LEGO Marvel
Coming in at 3,093 pieces with a minifigure line-up of 10 characters from X-Men with designs based on their appearance in X-Men: The Animated Series, LEGO Marvel
Release: November 1, 2024 Price: £289.99 / $329.99 / €329.99 Pieces: 3,093 Minifigures: 10 LEGO:
To me, my X-Men
There are a few interpretations of the X-Mansion across different media for the LEGO Group to perhaps have taken inspiration from, but choosing to stick to what is seen and detailed in X-Men: The Animated Series (and its 2024 reboot X-Men ’97) for
Just as the building is visually split into three clear segments by design, so too is the build process here, as you put together the middle of the mansion top to bottom, before building the entire left side and then the right. Each section builds two levels to the property before sliding together on Technic axles, meaning that the final model is sturdy enough to stick together as one complete model, but also relatively easy to split into three cross-sections for excellent access inside.
And for how each room is really given a good flavour of story and design, you’ll want to have good access inside.
The story and design worked into the set is important to acknowledge as more than just fan service too. Whilst the wider build techniques within the set aren’t necessarily the most complicated, and the best comparison is with the simpler techniques found in the Modular Buildings Collection (as opposed to anything more technical that some other 18+ sets can offer),
X-pansive inside
Inside
There's a lot to appreciate in every room, including nods to which minifigures and characters you may find in each one, relevant to their roles within the team or the powers they possess, and to what we may have seen on screens before (including those absent from the set, such as Collectible Minifigures 71039 Marvel Series 2's Beast). There’s plenty going on in every corner of the house, but clearly the fun happens in that Danger Room.
Much as 76218 Sanctum Sanctorum had removable panels built into the walls to customise the play and display of that set, so too does
Not only is this a consistent LEGO experience from a previous Marvel set, but is also a simple, very effective and incredibly fun solution to tie into the purpose of the Danger Room, which is to train different X-Men with any combination of devices and traps they may face on the field.
The Danger Room will draw a lot of your initial attention and rightly so, but the other rooms are just as lovingly detailed and thought-through. There's the study with a sliding chalkboard, which reveals a computer screen analysis of a Sentinel that is just off from a main lobby with a giant X worked into the floor. Above that is the lab where you’ll find an MRI scanner, an X-ray of Wolverine’s Adamantium-fused arm lying around, and a large curved windscreen with internal sticker to represent Cerebro and Professor Charles Xavier’s ability to detect and reach humans and mutants alike.
Plenty of what we have seen and enjoyed in the balance between everyday life, training and the dramas of being X-Men is played out nicely within
There’s always a room or two that you could list as absent – a communal area such as a kitchen sounds like a silly request but is the sort of area where we see a lot of everyday life for the X-Men in the show, while if we are doing bedrooms then those of a few different characters would have been interesting to see. But the priority rooms that tell the story and offer the best play opportunities are arguably all packed within the 48x32-stud footprint of
X-ceeds X-pectations
If the interior of the X-Mansion is for story and character, the front exterior is for play and action, thanks primarily to the huge buildable Sentinel included in the set, but also due to some clever build techniques dotted around the building that speak to the level of chaos and destruction that the X-Men and this Sentinel create when they clash.
Walls are in a frozen state of being ripped apart, a fire hydrant is flying up into the air with a plume of water underneath it, a lamppost is tipping over and the ground is beginning to break. Combined with a number of different trans-clear pieces (and positions on the ground and in the walls that these can be connected), you can place any of the X-Men in all sorts of action poses to bring to life a real sense of their powers in action. If we were nitpicking, it’s only to say that the ability to split the set into three sections would have been even better if it wasn’t in straight lines, but in zig-zags to mimic even greater damage being inflicted on to the building, but we really are nitpicking there…
As it is, the outside action all complements the giant Sentinel wonderfully and really draws the big purple-and-pink robot into the set in a way that otherwise just placing it in front of a calm and neat mansion would not have done so, particularly for how the simplicity of the cartoonish design of the mansion otherwise makes for a quite plain exterior. Putting the mansion into action immediately gives it life and a lot more interest and is a smart decision on the part of the LEGO Marvel design team.
The height of the Sentinel is also perfectly aligned to the building it is attacking, meaning it looms quite menacingly over any nearby minifigures, whilst as a design it is nicely rounded and with enough movement and action built into its body to allow for great interaction with the mansion and with the various X-Men minifigures.
The selection of minifigures included is likewise what you would expect, offering most of the most immediately identifiable X-Men, including long-awaited debuts for the likes of Gambit, Bishop and Jean Grey (beyond her 2012 SDCC minifigure). Iceman is also a new face, as is Professor X, albeit for his minifigure being given an old, overused headpiece. It works, but something unique for such an important character would have been better.
Rogue, Cyclops and Wolverine carry over from 76281 X-Men X-Jet, with Cyclops at least getting printed legs even if a dual-moulded hair and laser piece to go over his eyes would have been much better than the quite goofy eye-glass he seems to be carrying around to activate his power. Magneto’s classic design gets an upgrade and a new rubber cape, whilst Storm is sufficiently different (not better or worse) than her appearance in the recent Collectible Minifigures series. She loses the leg printing but comes with a two-colour cape, different hair piece and a darker skin tone making use of new colour ‘Umber’, as it is listed on BrickLink.
Yes, there are missing characters like Beast (who we also got in 71039 Marvel Series 2), Nightcrawler (who has a poster stuck on to the outside of the back of the mansion), Jubilee (who is acknowledged with the bubblegum, boombox and Wolverine-themed calendar in the bedroom), Mystique (who is a much lesser character in the cartoons), Morph (a more prominent character in the cartoon), and any number of others who appeared in the show. But there’s little to argue with who is included, particularly for the balance between what is re-used from elsewhere and what is brand new here. And Gambit. Including Gambit is essentially all this set needed to do, and it does it so, so well.
One thing this set didn’t need to do, though, is be modular. We’re not sure at what stage
The X-Mansion is always based in a country location, detached not only from neighbouring houses but from all other houses and people. While there’s the ‘option’ here to connect it to the other LEGO Marvel locations of recent years, doing so takes away from the set. It’s the same mistake 10326 Natural History Museum made last year, but where that set couldn’t escape its fate given it’s in the Modular Buildings Collection,
It's a smallish complaint but one worth considering when it comes to the price, as it’s only these two things that will cause you to pause, even as the cost comes in slightly lower than 76178 Daily Bugle and much lower than 76269 Avengers Tower. Everything else an X-Men fan could hope to see from LEGO Marvel
This set was provided for review by the LEGO Group.
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Our honest opinion: Cleverly thought out and designed, this is an X-cellent blend of character and story across a decent-sized building and line-up of minifigures. One to save up for.
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