Front cover

I am a little ashamed to say that being a big LEGO Marvel fan I didn’t have a Venom Minifigure in my collection until I grabbed this issue.

Before we get carried away with the Minifigure let’s get the magazine out the way first. As we’ve all become so familiar with what lies in wait within pretty much every LEGO iteration of magazine it never bores me to review them, yes we might always see a maze, crossword, or matching/pairs puzzle but they are all different in style and usually surrounding the particular character that’s included as the freebie.

In the comic strip we join the Avengers and their fight against Dr Doom, he has somehow manipulated Venom, or more precisely the goo, to give him power and try to topple the Avengers. You’ll have to read the rest to find out what happens.

Amongst the many activities there is a nice colouring page that again features the Avengers, I noticed Thor’s beard is already done, perhaps the creators missed it or they don’t want you to mess with it, who knows!

Something a little different to the normal activities is a code breaker, you need to help Iron Man crack the code in order to find the location of Ultron, my young Son enjoyed finding the corresponding letters and finally making the sentence and found Ultron at…. Oops, almost gave it away.

On the opposite page is where we get back to the usual puzzles within very issue. The Maze is basic in terms of you need to get from the Start to the Finish, there aren’t any obstacles, hidden paths, or codes to crack. It’s very much your typical Maze, which is fun and took my Son, the intended reader, only moments to get through.

Another puzzle, featuring Vision, is rather clever and takes ehments from other pages found in the magazine and asks for you to locate them. This ensures that you read through the entire magazine as not to miss anything. Of course Vision is very popular currently thanks to the hit Disney Plus show WandaVision, which I highly recommend!

A growing tradition is having soemthing to cut-out on the back cover, being slightly thicker paper it makes sense. In this issue we get four character cards that give us an insight into that particular Superhero and their abilities.

We Blackwidow, Loki, Iron Man, and Antman. I hope we get more in coming issues as having a card for every Superhero would be great, the art is incredible and could be used in so many ways, framing them would like ace once put on the wall for display!

Here Comes Venom is a page dedicated to the guy, or should that be goo, himself.

It features information regarding his powers, where he comes from, what he can shape-shift into and more. This is also where the instructions are to help you build the free LEGO Venom Minifigure.

Ooh that’s a perfect link to take us onto the Minifigure portion of the review!

As I’ve said many times, on the website and on various episodes of our Podcast, LEGO have definitely stepped up their game when it comes to the freebies.

Many moons ago the magazines were still great, don’t get me wrong, but they sometimes lacked in the free gift department. Getting the odd small build is wonderful and certainly changes it up a bit, but getting the same Minifigures over and over again was getting tiresome, I’m looking at you Owen Grady from the LEGO Jurassic World magazines!

The included Venom Minifigure is awesome to say the least, he is in only a handful of LEGO sets and has some very interesting parts.

As I mentioned at the very beginning of the review I had yet to aquire him for my collection so was very chuffed to hear the news of him being a freebie, well £3.99 if you take into account the magazine cost.

The price itself is really good for what you get and is at the lower end out of all the different iterations of LEGO magazine. So far we’ve be graced with Minifigures in every issue and long may it remain. I am interested to see a micro-build or two to see what they come up with, but much prefer the Minifigures!

Image courtesy of @boombrickz

He comes with a host of tentacles and stud holders, all in the colour black. I’ve not personally seen the larger tentacle pieces before so was really intrigued by them, they have a nice shape about them and suit Venom down to the ground!

The printing on both the head and torso is very crisp and detailed, the white is quite solid considering its printed into a black torso. 

It’s so good that we get an anti-hero in a magazine, as so far in the three previous issues the characters have been ‘goodies’ – Spider-man, Iron Man, Captain Marvel. 

Image courtesy of @boombrickz

Overall the Magazine is great and features a lot of different puzzles and activities to previous ones, which makes a nice change.

The addition of the colouring page and code cracking puzzle is a nice touch and was very enjoyable to finish.

The Minifigure is awesome to say the least and a welcomed addition to the collection. The unique accessories are also great with the inclusion of two large black tentacles, two smaller ones, and a handful of stud holders.

We highly recommend thisnl iteration of LEGO magazine and urge you to go out and grab them, or subscribe if you can!

Here’s a sneak peek of next issues freebie:

Do you own this magazine and/or Minifigure? Let us know what you think and what you’d like to see next in the comments below!

Big thanks to Martin @boombrickz who supplied the Venom Minifigure photos.