Are the latest LEGO® Marvel sets worth the money?

As I have been reviewing the most recent wave of LEGO® Marvel sets, the issue of relative value has been troubling me increasingly. After building The Milano and Dancing Groot for review and being thoroughly happy with the value of those sets, I moved onto The Helicarrier and I was a little disappointed with what was on offer for the price. I actually felt a little mean about being so critical. Nevertheless, I embarked upon my analysis of set 76291 Avengers Assemble: Age of Ultron with a degree of pessimism.

Before proceeding further, I decided to investigate the relative cost of the August 2024 LEGO Marvel sets against other IP (intellectual property) sets and regular LEGO sets, to judge if my concerns were justified.

Products in this article were gifted by The LEGO Group; the author's opinions are their own.
This article contains affiliate links to LEGO.com; we may get a small commission if you purchase.

The cost of IP vs. non-IP sets

There have long been complaints among AFOLs of an “IP Tax”, bemoaning the seemingly extortionate price of some licensed sets, because of the royalties charged to The LEGO Group by the license holder. Last year, Chris Clarke on BrickNerd published a thorough analysis and discussion of price differentials.

To summarise Chris’s findings, it’s fair to say that we should expect to pay roughly 20% more for a  licensed set than for a comparable non-licensed set. This comes from the hypothesis that a more accurate method of comparison is by examining the weight of sets, and not the common practice of calculating the average price per part.

Broadly, I think this new wave of sets has been overpriced (with the exception of The Milano and to a lesser extent, Dancing Groot) and not merely by the 20% BrickNerd’s article suggests.

I am basing this thought process on BrickNerd’s findings, which use UK prices:

Obtaining parts from licensed sets would cost 5.92p per gram (on average) while acquiring them from unlicensed sets would just cost 4.94p per gram.

– Chris Clarke, BrickNerd 

However, later in the article Chris elaborates that, based on a smaller sample average, LEGO Marvel has an even higher price per gram than all other IP themes, with the price per gram coming in at 6.49p.

I don’t want to be overly negative when, subjectively, LEGO produces such lovely engaging products. I’m trying to give these sets the fairest chance in terms of ‘raw LEGO commodity’ value. Therefore, as I try to ascertain what it is reasonable to expect the prices of this current wave of sets to be, I have used Chris' higher price per gram of 6.49p which is based upon earlier LEGO Marvel sets.

The value of August 2024 LEGO® Marvel sets

The diagram above shows the 7 sets in the August wave of LEGO Marvel, their part counts, retail costs and weights (including instruction booklets and boxes).

The graph above shows the costs per gram of the 7 sets, with a marker showing BrickNerd's 6.49p cost per gram based upon earlier LEGO Marvel releases.

Here is the above information in tabular format:

August 2024 LEGO® Marvel sets: cost, weight and relative price per gram

Set Piece count	Price (UK)	Weight	Cost per gram	Price if 6.49p per gram	% over 6.49p
76295 The Avengers Helicarrier 509 pieces	£69.99	851g	8.22p	£55.23	26%
76291 The Avengers Assemble: Age of Ultron 613 pieces	£89.99	954g	9.43p	£61.91	45%
76290 The Avengers vs. The Leviathan 347 pieces	£44.99	425g	10.59p	£27.58	63%
76289 Thor vs. Surtur Construction Figure 245 pieces	£24.99	279g	8.96p	£18.11	38%
76288 Iron Man and Iron Legion vs. Hydra Soldier 135 pieces	£19.99	153g	13.07p	£9.92	101%
76297 Dancing Groot 459 pieces	£39.99	506g	7.90p	£32.84	22%
76286 The Milano 2090 pieces	£159.99	3042g	5.25p	£197.43	-19%

I think it is fair to say that these figures confirm BrickNerd’s theory. At the suggested 6.49p per gram the prices would seem more reasonable, whereas the actual prices are far in excess of that in the first four cases. 

They are not all bad value, and that’s part of the issue here: inconsistency of pricing. In my review of Dancing Groot I made the assertion that the set was reasonable value based on the average price per part. However, now knowing the price per gram, and on the basis of BrickNerd’s hypothesis that weight is a better metric, it must be pointed out that better value for raw parts is definitely out there!

With the astounding value of The Milano thoroughly confirmed, the major offenders are the two sets shown above; 76288 Iron Man and Iron Legion vs. Hydra Soldier and 76290 The Avengers vs. The Leviathan. 

Perhaps the justification for 76288 Iron Man and Iron Legion vs. Hydra Soldier is minifigures, which I shall address later in the article, along with the weight added by instructions. I’ve also read defences of its price on the basis that this is a "battle pack". I assume this would be for army builders who want legions of Legions? If you’re happy with that, please do let us know, but I’d still want a 30% discount as a minimum.

Comparing 76290 Avengers vs. The Leviathan to similar sets

As a larger set that wasn’t a battle pack but still has a poor price per gram, 76290 Avengers vs. The Leviathan has a price that’s 63% above the 6.49p per gram we’d previously expected to pay. To be clear, that’s not a price we are necessarily happy to pay, but the price BrickNerd's 2023 calculations expect a set in the LEGO Marvel theme to be priced at.

So, as a set that was objectively overpriced within this wave, I wanted to compare the relative value in price per gram of set 76290 against other currently available sets. For a fair comparison, the ideal sets would feature around 350 parts and include 5 minifigures with a weight around 425g. Currently available sets don’t match those criteria precisely, so I’ve looked for a range of sets that are comparable in one way or another.

Without minifigures, but with a similar quantity of parts and similar weights I found:

• 31157 Creator Exotic Peacock containing 355 pieces, with a weight of 440g
• 76962 Baby Bumpy: Ankylosaurus containing 358 pieces, with a weight of 381g

With a similar number of minifigures, but slightly heavier I found:

• 71475 Mr. Oz's Space Car containing 350 pieces, with a weight of 496g
• 60407 Double-Decker Sightseeing Bus containing 384 pieces, with a weight of 589g

Comparison of four 2024 LEGO® sets by relative price per gram

Set Piece count	Price (UK)	Weight	Cost per gram	Price if 6.49p per gram	% over 6.49p
31157 Creator Exotic Peacock 355 pieces	£17.99	440g	4.09p	£28.56	-37%
76962 Baby Bumpy: Ankylosaurus 358 pieces	£19.99	381g	5.24p	£24.73	-19%
71475 Mr. Oz's Space Car 350 pieces	£24.99	496g	5.04p	£32.19	-23%
60407 Double-Decker Sightseeing Bus 384 pieces	£24.99	589g	4.24p	£38.23	-35%

 

Of course, statistics can be manipulated. It might seem as if I have only cited examples that support my argument. So I ran a query using Brickset's handy Queries tool to find all LEGO sets from 2022 or later with at least 300 parts priced under £50. 

There are probably sets within that search criteria that could give us different results. Perhaps there are sets from other themes that don’t conform to a generally standard price per gram or price per part for the whole theme? I found sets from LEGO® Friends and LEGO® NINJAGO® that were seemingly very bad value. I think, however, that these are outliers that might be justified on another basis, perhaps in a similar way to how LEGO® Minifigures are classed as pocket money purchases? 

There are probably more sets that could support an alternative hypothesis, but mostly the seemingly overpriced sets in that search are the exceptions.

So, if cheaper sets aren’t a fair comparison, let's look at it another way: what else could you get for your £44.99? 

Comparison of price per gram of six 2024 LEGO® sets costing £44.99

Set	Pieces	Weight	Cost per gram
10329 Tiny Plants	758	706g	6.37p
10331 Kingfisher	834	812g	5.54p
76922 BMW M4 GT3 & BMW M Hybrid V8	676	756g	5.95p
76924 Mercedes-AMG G 63 & Mercedes-AMG SL 63	808	916g	4.91p
31154 Forest Animals: Red Fox	667	834g	5.39p
42602 Space Research Rover	514	689g	6.53p

Space Research Rover and Tiny Plants both seem to be pushing the limit of good value for unlicensed sets here. Why is that? Both contain a wealth of recoloured elements, as our reviews of sets 42602 and 10329 reveal. Space Research Rover has many large elements, which are expensive, but Tiny Plants has tiny parts by comparison. 

I can’t explain why the cost of the Tiny Plants seems to contradict the price per gram of unlicensed sets. Perhaps it has a lower production run and so the development costs are higher? We’d love to hear readers’ thoughts on why this might be. 

Botanical Collection sets do seem to introduce a lot of recolours and perhaps that comes with an extra logistical cost too? Or are they simply so popular, LEGO know they can charge more for them? The sets certainly appeal to me from the point of view that they are excellent parts packs, so perhaps I don't take stock of the price as much as I would with other sets. That's a different kind of value that perhaps New Elementary readers will identify with! Maybe LEGO actually has a better bead on our habits than it seems, based on their pricing here. 

Further factors

There are many caveats we could make, and certainly without understanding the myriad of different production costs bearing upon LEGO sets, or indeed the knowing the terms of the licensing agreements that LEGO makes with each of their partners, it is impossible to discern where your money is going.

There are other factors that we can consider. As mentioned earlier, instruction booklets and minifigures are things that might impact overall weight and production costs.

Instruction booklets and boxes

When I spoke to the New Elementary team about my concerns, the matter of instruction booklets was brought up. To make his calculations, Chris used the BrickLink weight values for sets, which include instruction booklets (and boxes), and so that will distort the results of the price per gram.

Some themes have more instructions. For example, all sets with the 4+ age mark recently had their instruction booklets lengthened, where every other page is given over to just showing the parts needed for the next step. These factors will bump up the overall weight for some themes more than others. 

Other sets now come without instruction booklets, like LEGO® Super Mario™, and might therefore fare better using BrickNerd’s weight metric. Similarly with boxes, some have interior boxes within the exterior box.

Subtracting the instruction booklet and box weights might solve the problem for those cases, but that would also render BrickNerd’s well-researched metric redundant.

Furthermore, I feel that instruction booklets and boxes still add an intrinsic value to a product, and probably deserve to account for some of the cost per gram of the product. The LEGO Group could definitely be even more economical with space and certainly use less paper, but I suspect the added weight is probably very close to being proportionally comparable in the majority of sets.

To explore this, I did a limited exploration of the proportion of weight taken up by instructions.

My son just got the wonderful LEGO Ninjago 71822 Source Dragon of Motion, and because the instructions were close at hand, I thought it would make a good starting point of a different theme to test.

The set is 2232g and contains 1716 parts with a price of £129.99, so it's 5.8p per gram. However, it does come with 5 instruction books that together weigh 544g. That’s a hefty 24% of the overall weight! If eliminated, the weight of the set is reduced to 1688g and bumps the price up to 7.7p per gram.

 

Comparing that with 76286 The Milano, at £159.99 for 3042g it was 5.25p per gram but its two big booklets weighing 771g (25% of the weight) gives us 2271g and bumps the price up to 7p per gram.

However 76291 Age of Ultron was £89.99, 613 parts and 954g. It was 9.43p per gram but the instructions are just one book only weighing 189g, so that's just under 20% of the overall weight. Price per gram is pushed up to 11.7p for the remaining 765g.

I think without going any further, I’m probably satisfied by those figures. It seems to me that instruction booklets do represent a similar percentage of the overall weights, at least in these LEGO Marvel sets. It is within a reasonable tolerance, and still works for me.

A last thought on extra instruction booklets. There are five books in the Dragon set, so it possibly is additional weight, but it does mean that it can be built in tandem with an adult or other children. I’d say that adds a sort of value too; similarly sets with instructions for alternate builds like LEGO® DREAMZzz. The same could be said of sets with interior boxes. I think removing the weight of instructions and boxes does have the potential to skew value, and that would surely affect LEGO® Creator sets, especially the smaller ones. 

Minifigures

For many reasons, minifigures also bump up production costs. 

They are undeniably more expensive to produce. The torso and legs are both subassemblies; new prints are often featured; and reasonably often there is some new hair piece, hat or accessory. 

Another reason is the time taken with the development of each unique part, even if this only printed decoration steps. 

Weight per minifigure will also vary, but a quick weighing of a random selection of about 20 suggests they’re mostly between 4g and 5g each. Bigfigs, like Hulk for example, are approximately 31g. Big dinosaurs will skew the price in all sorts of ways but mostly because they’re heavy; Brachiosaurus and Giganotosaurus weigh 130g and 138g respectively. They come with many variable production costs too.

Conclusion

Most of the recent range of LEGO Marvel sets aren’t just overpriced; I think the statistics above show that they are varying degrees of incredibly bad value. Maybe not all-time bad value, because I know that there are sets out there from this year that eclipse even these high prices, but they are certainly out of the ordinary.

It’s the inconsistency that I find hard to accept. The Milano is great value, on top of being a wonderful building experience with plenty of parts to satisfy the parts nerd in me (as are many sets based solely on this hypothesis). It is when there isn’t much in a highly priced set to recommend it that the real issues arise.

So, what can we do about this? Unfortunately I feel pessimistic about affecting any change at The LEGO Group through complaint. I would suggest the only route open to us as fans is to continue to reject the sets we consider to be bad value. Suppress your FOMO everyone, for the good of the hobby! 

I know that I am fickle because it is not unheard of for me to buy a set just for one part. I like to think it is because I’m interested in investigating what new parts can do and how they fit into the LEGO System. It’s also the slightly more subversively enjoyable endeavour of finding the ways in which the new parts can be misused! Sometimes I just want something, irrespective of cost, because the value is intrinsic to the LEGO, the nostalgia it provides, or if I’m already invested in the theme or IP.

How do you feel about these issues? How do you judge the value of a set? Opinions among the New Elementary team vary widely, and we'd love to hear your thoughts. Let us know in the comments.

With our thanks to our friends at BrickNerd for the work on which this additional investigation is based.

READ MORE: Review: 77092 Great Deku Tree 2-in-1 from LEGO® The Legend of Zelda™

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