Time has not healed the LEGO Hulkbuster’s wounds

The massive LEGO 76210 Hulkbuster has been on the shelves for around three weeks now, and it’s becoming apparent that this isn’t what people wanted.

In the world of reviewing, being first out of the gate counts for a lot. So when a set like 76210 Hulkbuster comes along, there is pressure on to get it built and get some words down on paper. Or the electronic equivalent. And while first impressions do count, sometimes you need to live with something for a while to get a proper feel for something. What seemed great at first can sometimes turn out to be a duffer. cough*What’sTheStoryMorningGlorybyOasis*cough.

It’s fair to say that Tony Stark’s gold-titanium overcoat got some mixed reactions when it first got into people’s hands. Due to the slightly bizarre decision to design a £475 set around the concept of fitting a £40 Iron Man inside it, the finished model has some of the weirdest proportions ever seen. 

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So some early reviews slammed the model, while others, possibly swayed by the overall size and complexity of the set, channeled their inner Arthur Dent and proclaimed brightly ‘Actually, I quite liked it!’ But three weeks after launch, there are nearly 50 reviews on the official LEGO website – more, interestingly, than most sets receive.

Thus we can get a better feel for how it’s landed with the public who, presumably, have paid for the set with their own money, as opposed to some of the early adopters who may (we emphasise, *may*) have been given the set by the LEGO Group for review purposes.

And the news isn’t good. Of 46 reviews, 24, or just over half, give it a single, solitary star. There are complaints about the gaps, the aforementioned proportions and plenty of anguish related to the fragility of the build. The frustration of many is summed up by one reviewer who asks ‘Who is this for?’ and goes on to comment that ‘It’s too big to play with, has a useless feature to integrate set 76206 in, and is too big to display.’ Oh, and it’s ‘way too expensive’.

If LEGO fans are anything, it’s forthright in their feedback. Still, three weeks is a relatively short period of time. We’ll revisit the set in six months and opinions may have shifted, but for now, the big old Hulkbuster is taking a battering worthy of the Hulk himself.

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