LEGO Super Hero Legends Magazine Issue 14: The Thanos Pack That Was Never Really Exclusive

The foil pack is stapled to the board at the top right of the cover, and you can feel the shape of him through it before you tear anything. A torso, two arms, a head, a helmet-less purple face, and something long and thin that turns out to be a weapon. Anyone who bought this issue off a UK rack in late 2022 had the same thirty seconds: peel the pack, tip the contents into a palm, and realise the covermount is the villain the whole Infinity Saga was built around. That is the small pleasure at the centre of LEGO Super Hero Legends magazine issue 14, and it is why the number still comes up when collectors talk about back issues worth hunting.

What Came With the Paper

The magazine around the pack is exactly what Immediate Media has run under this banner for years, pitched at readers around six and up. Issue 14 carried an original Avengers comic strip, character profiles, and the usual run of puzzles, mazes and spot-the-difference spreads. The standout non-plastic item was a double-sided pull-out poster — Captain Marvel on one face, the assembled Avengers team on the other — which is a better piece of artwork than these posters usually get.

The back page matters as much as any of it. The next-issue preview is where upcoming covermounts get revealed weeks ahead of any retailer listing, and it is the single habit that separates collectors who plan their purchases from collectors who find out too late.

The Mad Titan, Element by Element

The Thanos minifigure in this pack — catalogued by the LEGO Group as set 242215 — is a full-size figure rather than a mini-build, and the printing does the heavy lifting. The torso and face are detailed enough that the character reads instantly; the legs are left unprinted, which is the standard covermount compromise and slightly less noticeable on a character whose lower half is fairly plain anyway.

He arrives armed. The double-ended sword is his signature weapon from the films, and the pack also includes a small-scale Infinity Gauntlet element rather than leaving him empty-handed. For a foil pack, that is a generous accessory count, and it is the reason this figure displays properly straight out of the bag instead of needing parts borrowed from elsewhere.

The Rarity Question People Get Backwards

Here is the honest part, and it is the bit most write-ups skip. This Thanos is not a magazine-only variant. Unlike many covermounts under this banner — which are deliberately simplified or altered versions of retail figures — a comparable Thanos has appeared in LEGO Marvel retail sets, so the figure itself is obtainable through other routes. Anyone buying this issue purely to lock down an unobtainable minifigure is buying on a premise that does not hold.

What is scarce is the issue. UK newsstand print runs are short and final: no reprints, no restocks, and no digital edition that includes the pack. Nearly four years on, sealed copies of issue 14 have largely left circulation — UK specialist retailers that once stocked it now list it as out of stock — and the copies that survive are mostly the ones adults set aside rather than the ones opened in a car park. So the collectable here is the sealed covermount and the magazine as an artefact of the run, not the plastic in isolation. Buy it for the former and it makes sense; buy it for the latter and you have overpaid for a figure you could have sourced loose.

Checks Worth Making Before You Commit

Three habits cover almost all the risk on a back issue this age. First, judge the listing by the pack, not the cover — ask the seller for a photograph of the foil pack still attached to the board, since a detached pack is a materially different item. Second, check the corners and spine; four-year-old newsstand stock gets handled hard, and creasing is the most common condition problem. Third, if the seller is offering a loose figure rather than the magazine, confirm the sword and the gauntlet element are both present, because small accessories are the first thing to vanish once a pack is opened.

One more, for anyone building a run: note that the Avengers and Spider-Man sides of this banner carry separate numbering sequences that alternate on the shelf. Issue 14 on the Avengers side has nothing to do with issue 14 on the Spider-Man side, and cross-referencing the two is how most gap-filling mistakes happen.

Filling the Gap in Your Run

Everything published under this banner is a UK exclusive newsstand title, which leaves collectors elsewhere with two workable routes: an importer, or a standing subscription that ships each edition as it appears. Our Super Hero Legends magazine guide untangles the parallel Avengers and Spider-Man numbering properly, current stock and back issues sit in the LEGO magazines collection, and the wider LEGO Marvel range is the natural place to keep building the shelf.

LEGO Super Hero Legends magazine issue 14 is a back issue that rewards clear thinking: a strong villain, a well-equipped foil pack, and a genuinely thin supply of sealed copies — but no exclusivity claim to lean on. Know which of those you are actually buying, and it is one of the more satisfying numbers to slot into the Avengers run.