4851, The origins

Okay, I do want to get the old Spider-Man and Batman lines reviewed before January, so I'd better get these out sooner rather than later. In 2003, LEGO discarded the idea of making Spider-Man a subtheme of Studios and made it into a stand-alone theme. The real bonus here was that this meant no more useless director minifigs, or camera elements, or other distractions from Spidey. In 2003 we got three sets, still based on the 2002 Spider-Man movie.

First up for us is set 4851, The origins. Now THIS is the set they should have started with in the previous year. With six figs you get all the key players--Peter Parker/Spider-Man, Mary Jane, and Norm Osborne/Green Goblin--and the extra fig, the scientist, actually has kind of a nice generically useful torso. There were also some nice little add on pieces, like the 2x2 tile with a DNA pattern and another 2x2 tile with a computer screen. The turntable action to transform Norman into the Goblin was a nice play feature. The only annoyance here for me was that they had tricked me into buying the much less useful Spider-Man action studio the previous year, when if I had waited for this set I would have had my Spidey fig and so much more. There was a STAMP (sticker across multiple pieces), but it was just over some basic bricks, so no great loss there. Oh, I forgot to note, they updated the Green Goblin mask from the previous year's iteration, making it look much nicer:

2002: 2003:

Buy it at BrickLink. See the inventory on Peeron and the instructions on Lego.com.