Set Review: 76032 Quinjet City Chase
Friday, April 10th, 2015 at 2:46pm by Andrew, BZPower News Manager [Source: Ta-metru_defender]
The Avengers: Age of Ultron is hitting theaters on May 1st, but the LEGO sets based on the movie are already on store shelves. That means that today BZPower Blog Assistant Ta-metru_defender brings us a look at 76032 Quinjet City Chase from the aforementioned line. Will this aircraft takeoff and land into your shopping cart, or will it crash and burn under the bombardment of hundreds of Ultron minifigs? You'll have to read on to find out!
Presentation
From the design of the box to the instruction manual, these are the first things you see before building the set.
QUINJET!
My hopes were high for this set, seeing as the Quinjet from 2012 was the highlight of the original Avengers line.
Back of the box shows the features of the set (of which there are a bunch) and has the Quinjet parked on a road.
Minifigs are shown on one side and on another is the LEGO-fied Avengers group show (with Widow and Hawkeye absent). I recently found out that the European boxes have the LEGO version on the front instead. Which makes me jealous, but that's probably me remembering the really old LEGO Star Wars logo.
Anyway. Enough about the box.
Inside we have five numbered bags, instructions, a sticker sheet, and a comic. I like the Avengers and Stark Industries logo stickers on the sheet, could be used for detailing stuff if you don't like putting stickers on sets. The comic features all the sets in it (except for Hydra Fortress Smash) rather than them individually like in 2012. It's your usual LEGO comic; fun and giving you some story to enact with your sets.
Building
Half the fun is had building the set. How fun is it to build and how easy or challenging is it?
Five bags, let's do this!
First thing you build is the truck and Ultron and Vision. It's straightforward enough, though centering stickers is bothersome as stickers tend to be.
Bag two sees us with the Quinjet's central hull and Black Widow.
At the end of Bag three we've got more Quinjet plus Captain America and his bike (which I gave to Black Widow since she's the one riding it in the trailer, even if LEGO tells me to make Cap ride it).
There's some cool SNOT going on in building the thrusters. Thought it was worth noting.
Got distracted by the instruction booklet mid-build. It's cool to see LEGO being environmentally conscious with their booklets. The LEGO Avengers in the background are cool too.
Anyway, back to the build!
Bag four has most of the Quinjet done and its play features finished.
And with bag five the cockpit and Iron Man are built and the set complete.
Like the old one, building the Quinjet is an absolute pleasure. There're some spiffy techniques scattered throughout and it's real fun to see it come together.
There's a bunch of extra pieces in this set, along with more ammo for the Quinjet's cannons, the Super Jumper, and brick separator.
Set Design
Now that the set is complete, we can critique how it looks from every angle. New or interesting pieces can also be examined here.
The set does come with a few 'new and interesting pieces,' or at least to me. Of particular note is the new panel/seat with a divider that can hold a minifig's legs and the new motorbike parts.
Anyway. Minifigs.
Ultimate Ultron and Vision are great, and I'm nerding out about getting these guys as minifigs. Printing looks great on both of them. Vision has one of the new cloth capes. It's a little thin, but looks (and feels) great. Part of me does wish Ultron was taller, like if LEGO reused those Toy Story minifig parts from a few years ago to give him that massive presence he has in the film. It's not a deal-breaker, but a looming Ultron would be great.
Also, Ultron's trans-orange head is printed with some energy effects, though you can hardly see it when the two-part helmet is on as not a lot of light gets in. It's a great little detail which I kinda wish was more visible.
The new Black Widow minifig reflects her new outfit in Age of Ultron (power lines!) but it's when compared to the old 'fig that we really see the improvement. She's got the Black Widow buckle now (yay!) and the hairpiece fits a lot better. Also, she comes with guns this time, but she doesn't have those spiffy baton/stick/things.
I really like Captain America's new suit and his minifig captures it great. The headpiece has better printing and I really like the brown gloves and details on his torso. The shield, though, is normal red instead of dark red which unfortunately has the white looking a little pinkish.
Iron Man's Mark 43 comes in this set too. It's another Iron Man armor with the usual Tony Stark head. You can really see the difference between the 45 from Iron Man vs Ultron when compared to the 43.
Also, my Iron Man Armor collection continues to grow.
I was happily surprised by the truck. It's solid and doesn't feel like a throwaway build, which is spiffy. The decal on the side's printed in two languages, the Korean reading "Cho Research" too according to a friend of mine. Does this mean Amadeus Cho will make his cinematic debut? Let's hope!
In the back of the truck we've got the Vision-pod and part of the roof flips up to hold Ultron with that new seat/panel piece.
The truck's designed to come apart, but more on that later.
The Vision-pod is particularly well done. He fits snugly in there (the cloth cape being much more pliable than the old ones) and it looks all smooth and stuff.
All said, I do really like the truck, probably because it's such a fun little truck. There's no driver though, which would have been a really nice touch. Adding a random fleshy minifig to drive in a panic would have been great (plus: extra minifig!). Ah well.
But the truck isn't why you bought the set.
QUINJET!
Look, I like planes and spaceships. And this Quinjet is one sleek plane. As a whole it's brighter than the old one, with white and blue in lieu of grey and dark blue. Wings are also relatively longer which adds to it's sleek feel.
The cockpit isn't as detailed, though the added sticker is cool.
The center opens up to hold the bike.
On that note, here's Cap on the bike with his shield on the clip. Anyway.
The aft has the underwing thrusters (with that cool build from earlier). Would have preferred the trans-red to cover all of it though as that would make it more noticeable. The rear door and roof open up, revealing a small room. There are clips there for a fire extinguisher and spanner, as well Widow's guns if you decide to put her on the bike (like you should). I like that there is space there for a minifig, even if there's no seats.
Here's how it looks underneath. You can see the minifig-dropper under the starboard wing and the cannon under the port.
The cannon unfolds with some Mixel ball joints, letting you aim the stud shooters at villains below.
Pushing the starboard Avengers symbol releases a minifig holding on to a string. It's a simple set up (one end of the rope goes on the blue pin, you put the minifig legs on that white brick and the tan fiction pin is what pushes the 'fig out). You'll have to wrap the string around the fig so it doesn't hang below the wing or just take it off when not in use.
The last (and coolest) feature is the bike drop. You push the black tile on top and the bay doors below open, releasing the bike like in the Age of Ultron trailer. The doors are held shut by a couple pins that hold it shut so they don't just flop open unwarrantedly. It takes some wiggling to get them to lock sometimes, though.
There are a couple more cool things about the Quinjet's design to note. All the wings are moveable, letting you adjust the silhouette and also fold them up for 'parking.' Part of the plane's sleekness is accomplished by attaching slopes to clips diagonally, which I found to be pretty smart.
Playability
The other half of the fun is in playing with the set. How well does the set function and is it enjoyable to play with?
By pushing down on the rear of the truck the side blows apart revealing the Vision-pod. It's a fun feature that works really well. And is a lot of fun, but that may just be the glee of making things fall apart.
The Super Jumper piece is used to knock Ultron off of the truck. It's a neat little built-in game and takes a couple tries to get right. The placement of the target also feels better than in Iron Man vs Ultron and Avengers vs Hydra, probably because the target's higher.
The Quinjet itself has a stud-shooters on the hull as well as the jointed one below the wing.
The minifig-dropper works as expected, though it's a little more work than I'd like to wrap up the string before deploying. That's probably because I don't want the string dangling below.
The bike drop is really cool, partially because it's a great moment in the trailer. The bike doesn't land standing up, but hey, that's to be expected.
Final Thoughts
Once it's all said and done, how does the set stack up? Should I get it?
Pros
What's to like?
- Great minifigs!
- Only set with Vision, Ultimate Ultron, and Black Widow (unless you drop $350 for the Helicarrier)!
- The truck is a solid little thing that I am oddly fond of.
- QUINJET!
- ...is a solid build and is really cool with neat features.
Cons
What's not to like?
- Is more expensive than prior Quinjet.
- Lack of minifig seating/storage besides cockpit and motorcycle bay.
- Would have been nice if there were a truck driver.
- Why is Captain America on the bike?
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It's hard to not compare this Quinjet to the old one, especially since the predecessor is one of my all-time favorite LEGO vehicles. They're different beasts, sure, but the comparison still happens. Most of the drawbacks to the new one is in relation to the old one, like how this one costs more despite having about the same piece count, or how the old one had a second cockpit to fit minifigs.
But this one's extra vehicle is cooler and has some niftier features (bike drop beats drone release thing every time). And as much as I wish there was room somehow to sit an Avenger or two in the hull, I'm glad there still is the space in the back. I don't have the old one with me, so I can't compare them in person. But from what I've seen this one's also slightly smaller. Which isn't bad, because this one looks far sleeker than the old one.
The $80 price tag is a sizable obstacle to a wholehearted recommendation, but it's worth picking up if you're an Avengers fan and have the money. Because dude, QUINJET!
Thanks to Ta-metru_defender for putting this review together - we hope you all enjoyed it! As always, if you have any questions or comments, feel free to post them in the Talkback. And of course, keep checking back on BZPower for more set reviews and LEGO and Bionicle news!
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