, because 76269 Avengers Tower coming in at £45 / $50 / €50 cheaper than 76210 Hulkbuster is really doing last year’s flagship superhero set no favours.
For further proof, just look at the deep discounts it’s seen at LEGO.com in the months after launching (a real rarity for LEGO sets even to this day). Sure, there are big elements here, but the price-per-piece ratio generally gets better the more you pay, rather than the reverse.
76214 Black Panther: War on the Water
Price: £79.99 / $89.99 / €89.99 Pieces: 545 Minifigures: 5 Release date: October 1, 2022
This Black Panther: Wakanda Forever set is not helped at all by its weird and unattractive shape, but for that we can only point fingers at Marvel Studios. Criticism for the LEGO Group should be reserved for the crazy price tag slapped on 76214 Black Panther: War on the Water, which is one of four play-scale LEGO Marvel sets released in the past 18 months to really toy with the limits of what consumers will pay.
Where some LEGO Marvel sets can (sort of) justify weird price-per-piece ratios through a mass of minifigures, large elements or even bigfigs – those always jack up the price – this set can’t really point to any of those things. It’s just a weird oddity in the superhero pantheon… but it wasn’t the first, and it’s definitely not the last.
76216 Iron Man Armoury
Price: £79.99 / $89.99 / €89.99 Pieces: 496 Minifigures: 8 Release date: June 1, 2022
Remember what we were just saying about a mass of minifigures? That was seemingly the game plan with 76216 Iron Man Armoury, yet another take on displaying Tony Stark’s various suits of armour, only this time hooked to one of the least-loved entries in the entire MCU. And you need to really, really love Iron Man to buy into a set that asks £80 for only 496 pieces – none of them particularly big – with half its minifigure slots claimed by slightly-different suits.
It was no surprise to see this one discounted in this year’s LEGO Black Friday sales, and it’s unlikely to climb too high in price post-retirement. After all, if history tells us anything, it’s that another Iron Man armoury set is probably right around the corner. Maybe the next one will cost £120 for an extra two suits?
76232 The Hoopty
Price: £84.99 / $89.99 / €94.99 Pieces: 420 Minifigures: 3 Release date: June 1, 2022
If The Marvels stood little chance of success on the silver screen following the tepid response to recent MCU entries, 76232 The Hoopty was given even less of a fighting chance by the LEGO Group and Marvel, who together cooked up a price tag above and beyond the realms of sanity. A dull grey ship, three so-so minifigures and one large cockpit piece do not add up to £85 no matter how you frame it, and – like
76281 X-Men X-Jet
Price: £74.99 / $84.99 / €84.99 Pieces: 359 Minifigures: 3 Release date: June 1, 2022
Which brings us to the latest offender in
But with one eye on that price tag, and inferior Wolverine and strange Magneto minifigures in the box, how many people are really going to buy it? The pricing of this thing really feels like the LEGO Group hasn't learnt its lesson from recent LEGO Marvel sets, which suggests either 76232 The Hoopty has sold better than we’re all presuming, or the margins are high enough that it can get away with this kind of obscene pricing anyway.
In all cases, these LEGO Marvel sets – which thankfully don’t represent the entire line-up of LEGO Marvel sets – are 100% worth waiting for a discount on. And that will probably go for
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