Even though we’re still nearly three full months away from its arrival, merchandising for the Avengers Age of Ultron movie is in full swing and Avengers 2 fever is on the rise! I’m not immune to Avengers mania myself, so when I saw the 76029 LEGO Iron Man vs. Ultron set available online early, I jumped at the chance to grab my first LEGO Avengers Age of Ultron set! My review? LEGO 76029 is by far the cheapest set in the series–but that doesn’t mean it isn’t awesome…

The Right:

The nature of the Marvel Cinematic Universe hadn’t lent itself to army-building, so this is only the second true MCU LEGO Marvel Battle Pack set that we’ve gotten (with the first being the Captain America’s Avenging Cycle, of course).

Having not seen Avengers Age of Ultron yet (like everyone else on the planet), I don’t know yet just how much the Sub-Ultron Drones are going to figure into the plot. But if they’re at all prevalent in the story, collectors will want to army-build them, and they’ll want to do so as cheaply and easily as possible. So the existence of this $13 pack with three Sub Ultron minifigures in it is definitely a “Right”.

We’ve yet to get a LEGO Juniors set with Iron Man, but this particular LEGO Marvel Iron Man vs. Ultron set is so basic that I think most young-ins will have little problem with assembling it. I’m a slow builder, and this set took me under 15 minutes to build at my slow-as-a-snail pace, and I don’t expect young children to have much more difficulty than that.

If you’ve been waiting for an easy LEGO Iron Man set for your kid to build, this one gets the thumbs-up from me.

The set includes four minifigures, and all four of them are exclusive to this set. Thanks, LEGO! The set includes two of the awesome stud shooter blasters that work surprisingly well, as well as plenty of translucent circular studs for each figure to pop onto their hands as energy effects. Iron Man even gets cylindrical pieces to use as “flying” effects. As far as weapons go, 76029 LEGO Iron Man vs. Ultron is pretty loaded!

The exclusive LEGO Iron Man Mark 45 minifigure in this set looks very similar to the Iron Man Mark 43 minifigure coming with other sets, but I suppose that’s the nature of red-and-gold Iron Man armor permutations at this point. Those collecting all of the main Iron Man armors from the Marvel Cinematic Universe in LEGO figure form will be glad to add this armor to their collections nonetheless.

While you don’t get a black hairpiece to make a full Tony Stark figure, Iron Man’s faceplate can be flipped up to show Tony Stark’s face. In fact, it’s even a double-sided head, with a smirking Tony Stark on one side and a furious, battle-ready Stark on the other. I believe we’ve seen this exact Tony Stark head used before on minifigures, but it’s a very nice head nonetheless.

The set also contains a build for an “Ultron Flying Vehicle” (or something–I’m really not sure what to call it). The Ultron flyer has to be one of the most crazy, ingenious LEGO builds I’ve ever seen, as the build totally incorporates all three of the included Sub-Ultron LEGO minifigures into its build!

The two Sub-Ultron Soldier minifigures get transformed into the wings of the vehicle, while their handheld stud shooters become the vehicle cannons.

Meanwhile, the Sub-Ultron Commander minifigure loses his legs (which attach to the Ultron jet as cannons themselves), gains a backpack with a pair of antennas on it, and plugs into the flying vehicle as a pilot (sort of in the way that an Astromech Droid fits into various LEGO Star Wars vehicles).

I believe this set is the first time a LEGO set has ever come with minifigures that literally convert to become part of the vehicle and not just fit into it! This is a really fun–albeit bizarre–ideas, and I get a huge kick out of it.

The Wrong:

While I really dig the fact that we get three Sub-Ultron LEGO Minifigures in this set–two Sub-Ultron Soldiers and one Sub-Ultron commander–the truth of these “two types” is pretty lame.

Basically, all three Sub-Ultron figures are absolutely identical, with the same prints on their torsos and heads. The only difference between types is an extra helmet that you can stick onto one of the Ultron Soldiers to switch them to a Commander. This is rather lame, and I definitely think LEGO could have done something to make the figures more differentiated other than a single add-on headpiece.

In addition, I feel like the actual face print on these figures looks far too friendly–almost comically so. For killer robots, these LEGO Sub-Ultron minifigures hardly strike fear into my heart.

Finally, at over 14 cents per piece for the 92 pieces contained in LEGO 76029, this set could hardly be considered a deal. In fact, that’s an awful value–one of the worst I’ve ever seen for a LEGO Battle Pack. When you pour the pieces of the two bags out of the packaging, it’s a little shocking to see how few pieces are actually included here. This set would have felt like a much better value for $10-$11 than for $13.

Overall: Generally-speaking, I often find the cheapest sets in a theme each year to be rather weak entries. In the case of LEGO Iron Man vs. Ultron 76029, however, nothing could be further from the truth.

Despite a poor cost-per-piece ratio, you get four all-new minifigures and an ingenious flying vehicle that actually utilizes the Ultron minifigures in its build. I think the Sub-Ultron figures could look a mite meaner and the set could cost a dollar or so less, but otherwise the Iron Man vs Ultron LEGO set is all aces. Recommended.

GRADE: A-