LEGO Spider-Man 2023 sets may take inspiration from Friends reboot
Next year’s LEGO Spider-Man sets seemingly introduce a second new webbing piece for the wall-crawler, potentially taking inspiration from LEGO Friends’ upcoming reboot.
A trio of new Spidey and His Amazing Friends sets will debut in March, offering colourful and simplistic builds that bridge the gap between DUPLO and System (previously called Juniors, now simply tagged 4+). Spread throughout those three sets is what appears to be a brand new webbing piece for Miles Morales and Ghost Spider, which should allow for better posing options – if what we’re seeing is correct, anyway.
On the box art and in the limited product images so far released for 10790 Team Spidey at Green Goblin’s Lighthouse and 10791 Team Spidey’s Mobile Headquarters, Miles and Ghost Spider can both be seen wielding a webbing piece that at first glance looks exactly like the old one – only twisted into shapes that would never hold up in real life, thanks to our old pal gravity.
That could easily be explained away by the LEGO Group taking a little creative licence with its promotional shots, and it certainly wouldn’t be the first time. But zooming in on those images suggests this could actually be an entirely different piece altogether.
Where the classic Spider-Man webbing element (also deployed in – for example – rope bridges) connects each of its bar sections with flexible string, the texture associated with that material isn’t present on the webbing in the new Spidey and His Amazing Friends sets. Instead, the bar sections appear to be connected by a thicker, harder plastic, which could potentially allow the webbing to retain its shape when twisted around.
There’s possibly still some manipulation going on in the product images, because it’s hard to believe that such a piece would be able to support the large web elements attached to one end across both sets. But if this is a genuine replacement part for the classic string webbing, it may at least give us more options for posing our Spidey minifigures – and could possibly have been inspired by LEGO Friends.
Next year’s reboot of the mini-doll theme introduces a bunch of new elements, among which is a rubberised version of the string webbing. LEGO Friends designer Ellen Bowley told Brick Fanatics and other LEGO Fan Media that the intention was to be able to ‘use it in so many more different ways’, including some ‘pretty exciting ones coming up’.
We speculated earlier this year that one such way could be in future LEGO Spider-Man sets. The same piece – which features bar rather than stud attachment points at either end – has not materialised in any of the Spidey and His Amazing Friends models, however, nor in January’s 76244 Miles Morales vs. Morbius. Instead, it looks like the LEGO Marvel team may have adopted the piece’s approach for their own new element.
Exactly why we’d need two different pieces that serve a similar function is not so obvious, but it may be due to factors like their individual lengths, or the flexibility of a stud attachment within the wider LEGO webbing part library. Or – and it’s always a possibility – the element included in the Spidey and His Amazing Friends sets, which comes in red and pink, may be the same old string element after all, and the renders have simply left out the material’s texture.
We’ll find out for sure once the three new LEGO Spider-Man sets debut in March. For now, here’s a quick reminder of every LEGO Marvel set coming our way next year.
Every LEGO Marvel set confirmed for 2023 so far
| LEGO set | Price | Pieces | Release date |
|---|---|---|---|
| 76241 Hulk Mech Armor | £12.99 / $14.99 / €14.99 | 138 | January 1, 2023 |
| 76242 Thanos Mech Armor | £12.99 / $14.99 / €14.99 | 113 | January 1, 2023 |
| 76243 Rocket Mech Armor | £12.99 / $14.99 / €14.99 | 98 | January 1, 2023 |
| 76244 Miles Morales vs. Morbius | £19.99 / $24.99 / €24.99 | 220 | January 1, 2023 |
| 76245 Ghost Rider Mech & Bike | £29.99 / $34.99 / €34.99 | 264 | January 1, 2023 |
| 76247 Hulkbuster: The Battle of Wakanda | £44.99 / $49.99 / €49.99 | 385 | January 1, 2023 |
| 76248 The Avengers Quinjet | £89.99 / $99.99 / €99.99 | 795 | January 1, 2023 |
| 10789 Spider-Man’s Car and Doc Ock | £8.99 / $TBC / €9.99 | 48 | March 1, 2023 |
| 10790 Team Spidey at Green Goblin’s Lighthouse | £29.99 / $TBC / €34.99 | 149 | March 1, 2023 |
| 10791 Team Spidey’s Mobile Headquarters | £44.99 / $TBC / €49.99 | 187 | March 1, 2023 |
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