Review: LEGO Marvel 76189 Captain America and HYDRA Face-Off

Today we quickly tour the LEGO Marvel set 76189 Captain America and HYDRA Face-Off, a small box of 49 pieces stamped 4+ sold at the public price of 9.99 €.

This is a toy for very young fans of the Marvel Universe and so logically don't expect an out of the ordinary building experience or exceptional level of detail. The set is doing pretty well anyway, offering plenty of fun right out of the box with a motorcycle that is probably a little rough but strong enough to handle and a "gun" that allows you to try and knock out Captain America. .

The bike's chassis is identical to the one seen in red in set 4+ 76172 Spider-Man and Sandman Showdown (2021) but the four wheels with the golden rims are here placed inside the two elements and the result is rather convincing. The few elements that help turn the somewhat rough assembly into a motorcycle do their job and the whole remains recognizable. I would have put blue instead of black but I am not the designer of the set and this product is presented by LEGO as based on the movie Avengers: Age of Ultron, the bike is therefore a reproduction freely inspired by the Harley-Davidson Street 750 model seen on the screen.

The small firing station with gold and purple accents reminds us that the HYDRA uses Chitauri technologies and it allows you to launch a few discs. It is summed up in its simplest form, but the function undoubtedly takes precedence over the look of the object, even if the designer could have made an effort. No stickers in this box, everything is pad printed: the front of the motorcycle with its big, slightly pale headlight and both Tiles bearing the logo of the Avengers placed on the sides of the machine.

It is obviously on the side of the two minifigs provided that it is necessary to look so that this small unpretentious box finally finds its interest in the eyes of the collectors: they are both new.

Captain America reuses the head and the mask already seen in other boxes but the torso pad printing is unique. A slightly annoying detail: the pad printing of the character's "civilian" face, to match with the hair provided, frankly drooling around the eyes. The defect is more or less visible depending on the copies of the set, I was able to compare with another minifigure from the same product and the burrs are there even if they are less obvious. Steve Rogers' shield has a few burrs as well, but that's okay.

The HYDRA soldier's minifig has the face of an AT-AT pilot but it benefits from a superb pad printing on the chest with a red logo that stands out clearly on the outfit in winter camouflage version. Too bad the character's legs are not covered in a matching pattern, the figure appears as is as half-dressed.

In the end, this set will probably not mark the spirits as being a derivative product absolutely faithful to what it tries to reproduce but it does offer the possibility of filling your Ribba frames with minifig collectors a little more for less than 10 €. It's so rare in the LEGO Marvel range that there is no valid reason to ignore this little box.

Note: The set presented here, provided by LEGO, is as usual involved. Deadline fixed at September 20, 2021 next at 23pm. 

Update : The winner was drawn and was notified by email, his nickname is indicated below. Without a response from him to my request for contact details within 5 days, a new winner will be drawn.