Super Heroes Marvel

Venomosaurus Ambush

A Venom-slimed T. rex that exists mainly to smuggle Spider-Ham into your collection, and honestly, it works.

Brick Rated Score

4.0/5

Set 76151 · 2020

Pieces648

Minifigs5

Year2020

Set number76151

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The verdict

Let me be straight with you: nobody buys this set for the buggy.

You buy it for a Venomized tyrannosaurus with a fully articulated snapping jaw, and for the fact that Spider-Ham makes his very first LEGO appearance here, molded pig head and all. It is playful, a little ridiculous, and packed with a genuinely strong five-figure lineup. If you want a display-piece diorama with clever engineering, this is not that. If you want a fun creature and some collectible figures your kids will actually play with, it is a easy yes.

Best for: Spider-Man fans and minifigure collectors who want the debut Spider-Ham

The full review

What it is

The Venomosaurus is exactly as silly as it sounds, and I mean that as a compliment. It is a tyrannosaurus dripping in Venom's black symbiote, jaws lined with teeth, with a Venom minifigure that tucks inside to pilot the thing. The whole concept comes from the Old Man Logan comics, where a symbiote-infected dinosaur genuinely exists, so it is not just LEGO inventing chaos for the sake of it. The first time I worked that jaw and felt it snap shut over a full row of dentition with the tongue flicking inside, I grinned. It has real character. The shape of the head in particular is the part that got me, and it photographs far better than you would expect from a set marketed squarely at kids.

The catch

Now for the honest caveats, because there are a few. This set launched at $79.99, and a decent chunk of the 648 pieces goes into a Spider-Buggy that nobody remembers five minutes after opening the box. It does very little except bump the count. There are also a fair number of stickers to get the dino looking finished, which is always a groan for me, and the finished creature needs a bit of patient balancing to hold a proper action pose rather than just standing there. None of this is a dealbreaker, but if you were hoping for the kind of sturdy, sophisticated build you get from a bigger Marvel set, this is a lighter, more toy-forward experience.

Who it's for

Who should get this? Anyone who loves Spider-Man and cares about minifigures, full stop. The five-figure lineup is the real reason this set has aged so well: Spider-Man, Iron Spider, Ghost Spider, a properly kitted-out Venom, and Spider-Ham himself, appearing in LEGO form for the very first time. Iron Spider here has the most detailed printing the character had received to that point, with faint suit detail carrying up onto the head as well as the torso. Skip it if you want an engineering showpiece or a clean adult display model, because that is not what this is. But as a playset with genuine collector pull, it more than earns its keep, and now that it has retired it has become a Spider-Ham hunting ground.

The parts story

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

Building this is quick, loose, and forgiving, which makes it a lovely one to hand to a younger builder or to knock out yourself on an easy evening. The dinosaur comes together in sections around a jointed frame, so the legs, tail, and that all-important head all get their own moments, and the jaw mechanism is the bit worth slowing down for. The Spider-Buggy is a fast, unremarkable little vehicle you will assemble almost on autopilot. Nothing here will test an experienced builder, but the creature has enough shaping and articulation to keep it from feeling like pure snap-together filler.

The standout piece is unquestionably Spider-Ham's molded head, a brand-new ABS element that closely follows his design from the Marvel Super Heroes 2 game, complete with snout holes and printed eyes, sitting on a torso shared with regular Spider-Man. Venom's neck-mounted back piece is the other clever bit, letting you clip on four extra spider arms in black for that full symbiote silhouette. Add the upgraded Iron Spider printing and the exclusive figures, and the parts value tilts heavily toward the minifigures rather than the bricks. That is worth knowing going in: you are paying for characters here, not for a bag of rare recolored elements.

Fun facts

01This set marks Spider-Ham's (Peter Porker) first ever appearance as a physical LEGO minifigure, decades after the character debuted in 1983 and just after his breakout in Into the Spider-Verse.
02The Venomized dinosaur concept is pulled from Marvel's Old Man Logan storyline, where a symbiote-infected tyrannosaurus really does show up.
03Released on July 3, 2020 at $79.99, the set retired in December 2021 and has climbed roughly a third in value on the secondary market since.
04Of the five minifigures, two were exclusive to this set at launch, which is a big part of why collectors kept chasing it after retirement.