LEGO Marvel Rocket & Baby Groot (76282) Early Review

Hi, this is Martin aka BoomBrickz with an early review! I was very lucky to get hold of the not-yet-released Rocket and Baby Groot set (76282), which was kindly sent to me by Banthatoys!

THE BOX AND PACKAGING:

The box art features the usual LEGO and Marvel logos along with the black and white line drawn LEGO Minifigures and Infinity Saga at the bottom right, which is where we first see the new Baby Groot Minifigure. In the centre is the main build, Rocket holding both of his large handguns. Flip the box over and we see Rocket in a different pose with Baby Groot standing between Rockets feet and another picture showing the projectile in one of Rocket’s guns. On the side of the box we have the full photo of a 1:1 Baby Groot minifigure.

We also found on opening the box, paper bags! This is the first time we have seen a set use paper bags fully, except we discovered that 3 of the 4 bags had the small element plastic bags inside, so not 100% paper. This may have something to do with the factories where the elements get picked, hopefully in the future we will see only paper bags.

THE BUILD

If you have ever built one of LEGO’s buildable characters, like Wolverine or Captain America, then you will have a good idea of how the build will be with this set. There are a few differences, mainly in the tail which is very cleverly done with great part usage using barrels and a bush. The noticeable difference is in the legs where we see a brand new element that we have not seen before, this will be a great part for MOCcers, a 2×2 plate with a bar beneath. This part adds a lot of stability to the build by locking the knees, however this sacrifices movement in the knee joint. We do get great posability in the hips, ankles, arms, hands and head tho.

The overall build is very good and you can instantly tell its Rocket Raccoon, the build is not in scale with the buildable Groot, both normal and venomised, but they do display really well together. The build looks fairly chunky and is solid with not many pieces that will just fall off. The build for the head is fantastic, using a lot of SNOT (studs not on top) techniques and curved plates to finish the texture off well.

The stand out part of the head build for me was how the eyes and eyebrows were built, using the new 1×1 snot bricks with rounded off back this allows for the angles if the eyebrows to be pushed back and it works a treat!

We all know Rocket loves his guns and gadgets and the large handguns included in the set are pretty good, however we wish we had the option to build a larger gun with the same pieces or maybe by adding a few elements to make a crazy large gun, oh well this is something we can all try to make ourselves.

THE MINIFIGURE

We was very excited to see a brand new Baby Groot minifigure with this set, the head features brand new printing and he looks really cute and he is in his Ravagers uniform which we haven’t seen since the small Baby Groot in set Ayesha’s Revenge (76080) and the usage of short legs works really well. Definitely one for the collectors.

Overall this is a great set, especially for Marvel collectors, it’s a great set to pose and display with other buildable characters, some people wont like the look of Rocket’s face but we think it works pretty well, the photos on the box don’t give this set the justice it deserves.

Due out January 1st, will you be picking this set up?