While most of the general public asks who the heck are the Guardians of the Galaxy, we here at DFAT couldn’t be MORE excited for this “experiment” of a film to hit theaters this August. While we anxiously await the release, we are getting some of the coolest collectibles this side of the Milky Way! It seems that Marvel has the right formula when it comes to marketing their films, and we will be taking a look at two out of three of the sets that are available now at your local LEGO store, the online LEGO Shop, or your favorite retailer!
In order to collect the entire team, and get a majority of the villains, you have to pick up two of the three sets. Luckily the smallest of the sets, Starblaster Showdown, can be skipped if you really feel the need to save some cash. Luckily, by purchasing The Milano Starship Rescue and Nowhere Escape Mission, you can get your ragtag crew together for many brick-filled space missions! Today we will take a look at the Nowhere Escape Mission set!
Coming in at 433 pieces, and the second most expensive of the sets, Nowhere Escape Mission will run you around 40 bucks. Nothing special about this set when compared to others, except that it seems that LEGO is using more unique colors when it comes to the pieces. But this is all thanks to the colorful worlds that director James Gunn and Marvel Studios have put together for this film.
This set is packaged with the following Minifigures; Rocket Raccon, Nebula, and a Sakaaran. The gem of the set is the Groot figure that you have to build. It is very similar in build to the Sentinel from the X-Men set, you can check out my review of that here. Get ready to be a little disappointed, because these are the best parts of the set. I will cover more of that when I get to the build.
A little side note here, the Sakaarans appearing in this movie, and the recent cameo of a Korg in Thor 2, means we may be headed towards a Planet Hulk movie at some point in the future, we can only hope. But until then, let’s enjoy the zany adventures of the GOTG first! Rocket comes armed with an over-sized, one of the largest guns in LEGO history, while Nebula is packaged with two swords. The Sakaaran also has a unique blaster, but the rocket launcher is his weapon of choice in this set! Groot is fun to build and even more fun to pose, he even has a spot for Rocket to stand on his shoulder!
While this is a fun and easy set to put together, there isn’t a whole lot to it. What you get is three different sections to the set: a mining pod, mining station, and rocket launcher. This set may be a spoiler to what will happen in the film, but it doesn’t give that much away. The mining station will be fun for kids as it has a lot of action features including a trap door and an “exploding” feature that allows you to emulate the station getting blown up! Will the Guardians be able to protect the gem from Nebula and Sakaaran’s? Only you can decide!
From a collector’s standpoint this set is worth it for the Minifigures and Groot alone, it is also the only way for you to get your paws on this dynamic duo. As I’ve stated in the past, LEGO knows what they can get away with when it comes to their sets and this is a perfect example of that. There are a lot of small pieces in this set, so when compared to a set like the X-Men one (which has 300 something pieces), I think it was smart of LEGO to price this one under the $50 price point. This is another set that includes the spring-loaded missile launcher, something I can see LEGO banning sooner than later due to the age range of this product.
I love these GOTG LEGOs and I can’t wait to put together the Milano Spaceship set next week! Look for the review next Friday!! I still have one question, where is my Thanos Minifigure?! Maybe we will see that down the road at some point, using the Hulk mold! For now we have three sets based on this summer’s galactic adventure, time will tell if Rocket Raccoon becomes a household name like Spider-Man! I give the LEGO Guardians of the Galaxy Nowhere Escape Mission 4 outta 5 stars. Kids will love it and collectors will have a hard time not picking these suckers up to collect all of the GOTG Minifigures.
LEGO Guardians of the Galaxy: Nowhere Escape Mission – B+
~CynicNerd
I AM GROOT!!
