It's January 1, 2023 and LEGO is marketing a very large handful of new sets from today on its official online store with an assortment that covers many in-house or licensed ranges.

As usual, it's up to you to see whether to crack without waiting by paying the full price for these boxes or whether to show a little patience and wait for the inevitable reductions that will be offered in the boxes. weeks and months to come at Amazon, on FNAC.com and at a few other resellers.

ALL THE NEWS FOR JANUARY 2023 ON THE LEGO SHOP >>

(All links to the shop redirect to the version of the official shop for your country of connection)

As expected, LEGO is offering a new promotional offer that should appeal to the most nostalgic among us: the set 40580 Blacktron Cruiser is indeed offered from January 1 to 14, 2023 from 190 € of purchase without restriction of range. This small box of 356 pieces which allows you to assemble an interpretation of the ship delivered in 1987 in the set 6894 Invader is automatically added to the basket as soon as the minimum amount required is reached. It's up to you.

As a bonus: LEGO also offers a new thematic polybag of 124 pieces to members of the VIP program, the reference 40605 Lunar New Year Add-On VIP Pack from 50 € of purchase without restriction of range. This offer is valid until January 25, 2023 and without range restriction. The polybag is automatically added to the basket as soon as the minimum amount required is reached.

DIRECT ACCESS TO THE OFFER ON THE LEGO SHOP >>

(The link to the shop redirects to the version of the official shop for your country of connection)

And one more ! Another year gone by in your company and I still can't get enough of it since 2010.

Thank you like every year to all those who came, stayed, returned, to those who contributed via their comments, to those who helped other readers as well as to those who shared their good plans or their experiences, good or bad. , with the others. I'll say it again, without you and without all these interactions, this space would be very sad and without much interest. Continue to deliver your opinions and remarks in the comments, many employees of the LEGO group read you with attention. Even if you have the impression that things are not moving, I know from a reliable source that many of these comments are often taken into account and sometimes passed on to the competent or concerned persons.

In 2023, I hope you will continue to come regularly to pick up here what interests you around our common passion. I will continue for my part to try to give you more and more very personal opinions and as many more or less relevant remarks that you will obviously be free to contradict or criticize. I will also continue to try to get more and more products to put into play on the site and to offer all the sets that LEGO is willing to send me via the LAN endowment and the various review offers that I receive throughout year round.

The usual remark that anyone who has been around for a long time probably knows by heart by now: don't sacrifice anything for a box of LEGO. Don't go into debt to buy LEGOs. Plastic can't be eaten, and it can't be resold as expensive as some would have you believe, especially when you have to act urgently. If personal constraints force you to put this passion aside temporarily, don't worry, nothing is final and you can possibly come back to it later. We will always be there to welcome you.

Take care of yourself and yours, enjoy your family and friends, the way you live your passion for LEGO should not isolate you, it should on the contrary allow you to meet other fans for the to share. With these words, I wish you all a happy new year 2023.

Today we are quickly interested in the content of the LEGO Marvel set 76248 The Avengers Quinjet, a box of 795 pieces which will be available from January 1, 2023 at the retail price of €99.99.

The Quinjet is a chestnut tree from the LEGO Marvel range, you always need one in the manufacturer's catalog. Different versions have succeeded since 2012 and collectors certainly remember the sets 6869 Quinjet Aerial Battle (2012) 76032 The Avengers Quinjet City Chase (2015) or 76051 Super Hero Airport Battle (2016) 76126 Avengers Ultimate Quinjet (2019) et 76127 Captain Marvel and The Skrull Attack (2019)

With this 2023 version of the ship, it is still not an exhibition model in the literal sense of the term, this product is indeed a simple toy for children to which LEGO had the good idea to add a presentation support . I often complain about not having on hand enough to display a flying machine correctly, I feel like I have been heard this time.

I might as well tell you right away, I'm a little annoyed by this product. On the one hand, it combines excellent ideas and a very acceptable finish and on the other, it suffers from many more or less annoying flaws that remind us that LEGO is making less and less effort on the details. In terms of form, the designer is doing quite well with a ship that is more or less faithful to the reference model and without, however, overbidding the parts that would have affected the retail price of the product. The set is on arrival sufficiently detailed and functional to be both a very elaborate toy and a model that can be proudly stored on the corner of a shelf between two play sessions.

We take advantage of an easily accessible interior space, whether at the level of the cockpit or the seats placed at the rear, the canopy of the cockpit benefits from a nice finish with the addition of two side bubbles which give it a little roundness, this Quinjet is equipped with retractable landing gear which prevents it from resting on its cabin and the whole looks rather proud from almost all angles if you don't look too much at the wings with their revealing space the turbines which are sorely lacking in finish. In any case, you should not expect a perfectly faithful and refined reproduction of this product down to the smallest detail, there are necessarily some aesthetic shortcuts, especially on this scale. I simply regret the lack of pad printing on the different windows, just to correctly embody the uprights that frame these different glazed surfaces.

The presentation support provided is simple but it allows some fantasies, it can accommodate the Quinjet in different positions without the stability of the whole being affected: nose forward, take-off phase, etc... it's you who choose and you can even stow the three landing gears in the cabin to get something believable.

The vessel is unfailingly solid with its internal structure based on Technic beams and its side uprights held by plates which cross the cabin in its width. Nothing comes off during handling, but this Quinjet is also not equipped with any machine launchers. Children will have to deal with it, those who will acquire this product to display it will probably not complain.

Things get tough when LEGO highlights the product's customization functionality with two separate sticker sheets. The idea is not bad, for example I chose to apply the set of stickers on the theme of SHIELD to obtain a Quinjet identical to the one seen in the movie Avengers (see photo above). The result is aesthetically very successful with pretty logos and less intrusive mechanical details than on most stickers of the Avengers version.

Unfortunately, it will be impossible to easily reverse course afterwards, LEGO not providing the handful of parts necessary to transform the SHIELD Quinjet into a spaceship in the colors of the Avengers. It's petty, it was enough to throw the ten parts concerned in a bag and the proposal then immediately became more attractive and really exploitable. As it stands, a choice will have to be made and any subsequent change of mind will necessarily involve the purchase of the various necessary parts via the official store or a third-party reseller.

This product does not escape the problems that have become usual with LEGO: the canopies are all more or less scratched, you have to install a Plate dull and ugly with its big injection point in the middle of the back of the ship, one of the bags of the copy I received contained a part that had no place there and there was a missing part essential to the assembly and background of the stickers does not quite match the gray color of the cabin. And that's without counting on a defect that affects more and more minifigs with unsightly burrs around the eyes.

I will be told that there is nothing insurmountable here and that all you have to do is call the manufacturer's customer service to get the right part and the replacement of those that are scratched or damaged. But I have already received several testimonials from readers which lead me to believe that the tone is gradually changing at LEGO and that too many requests for replacement of damaged parts may one day lead to an end of inadmissibility. Anyway, I'm buying a top-of-the-range product, it must be in excellent condition right out of the box without me spending my time begging from more or less accommodating operators.

On the side of the minifigs supplied with the Quinjet, you have to be satisfied with part of the cast but here you escape, for example, an Outrider or a generic Chitauri without interest, that's already it. Everything is not new among the elements provided, Iron Man reuses for example the helmet seen in the set 76216 Iron Man Armory on a new torso and pair of legs rather faithfully reproducing the armor in Mark VII version. The character has additional hair that allows you to take advantage of the two usual faces, with or without the blue HUD.

Captain America reuses the mask already delivered in half a dozen products, but the two-faced head and the torso are new. LEGO still can't properly stamp the flesh color on a darker background, the result is once again frankly disappointing with a distressingly pale Steve Rogers. The copy of the usual shield, also already seen in several boxes and provided in the copy of the set that I received, is affected by a clearly visible pad printing defect, which is a shame.

Black Widow benefits from a pretty new torso with arms stamped with the SHIELD logo, it's very successful except for the pale area of ​​the neck which should have been flesh-colored and the desperately neutral pair of legs. This lack of color on the neck reminds us once again that we should not always rely on official visuals that are a little too optimistic. The face provided is also that of Jyn Erso, Mighty Thor, Mera, Rachel Green, or even Vicki Vale.

Loki's minifig is beautifully executed, brand new from head to toe with two very compelling faces and an additional hairstyle that allows the character to be enjoyed in two different configurations. The pad printing of the torso and the legs is rather complex and the whole is roughly connected to the junction between the two elements. For those wondering where Loki's black hair comes from, it's the element already seen in Dark Tan on the head of Luke Skywalker in Ahch-To version. The golden headdress is successful, its shiny color is reinforced compared to the examples already seen in other boxes and it is now fully matched with the supplied stick. For once, the real version conforms to the heavily retouched official visuals.

Finally, the minifig of Thor is not new, it reuses the head with its slightly ridiculous smile on one side initially marketed in products based on the film Avengers: Endgame and the beautiful, extremely detailed torso delivered so far only in the set 76209 Thor's Hammer.

As I said above, this product is annoying because it is sufficiently mature in substance to make it a beautiful, almost affordable toy, but the shape is a bit sloppy with flaws that LEGO still can't avoid. It is still the main job of this manufacturer who regularly tells us that quality has a price, and yet we often have to be satisfied with various scratches and other failed pad prints. 100 € for that is a high price even if we are all more or less used to the current pricing policy which sometimes makes us forget that we are paying these few grams of plastic at a high price.

The fact remains that this Quinjet which seems to me to be the most credible version to date will obviously join my collection, but I will wait to be able to pay a little less for it at the usual dealers and I am already ready to harass customer service to obtain a product that meets my expectations in terms of finish.

Note: The set presented here, provided by LEGO, is as usual involved. Deadline fixed at 11th January 2023 next at 23:59 p.m. Just post a comment under the article to participate. Your participation is taken into account regardless of your opinion.

Update : The winner was drawn and notified by email, his nickname is indicated below.