Review of 76161 LEGO DC 1989 Batwing
“Cool and heavy ,but NOT a steering wheel”
First of all, a big thank you to LEGO for sending us this awesome set for review. In 1989, a movie was released with simple yet powerful title, BATMAN. Starring Jack Nicholson as The Joker and Michael Keaton as The Batman in his iconic rubbery suit. This will be the second 18+ LEGO set from Tim Burton’s classic movie with the first set being the 1989 Batmobile.
This Batwing is the one Batman used to remove the balloons with “Smylex” gas in the movie. However, it crashed soon after being shot down by the Joker in the movie. But the design of the aircraft has survived for decades in our hearts, especially the iconic scene with the moon as the background. Let’s see what’s inside this set.
The box art is black showing the top view of the Batwing. The box is matte instead of the usually glossy finish and it shows the piece count of 2353 pcs at the bottom left corner of the box.
The back of the box shows us the top left view of the set. The main surprise is that for the first time after the mosaic sets, a display set is officially meant to be hanged on the wall as shown on the bottom left picture. It is 50cm wide from the head to the tail and 23cm tall when its placed on its stand. We only have one picture of the minifigures (which are great!)
The side features the illustration/silhouette of Micheal Keaton’s Batman.
Top side shows us the Batwing and the 1:1 picture of the new half cone part 6314907.
Stickers sheet. Again, if the plaque was printed, it will add so much more exclusiveness to the set. But we get stickers instead. Its okay. The awesomeness of the set will make this rant irrelevant. Haha..
Let’s start building. Bag one : we build the skeleton of the set, connecting lots of rectangular Technic bricks with open center and we have the Batman minifigure with us in the first bag too.
Bag 2 : we seal off the back with LEGO System plates. Here you can see that it’s a flat base, probably designed as flat as possible to allow it to be easily mounted on the wall.
Bag 3 : At the first few steps of bag 3 we actually add bricks inside the open centres of the aforesaid technic bricks (see the yellow elements on left side of the Batwing in this picture) to add to the sturdiness and weight of the build. Then the colourfulness of the insides are sealed off with black plates as seen on the right side of the batwing in this picture. We know Batman always works with black and very dark grey right?
In all seriousness, LEGO always fills up the innards or areas which will not be seen after completion with seemingly not matching colours for a variety of reasons which include adding contrast, making use of slow moving inventory and also, just for fun 🙂
Bag 4 adds some curves at the inner centre at both sides of the build. Notice that I needed to hold it up using use the wall mount piece to hold the build for picture taking as it is gaining weight.
Is this an easter egg from the movie?. Proof that Bruce Wayne has a heart? (We get two pink heart shaped plates in the set). This nice plate is then covered up totally in the build not to be seen later on.. Part number 6254513 Plate, Round 3 x 3 Heart.
Bag 5&6 are where the magic happens in our opinion, with the brilliant build of the curve of the Batwing. LEGO is always associated with being blocky but with the use of 6053077 Slope, Curved 2×2 and 6102774 Hinge Plate 1 x 4 Swivel Base with Same Color Hinge Plate 1 x 4 Swivel Top, we can see the nice half round wings of the build at both side of the Batwing. If you zoom into this picture, you will notice the area near my arm is not yet closed. I did this just to show you the only printed piece in this set. A yellow round tile with batman logo on it. There are two in the set and they too will be covered up when the side is closed up as you can see in the next picture.
Bag 7 welcomes the second minifigure of the set Lawrence the Boombox Goon. The build of this bag finishes off the iconic shape of the wings with plates and tiles.
Bag 8 adds some accessories and wings at the back of the aircraft. Flatness is still very much a key to the design here as it needs to be able to be mounted on the wall.
Bag 9 builds the head and the tail of the bat and part of the cockpit.
6151937 Tile, Round 2 x 2 with Bottom Stud Holder with Black Bat Batman Logo Pattern. It has been around since 2016 and not exclusive to the set. But why hide such a nice part inside?
6272184 Tile, Modified 1 x 3 Inverted with Hole (first introduced to resolve the problematic loose Unikitty head) and 6290456 Minifigure, Utensil Candle, These are quite interesting parts in the set especially the candle is used as the gear handle is the cockpit.
6302094 Technic, Pin Connector Block, Liftarm 1 x 3 x 5 with Cutout. The interesting part of this set as this is our first time encountering it. This is the part that makes the wall mounting possible. Apart from the LEGO Art Mosaic sets released a few months ago, this is the only other set that carries it although we see it possibly being used quite a lot in the coming years.
Bat engine. This is one of the useful ‘play feature’ in the set. It is located behind the seat of the pilot.
Opened up we got two red crowbars stored inside. These are not tools for the minifigures but for us humans, to be used when you want to mount the Batwing on the wall.
Here is how you do it, Going back to the seat in the cockpit, place the edge of the crowbar underneath the 2×4 tile to flick the seat up.
This will reveal the special wallarm liftarm part, you can simply aim the cutout to the nail on your wall to hang the finished build on the wall as a wall decoration before flipping the seat back in place. Be careful to mount it on a weight bearing wall, as the weight of nearly 2k pieces of LEGO is quite heavy to lift!
The windshield of the cockpit is actually not fixed tightly via many studs to antistuds and is more of a “interference fit”. It can be easily removed to check on the details inside. This also means that if you forget about this, it might fall off and scatter on the floor which happened to me several times while moving it from place to place for photographs. Haha.
Simply and awesome design and look.
View of the cockpit. These stickers are very well placed despite the difficulties in applying those on 1×1 tiles. I love the sticker showing Batman targetting directly at The Joker on the Heads Up Display.
As I mentioned earlier, the set is not actually minifig scaled. Let alone the stiff caped Batman in this set, it is impossible to sit him in, which is why I used the Batman from another set for this picture.
I love this Easter egg here in the side panel showing the balloon parade on the screen!
Design of the Gatling guns at both sides of the Batwing is spot on here, using lots of curved parts in the build.
241226 Tile, Modified 1 x 2 Grille with Bottom Groove / Lip. Imagine building 86 pieces of these! However, the result is worth the pain. Haha..
The tail is built with staggered plates. This makes it looks so cool up close!
Bag 13 greets us with the Mime Joker with the Minifigure stand and the stand for the set with the plaque on it.
The weight of the Batwing stressed on the tile and made it loose if you put the batwing on the stand for too long.
Now let’s go to the minifigures. The stiff rubbery batman cape looks scary on its own like this..
The Batman with the cape on. This is exactly the same Minifigure from the 76139 : 1989 Batmobile set. I love the rubbery cape but it takes up a lot of space if you are to place it with together with other minifigures.
Underneath the cape, Batman comes with two facial expressions. The back torso print is good with the back muscle lines. This Minifigure can only be used with the rubbery cape as the front torso print comes without the batman logo.
Lawrence the Boombox Goon. This guy only appeared about 3 times in the movie as the music man of Joker as he always carries a large radio when he appears. This Minifigure is exclusive to the set and it has side arm prints of Joker cards on his right arm. On his torso, the dice prints near his neck is lovely, as is the green haired Joker above his left pocket. The boombox is a very great part for him as it is the reason he’s known as the Boombox Goon.
The Mime Joker! He is very famous with his purple jacket and green hair but this black and white mime Joker is very rarely known as he only appears in the 1989 Batman movie. The Minifigure is very movie accurate holding a white feather which he used to assassinate Vinnie Ricorso in front of the City Hall. The torso is nicely printed with a white flower on his chest and the legs are printed as well!
The gargoyle builds on the display stand is exactly the same ones as in the 1989 Batmobile set. The build is very simple yet effective. I really love the minifigures here and now I need to get the Batmobile as well to complete the collection.
The final build. It really looks cool even its not mounted on the wall. It has to be placed on the stand this way for better view of the details on the Batwing. If you put it in the flight mode (opposite way), all you can see is the bottom of the Batwing.
Summary
I give this set a 4.9/5.0 score as the design and overall idea of mounting it on the wall makes it a near perfect set for a Batman fan to display it without taking up too much space (Comment down below if you face this space problem!). The sturdiness and the weight of the set makes me want to hold it like a steering wheel whenever I see it. The minifigures are perfect for the set. The only thing is now we will have an extra identical Batman if you put both 1989 Batmobile and 1989 Batwing sets together. Batman fans, this is a set not to be missed. Look at the wall, you need this. Haha.
Hope you enjoyed my review. Thank you!
The set used for the review was sent to us by The LEGO Group for the purpose of a review. Provision of sets do not in any way influence or guarantee a positive review.
