LEGO Super Heroes: Spider-Mech vs Venom

Cross Posted to BrickSet

The Builds

Venom

The main attraction of this set, I find Venom to be a fine build. He is satisfactorily bulky, towering over the accompanying Spider-Mech. The designers put this bulk is put to good use by having a minimum of exposed anti-studs, lots of interesting sub-builds and a fantastic color scheme!

Venom has anti-studs are exposed in two highly visible locations, under the forearms and on the inner sides of Venom's thighs. Even then, they don’t take away from the look of the kit. The exposed surfaces are in black, the arms are usually posed so under-arms will be hidden and the thighs have inverted slope pieces used to help give the legs shape.

I really like the use of the red arch pieces for the back of the mouth. They give this area depth so it really looks like a gaping maw. The head itself looks great when viewed from above or head-on but looks a bit wonky when seen from behind or the side. Venom's torso build includes side protrusions so the shoulder joints articulate a bit far away from the center of the torso.

There is a ballpoint for the joint so you get full articulation but the arms look funny unless they’re put in a reaching out or balancing pose. The arms also include ball joints for the elbows and a technic pin for wrist rotation. Outside of the shoulder issue Venom's arms are well-built and easy to put in a desired position.

Venom’s legs are only articulated in two spots, at the thighs and ankles. Venoms legs are built with a bend at the “knee”, so most stable posing has to be in some form of a squat. The leg joints use rachet pieces instead of ball joints. While this reduces the range of motion Venom can use, the ratchets also allow him to stand solidly on his own. Venom’s feet connect to the ankles via a free spinning technic axle. This allows the feet to remain as flat as possible without the intervention for the builder. Such a neat solution for a massive and unwieldy figure!

A minor nitpick, but the white of the stickers and eye-print (which is a bit translucent) doesn't quite match the cream white of the bricks. This shouldn’t really matter since the shadows from the finished blends all the white together into a grey color.

Spider-Mech

I actually prefer the Spider-Mech to Big!Venom. While Venom cuts a more impressive figure, the spider-mech is downright more play-able. Both of the Mech's primary play features (the "Web Claw" and "Web Cannon") are easy to use and nicely detailed.

 

I also appreciate the use of the straight web slingers as a harness to “secure” the Spider-Man mini-fig in the cockpit. Due to the lack of bulk the Spider-Mech has functional shoulder, hip and ankle joints. The Mech is thus able to pull off a variety of dynamic and expressive poses with minimal effort. The classic Spider-Man color scheme/pieces chosen allow these joints to blend into the finished build, unlike the joints on Venom.

While the mech doesn't feel like an after-thought, it does only use 1/5 of the bags in this kit. Therefore, the back of the Mech has no attempt to hide anti-studs. The lack of pieces also leads it to feel small, particularly in comparison to the Venom it's supposed to square off against. Another consequence of the small piece count is that the "Web Shield" or "Web Blaster" feels extraordinarily small for the ENTIRE set.

 

Mini-Figures

Spider-Man

A fine figure. The prints on his head and torso are nicely detailed but I don’t quite agree with the choice to use metallic blue around the eyes. That feels a bit too much like the MCU spider-man while this set feels like cartoon spider-man. None of the figures in this set have leg printing but only Spider-man gets dual molded legs to compensate (red and blue legs).

Venom

I really like the Venom figure in this set. While he’s pretty minimalistic in color, the head print is amazing! He has such a wicked Grin that feels so right for Venom! His torso print also does a good job of capturing his Spider crest.

Ghost-Spider

The Ghost-Spider/Spider-Gwen figure captures her comic book likeness well. They only complaint I have is with the baggy hood piece. The front of the hood obscures too much of her shoulder prints. This happens to be the only area where you can really see her signature turquois and magenta highlights from the front.

 However, her… hover-board(?)…helps bring these colors back. The board is pretty fun to “swoosh” pretty the Spider-Mech and Venom and is just a neat side build.

Aunt May

I love Aunt May’s sweater print! That’s about all I have to say about her.

Conclusion

Spider-Mech vs Venom is pretty good for the price. I think the figures and playability of all three builds just pushes the set into the “worth it” region for me. Thumbs up from me!