Decool Super Heroes / Batman Tumbler Chinese Knock-Off Lego

Decool Super Heroes / Batman Tumbler Chinese Knock-Off Lego

Last Christmas, I was looking at this kit at the Lego store. I almost bought it, but decided to get the Lego Technic 24 Hours Race Car instead. The lady at the store mentioned that Lego increased production of the Batman Tumbler because douchebags bought a bunch of them hoping that they could resell them at higher prices. The kit lacked availability when it first came out and many discontinued Lego kits double or triple in price. Well less than a year later, I found out that Lego discontinued this product. These kits are now only available on EBay from those very douchebags, who are selling them for about $75 to $100 more than what they paid. In reality, not too bad (probably because the market is flooded with these kits), but this still pisses me off and I won't buy from these people.

Therefore Decool to the rescue. Decool is much like Lepin. See here: http://www.superbestaudiofriends.or...rs-lego-chinese-knock-off-seafoam-green.3100/ In fact, the bricks are exactly the same as the Lepin kits. If I could have found the authentic Lego set at its original retail price, I definitely would have picked that up instead. The Decool / Lepin bricks aren't quite as nice as the real Lego bricks. The tolerances aren't as exact, leading to less consistency in size of the gaps between the bricks. Some parts can slightly bind, especially when bricks are laid end to end for longer length structures (as in this kit), and result in some bowing. This problem can be worked around if you have some extra plates to provide better reinforcement for longer structures. Finally, the bricks are a tiny bit softer and snap less authoritatively together. In other words, I would have preferred to put this thing together with the real Lego parts, but I didn't want to support the douchebags that hoarded these kits hoping to make a profit on them on Ebay. My son says putting these pieces together does hurt a bit more; but all-in-all, the block quality is actually pretty good. Far better than anything from iBasso, Yulong, or other overpriced Chi-Fi gear in the audio world.

As usual, the contents arrived in plain box with all the parts instead. The nice really thing about this knock off kit is that the bags were actually numbered per the instructions. So unlike the Green Grocer kit, my kids and I did not need to sort every part, which would have been a massive pain in the ass. The only twist that that bag number #1 consisted of five different bags all marked with some long string of numeric codes. The rest of the bags, #2 and up were labeled clearly, so it was obvious what the five bags which represented bag #1 were. Finally, there was only one missing piece on this kit: a small 1x2 black plate. In contrast, the Lepin Green Grocer kit was missing quite a few pieces. Missing pieces is something to consider before buying these kits. I actually have fairly large sorted collection of spare Lego parts of different colors, so this doesn't worry me. But this may not be true for most other Lego builders.

 

This is the base of the vehicle.



Here's the cockpit. Batman is a geek, that's why there are all these displays and stuff inside.

It seemed like most of the difficult work involved putting the base of the vehicle together, which includes the rear axle.

 

Some structures are added to the base: the engine compartment and rear quarter windows.



Front windows added. The wipers are a nice touch.


Support for roof.

 

Here, the front suspension and front and rear wheels are added. It's not a Technic kit, so the wheels are not sprung with suspension links and springs. The Batmobile does roll forward and backward quite well though.


Armour plating added to the sides.

 

One of the minor niggles I forgot to mention. There are some gaps in the inside inner lip of the rubber tires, so the fit isn't quite as uniform all the way around per the authentic Lego parts.


Now for a break. Thank you @CEE TEE!

 

The rest of the the kit is extra "random" armour plating all over the car.



The top pieces of the roof come off so we can see inside.


The one thing I don't like about the kit is that all of the extraneous armoured plates are attached in flimsy way, making it difficult for the Tumbler to be a "play" vehicle. But at the end of it all, I find the kit to be quite faithful to the Tumbler in the Batman movie.

 

It's a pretty awesome kit. Resembles the tumbler very closely. I would buy it, but my son has way to many legos now. In hind sight, I proly would have done better buying this one than some of the other ones I got him in the past.

 

The Lego Speed Champion kits are fun quick builds. Also the orange redneck truck with speedboat one is fun. My son and I play with the boat in the bathtub. It floats. I'll post that build tonight if I get a chance.