Today we wrap up our recent barrage of reviews with a look at 4529 Iron Man. Blog Leader DeeVee shares his thoughts on this superhero constraction set. Will this most obvious Avenger to turn into a buildable figure be worth it in the end? Read on to learn that and more!

Presentation
From the design of the box to the instruction manual, these are the first things you see before building the set.

Iron Man comes in a box. It's the same box as the other superhero sets, but it has Iron Man on the front! He is flying! He doesn't really do that in the plastic, though. Darn.

Here you can see him in the LEGO stock box image. Because the box I have is wayyyyyy not together enough to have photos taken. The back of the box, which you can't see, because apparently there aren't easily accessible stock images of them, has a slightly different version of the Iron Man build, plus a combo build advertisement. It's not very good.

There are legal disclaimers somewhere. I think they moved, apparently they want space.

Building
Half the fun is had building the set. How fun is it to build and how easy or challenging is it?

Unlike both Captain America and the Hulk, Iron Man is really straightforward, and kind of boring. Captain America has those cool shoulders, and Hulk is... well, go check out his review. Iron Man, out of all three, is the one that feels the most like a regular Hero Factory set. Switch out his head for Bill's, and you have Bill Furno - Gold Edition. His only moment of interest is the large gun on his back, but even that's not really anything special.

Iron Man is a boring build. Compared to his peers, he's kind of a letdown, when it comes to the building fun.

Set Design
Now that the set is complete, we can critique how it looks from every angle. New or interesting pieces can also be examined here.

Iron Man also doesn't really come with much in the way of interesting parts. Man he's underwhelming.

What he does come with isn't too bad, though. There's the Iron Man head, that ammo belt we got with Rocka, the chestplate with the Iron Man ARC reactor, three HF Breakout chestplates (minus any decals!!), a gold engine piece thing, a gold Star Trek ship thing, and that trans-light-blue gun piece we first saw in orange with Joker.

That's about it. I mean, personally, I can always use more red and gold cladding parts, so that was nice. Plus the two grey friction extender things that we saw with the DC heroes.

The resulting set, though, isn't too bad. A lot of people have mentioned that he looks more consistent and streamlined than the other two Marvel sets. This is true. I prefer the powerful and heroic Captain America set, but Iron Man is way better than the Hulk. I do wish instead of the torso parts on his upper arms he had red cladding, perhaps with the round add-ons we saw with Splitface. That could look nice. Also, not weak and lame empty lower arms. I don't like those. They look weird.

The gun is mounted on a long HF-era limb piece, with a SILVER Savage Planet claw thing over it. I don't know why this is silver, since it already existed in red. This is truly truly baffling to me.

The gun itself moves pretty well. The ammo belt can sometimes get in the way, and is stiffer than true mobility would prefer.

Overall, he doesn't look terrible at all. Like I said, he looks more consistent than the Hulk, and his streamlined appearance works for Iron Man. Though the huge shoulders still make me wonder.

Playability
The other half of the fun is in playing with the set. How well does the set function and is it enjoyable to play with?

Iron Man has the same standard points of articulation we've become accustomed to. He moves pretty well, and he can achieve some pretty heroic poses. He doesn't really do a good flying pose, which is unfortunate, because if he did, there'd be a picture of it here! But nay.

He looks nice. I kind of wish he did something different with the Hero Factory build like Captain America and the Hulk do. The Superhero sets are kind of a nice place to experiment a little bit, what with the higher price points.

Of course, the best part of Iron Man is that he's an Avenger.

And the Avengers Assemble:

Final Thoughts
Once it's all said and done, how does the set stack up? Should I get it?

In the end, it really depends on what you're going for. He doesn't look bad at all. He is fun to have on your shelf, I'm sure. He's a good representation of Iron Man, and the HF build lends itself well to the mechanical armour of Iron Man. I just can't shake the idea that he's boring compared to his peers.

Thanks go out to DeeVee for his amazing pictures and insightful words - you all should thank him too in the Talkback. Hopefully you all enjoyed this look at this man in the metal mask. If you did, keep checking back right here on BZPower for more LEGO and Hero Factory news!

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