Woe is me, I have contracted the Marvel Lego bug, and just when I was dedicating myself to completing the Lord of the Rings Lego collection. Frankly, I blame Deadpool, because I may never have started down this expensive path had Lego not included him in a set. Anyway, while I was stocking up on provisions the other day at Target I couldn’t help myself but pick up another set. This time it’s Captain America’s Avenging Cycle, and it’s considerably smaller than the first one I looked at.

There you go, it’s a pretty exciting little box. This set comes with an instruction book, a loose motorcycle frame, a small sticker sheet, and two un-numbered baggies, with a grand total of 72 pieces. Those pieces build three minifigs, a missile launcher emplacement, a Chitauri Air Chariot and Cap’s motorcycle. It didn’t take me long to throw this thing together, so let’s see what we’ve got. And as always, we’ll start with the minifigs.

First up, we have Captain America, and he is without a doubt the reason I bought this set. He’s a pretty simple minifig composed of just the head, legs, and torso, but the colors and printed details really mesh well to make him a cool little guy. Naturally, he comes with his trusty shield too.

The other two minifigs are Chitauri troops. I’m pretty ambivalent toward these guys. Like Cap, they’re pretty simple and each made up of just the three basic pieces. The printing is very detailed, but it kind of just looks like a jumbled mess of patterns. I blame the crazy Chitauri design, which was really the only thing I didn’t like about the Avengers movie. Either way, I’m sure Lego did their best with what they had to work with, but these guys just weren’t designed with the Lego treatment in mind. At least one of them does come with a pretty cool gun. And since they’re faces are just a jumbled mess, I’ve put one head on back-to-front just to mix them up a bit.

Cap’s motorcycle is absolutely killer for such a small and simple build. The colors match his own and it comes with stickers with his star emblem and a SHIELD sticker for the front. There’s a clip on the back so you can attach his shield to it. Part of me kind of wishes there was a clip on the front to attach it to the front of the bike in the more iconic way, but then the bike looks so good, I’d be hesitant to change anything. And most importantly, Cap looks awesome riding it. This will be a big win for my new Marvel Lego display.

Chitauri pieces are a mixed bag. I like the Air Chariot. It was a little more complex of a build than I thought it would be, which is very cool. It has some great looking jagged blade pieces and some gorgeous stickers to give it extra detail. There’s also a flick-fire missile mounted under it. The side wings can move up and down and the front shield-slash-control column can pivot forward and back. A set of handlebars for the front column would have been cool, but I can probably rob one of those pieces from one of my Atlantis sets. Either way, it still looks fine without it.

The other Chitauri piece, the missile launcher feels like just something Lego threw in to beef up the brick count. It reminds me of the kind of thing they tossed into at least a couple of the Alien Invasion sets, only they made a little more sense in those. Still, I could probably cannibalize the parts for one of my Pharaoh’s Quest sets since the brick colors are totally Egyptian.

This set was $12.99 and it seems pretty fair. While I’m overall satisfied with the set, I would have really preferred Lego broke with the movie and included Skrulls in this set instead of the Chitauri. Skrulls would have worked better as minifigs and I would have had a lot more use for them in my collection. There’s nothing particularly bad in here, and I’m sure kids will appreciate being able to get a little battle in a box like this, but ultimately, I would have been happier just getting Cap and his motorcycle in a tiny impulse set for about five bucks cheaper.