Super Heroes Marvel

Carnage

A snarling symbiote bust that nails the face and fumbles the finish.

Brick Rated Score

3.7/5

Set 76199 · 2021

Pieces546

Minifigsn/a

Year2021

Set number76199

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The verdict

This is a display bust of Carnage's grinning, fanged head, and the sculpting genuinely surprised me.

The mouth is the star, built with hinges and ball joints so the teeth splay out in that manic Carnage grin, and it reads perfectly from almost every angle. The heavy sticker load is the catch, and it's a real one on a set meant to sit on a shelf for years. If you love the character you'll adore having this snarling in your collection, and if you want a purist printed showpiece you'll want to think twice.

Best for: Marvel fans who want Carnage's face snarling on a shelf

The full review

What it is

The first time I got the mouth assembled on this Carnage bust, I actually grinned back at it. This is the second of LEGO's Marvel display heads after the 2020 Iron Man Helmet, and where Iron Man is all smooth clean plating, Carnage is the opposite: a snarling, fanged, red-and-black symbiote face that leans into chaos. The whole thing comes together in a bit under an hour, which sounds quick, but the good stuff is packed into that hour. The eyes, the teeth, the splayed jaw, all of it uses hinges and ball joints to get those organic, off-kilter angles that make Carnage look alive and furious rather than tidy and posed. Standing 19cm tall, it's noticeably bigger than the Star Wars helmet line, and that extra size lets the designer push detail you can actually make out from across a room.

The catch

Here's where I have to be straight with you. For a set aimed at adult display, this thing relies on stickers to a degree that stings. A lot of the black symbiote veining and detail is applied, not printed, and several stickers go onto slopes and curved wedges rather than nice flat tiles, which makes them fiddly to place and slower to trust over time. The most common gripe I saw echoed my own: the eyebrow stickers span two wedge pieces and just don't align, leaving a visible gap at one end no matter how carefully you work. On a play set I'd shrug, but on a showpiece you're meant to keep for years, the worry about peeling and curling edges is fair. At its original 59.99 dollars for 546 pieces it wasn't cheap either, and the sticker choice is the thing that keeps this from being a slam dunk.

Who it's for

So who ends up happy here? If you're a Carnage fan or a Marvel villain collector, honestly the face is good enough that you'll forgive the stickers, and the owner reviews back that up: real buyers rate it around 4.6 out of 5 even while critics landed at mixed. This is a character piece first, and as a character piece it delivers a genuinely menacing sculpt. Who should skip it? If you're a purist who can't stand applied detail on a display model, or someone chasing engineering depth rather than a bust, this one will frustrate more than it satisfies. It retired in December 2022, so if the grin speaks to you, you're now shopping the aftermarket rather than the shelf.

The parts story

What the build is actually like, and the pieces worth knowing about.

Building this is a refreshing change if you're used to rectangular sets, because almost nothing here is a straight wall. You're constantly working at angles, wrapping curved slopes and wedges around a core to fake an organic skull, and the mouth section in particular is a lovely little puzzle of hinges and ball joints that let the teeth splay outward. Things get fiddliest around the jaw, where you're nudging triangular tiles into place to hide the seams between hinged sections, so it rewards patience more than speed.

On the parts front, the headline is the red curved wedges (8x3x2 open left and right) making a return after last appearing back in 2009, which is a genuine treat for anyone who builds. There are useful recolors too, including an inverted curved slope in bright pink that had only shown up in a 2020 Monkie Kid set before, red 2x2 triangular tiles, and a bright purple 2x2 plate with two studs. The catch for parts hunters: printed elements are almost nonexistent, with the lone printed piece being the black LEGO MARVEL CARNAGE nameplate on the stand. Everything else that looks printed is a sticker, so value here is really in the recolored slopes and wedges rather than any deep printed haul.

Fun facts

01Carnage is the second bust in LEGO's Marvel display line, following the 2020 Iron Man Helmet (76165).
02At 19cm tall it stands higher than most of LEGO's Star Wars helmet busts, which is what let the designer capture those oversized teeth.
03The entire 546-piece set contains just one printed part: the black nameplate tile on the display stand.
04Released April 2021 at 59.99 dollars, it retired in December 2022 and sealed copies now trade well above original retail.