Review: LEGO 76080 Ayesha’s Revenge

March 12, 2017 | 23

For my next LEGO Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 2 review, we’ve got 76080 Ayesha’s Revenge, the medium-sized set from this year’s lineup of 3 GOTG sets.

After reviewing (and loving) the 2017 Milano, I’ve seemingly caught the LEGO Guardians of the Galaxy bug and was more than keen to finish building the other two sets in the wave.

Ayesha’s Revenge features the long-awaited debut of the Yondu minifigure, as well the introduction of Ayesha, a mysterious cosmic lady (played by Elizabeth Debicki) covered in gold that made a brief apperance in the latest trailer. Oh and Baby Groot too!

Name: Ayesha’s Revenge
Set Number: 76080
Pieces: 323
Price: AU$49.99 | US$29.99 | £29.99 (Buy from LEGO.com [AUS] [USA] [UK])
Exclusive to: N/A
Minifigs: 3 + 1 Baby Groot
Theme: Guardians of the Galaxy
Year of Release: 2017

For an AU$50/US$30 set, we get a pretty decent cast of minifigures, all of which are exclusive to this set. We get an updated Star-Lord in casual wear, an exclusive variant of Baby Groot, and the introduction of Yondu and Ayesha into the LEGO Guardians of the Galaxy universe. Galaxy universe. Hmm.

Star-Lord (who?) is all updated for 2017 with a brand new hairdo, which I like a lot better than his previous one, same old Chris Pratt face and his trademark business casual outfit, the dark red jacket over a grey shirt.

He comes with a pair of patented Star-Lord blasters which I’ll never complain about given that they’re one of the best designed guns in the LEGO universe. I was very surprised to find that star-Lord didn’t come with his iconic mask, making the one in Milano vs The Abilisk a lot more valuable.

I thought it was kind of a sneaky move from LEGO, as they could’ve easily included the mask in this set, but I guess they wanted to make the new Milano set a lot more appealing.

He also has the new jetpack attachment on his back, which in all honesty is quite ugly. I mean, I get the effect that they’re going for, but the binoculars accessory just makes it look quite amateurish.

The neck clip also distracts you when looking at it from the front. After taking these photos, I just remove the jetpacks from all the minifigs with it.

Here’s a look at Star-Lord’s angry alternate face and back printing.

And here’s a comparison with the original Star-Lord from the first wave of Guardians of the Galaxy sets. It feels like the design has gone backwards, and I’m disappointed that there’s no leg printing of any kind.

Interestingly as well, even though the face design is the same, there are very minute differences – for one thing, it seems like the newer Star-Lord has thinner lines and pigments, which makes it look like he has less facial hair.

Meet Ayesha, a new addition to the Guardians of the Galaxy cast. I’m a huge fan of the actress that plays her, Elizabeth Debicki from the time I was introduced to her in Man from U.N.C.L.E.

Ayesha is a cosmic character from the Marvel Universe, who has also gone by the name of Her, Kismet or Paragon, and is an artificial human and female counterpart to Adam Warlock – she’s got a pretty bonkers backstory which I encourage you to check out.

Her role in the movie is a little unclear at this stage, but she seems to be the leader of a blinged up planet of golden individuals. Given the set’s name being about her getting revenge, it does seem that she’ll have some sort of adversarial role against the Guardians.

The Ayesha minifigure is rather unique, with her pearly gold face and hairpiece. Her body is an attractive dark blue with hints of gold and light blue accents. I’m also very pleased that she has leg printing. Ayesha has some sort of golden remote control which I assume is there to control the golden drone.

Ayesha has an alternate face with an angry teeth-baring expression, and back printing as well.

Her pearly gold hairpiece is all sorts of luxe. If you own a Mr Gold, and enjoy creating custom minifigures, Ayesha’s head and hair are going to come in handy if you want to create an all-gold female character or monofig. I really hope that this isn’t the last time we see this hairpiece.

The biggest name in Ayesha’s Revenge is undoubtedly Yondu, who makes his much-anticipated debut in the set. The blue skinned Centaurian, who is the leader of a bunch of space pirates called the Ravagers – the very same group of renegade mercenaries that kidnapped Peter Quill (Star-Lord) when he was a kid and raised him to become the Star-Lord that we all know and love.

He’s set to play a bigger role in GOTG Vol 2, possibly joining the Guardians for their cosmic adventures this time round. Yondu is attired in his Ravager outfit, which consists of a dark red trench coat over a brown suit.

The designers really nailed his blue complexion and his shifty expression. His face is all sorts of devious, and I really love the tiny details that they’ve managed to cram in such a fleck of silver in his teeth, as well as faint facial hairs on his chin.

The highlight of Yondu’s minifigure is his most recognizable feature – the translucent red fin, which is a brand new hairpiece that snugly fits into the minifig head hole. It appears that Yondu’s fin has grown bigger in GOTG 2 to better reflect his comic book appearance.

It’s a really unique accessory, and could have more application as a mohawk-hairstyle piece, if it weren’t translucent, but it’s such a well-crafted piece that it’s reusability is a pretty minor issue to me.

As an added bonus, the set comes with an extra Yondu hairpiece! Spares of hairs are always the best.

Here’s a look at Yondu’s back printing. He doesn’t have an alternate face, which I think is mostly a good thing, as minifigure customisers can use the plain back for a dark azure monofig.

Yondu also comes with a pearl gold “arrow”, which he controls using his psychic/whistling powers. The scene from Guardians of the Galaxy where Yondu massacres a whole bunch of Sakaaran goons was brilliant, and told you just enough that Yondu is a force to be reckoned with.

The real draw of this set isn’t any of the 3 exclusive minifigures but the adorable Baby Groot, which is the best thing to come out of the 2017 Guardians of the Galaxy sets.

This variant of Baby Groot is exclusive to this set and is super cute, mostly because Groot is dressed in a Ravager’s uniform. Huge props to LEGO for managing to pull of printing so much on such a small surface area without sacrificing any clarity.

This Baby Groot is a lot angrier than the version in 76081, which kinda adds to his overall cuteness. There’s something about an angry little baby sentient tree voiced by Vin Diesel. I love the subtle details such as Baby Groot’s furrowed brows and ☹ expression.

This angry Baby Groot is by far my favourite one out of the two, mostly because he seems to have a lot more personality, and that tiny Ravager uniform is just irresistibly cute.

The Baby Groot has hands that can be gripped by hooks or other minifig hands, which lets other characters interact with him quite well.

For US$30/AU$50, this is the cheapest way to get your hands on a Baby Groot, and given that this is in my opinion the superior one, fans of LEGO Guardians of the Galaxy owe it to themselves to pick this set up.

There’s a small chunk of “planet” that’s really just a bunch of red, dark red slopes and plates cobbled together.

A very insignificant play feature is built into this little “cliff” piece which involves pressing a button to dislodge a portion of the bricks off. It’s pretty lame, but at least the cliff is a decent place to display Baby Groot.

That’s it. Yawn. Let’s move on.

This is the Golden Drone, a spherical alien-looking spaceship that’s controlled by Ayesha. It’s got a ball like shape with some feet sticking out the bottom and twin stud blasters as it’s weaponry.

The Golden Drone is made out of some uncommon elements – I particularly like the gold and nougat parts, but otherwise I’m not a big fan of the design. That said, the blend of colours in the design are spectacular.

The shimmery gold dish is nice, and so are the pearl gold quarter circle tiles are new, I believe which should be fun for builders looking for cool new elements to mess around with.

The Golden Drone is pretty awkward to pose, mostly because it’s supposed to hover around unassisted – you can use the “legs” as support but it just makes it look silly.

While it may have a more prominent role in the movie (which I doubt), the drone a miss for me and will soon be scrapped for parts as soon as this review is live.

The main course of this set is Yondu’s Laser Drill Spaceship, a peculiar looking craft that boasts a very striking appearance thanks to its vibrant bright light orange colour scheme.

The Spaceship has a very unique look, that bears a resemblance to an undersea exploration vehicle thanks to its elongated almost squid-like body shape, as well as the clear bubble cockpit in front.

Another striking feature is just how smooth and sleek it looks. Its body is very organic looking, with curves in nearly every area. There are also barely any studs visible, which gives it a really clean look.

The Laser Drill Spaceship’s look is mostly achieved by the large curved canopy that dictates the overall shape of the craft. This is quite a rare element, and has only previously appeared as transparent cockpits in the likes of 10215 and 8075.

This bright light orange version is opaque, and I can see LEGO spaceship/mech designers getting a lot of use out of this piece.

There’s supposed to be 4 stickers that you had to affix to the roof which had bits of dirt and battle damage, but I didn’t opt to place them on as they honestly looked quite ugly and ruined the clean look of the roof.

Sure, this is obviously a mining craft of sorts, but those stickers were just a huge distraction. I usually place stickers on, but I couldn’t bring myself to ruin the Spaceship with them. 

Here’s a look at the underside of the Laser Drill Spaceship where you can see the spring loaded missile as well as the 6 transparent blue “thrusters”. I really like the thrusters, you can adjust them slightly so they face outwards instead of downwards which is kinda cool.

Here’s a look at the clear bubble cockpit – the insides are quite spacious although there aren’t any control panels or levers for him to control, so I’m just going to assume that he pilots the ship by whistling.

The other dominant feature of the Laser Drill Spaceship are the two printed dishes that can swing outwards.

I was very impressed that these two dishes were printed. I have to say that I have noticed LEGO adding a lot more printed elements into sets as of late. If this were a sticker, I can only imagine the nightmare of applying them to such a large dish.

The printed dish’s printing is gorgeous, with a large painted Ravager logo and a cool little Easter Egg thrown in. There’s a large logo with “TIVAN” printed to it, a reference to Taneleer Tivan aka The Collector.

There’s also test with 28MB on it – but I have no idea about what it means. Maybe it’s the amount of RAM this spaceship contains.

Edit: Thanks to Jean T for the little tidbit of info. The 28MB text is a reference to LEGO Senior Designer Marcos Bessa (designer of the Disney Castle, and Ecto-1 among others) who is probably the designer of this set. 28 is supposedly a number that’s special to him, and MB is his initials! Gotta say, that’s pretty awesome.

The dish flaps open up to reveal the insides of the spaceship. On one side, we have clips for a wrench and a red fire extinguisher. 

And on the right side, we have a small compartment for storage.

The Laser Drill Spaceship is well constructed, it feels very solid in the hand and can probably withstand some rough play. It contains a pretty cool play feature where you can slide a portion of the spaceship back, which opens up a small gap so that you can place or remove Yondu from the cockpit seat.

It’s actually a really satisfying mechanism and works without any hitches. I didn’t make a GIF this time, because one of the best things about this feature is the oddly satisfying sound it makes when you open it or click it shut. Play the video above with your volume turned up to see what I mean.

I could literally do this all day and not get bored.

What I liked:

• Cheapest way to get Baby Groot
• Yondu and Ayesha are both great additions to the LEGO GOTG sets
• The best Baby Groot
• Laser Drill Spaceship is a well constructed and designed model

What I didn’t like: 

• Star-Lord feels like a downgrade over the older version
• Star-Lord doesn’t come with his mask
• The Golden Drone

Final thoughts: Ayesha’s Revenge is a decent but mostly unremarkable LEGO set. The pros definitely outweigh the cons for this set, but apart from the minifigures, there’s not a lot here that will make you close this review and immediately hop online to purchase this set.

Most Super Hero LEGO sets are driven by minifigures and from this perspective, it’s hard not to fault Ayesha’s Revenge. All 3 minifigures are exclusive to this set, which is nice since that means no double ups.

Star-Lord is by far the weakest addition – the lack of leg printing really bothers me but LEGO’s bizarre decision to not include his iconic mask infuriates me. Like, I know that they’ve done this to incentivise people to pick up 76081 Milano vs The Abilisk but it still doesn’t sit right with me.

Thankfully, Ayesha and Yondu make up for Star-Lord’s shortcomings. Yondu is a stellar addition to the Guardians crew, especially since it’s heavily hinted that we’re going to see much more of him in the movie. His design is on-point and I think his translucent red mohawk is a brilliant piece of LEGO.

Ayesha is a little plain since her character hasn’t really been established, but her minifigure contains some pretty nice body parts in uncommon colours.

Baby Groot of course steals the show and is the main reason anyone is going to pick this set up. His merchandising prowess is most evident in this case, where I’m actually recommending you to plonk down AU$50 for a baby-sized character, but hey, that’s just testament to Baby Groot’s appeal.

The Golden Drone is plain boring, but at least you can harvest it for some nice parts. The Laser Drill Spaceship, while very nicely designed and constructed, with some very neat printed elements is not particularly exciting.

I really like the sleekness of the spaceship and how much it looks like an undersea submersible, but because it looks so non-threatening, I find it hard to fall in love with it. The colour scheme is awesome, and it’s a nice source of bright light orange elements, but it just doesn’t come across as an attractive display piece. 

It’s a good thing that Ayesha’s Revenge isn’t particularly expensive. At AU$50/US$30, it makes for a very inexpensive way to get your hands on Yondu and Baby Groot which is very nice of LEGO.

I’ve mostly been impressed by the pricing of the LEGO Guardians of the Galaxy sets and I’m glad Ayesha’s Revenge sticks to the blueprint of affordable licensed sets.

If you’re a Guardians of the Galaxy fan, this is an easy buy for you to pick up the minifigures. Just look at the Laser Drill Spaceship as a nice little bonus to go with a great cast of minifigs and Baby Groot.

Rating: 3/5

If you’ve built this set, I’d love to hear your thoughts on it in the comments section, as well as which Baby Groot is your favourite!