Saturday 22 October 2011

Toyologist Review: Batcave

Boots are big at the moment. Wellingtons, UGGs, Waders, and Reboots.

No, not the fantastic 90s animated series, but taking a franchise and starting it over fresh.

Bond's had a go. Star Trek sort of did it...while also not (it's technically still in continuity with the previous things). Spider-Man. Planet of the Apes. Superman...

It all began (more or less) with Batman Begins, which (almost) made up for the travesty that was Batman & Robin.

shudder

And last month the entire DC Comics universe has rebooted.

(Batman is part of the DC universe, for you poor non-comic fans out there).

While I read a lot of comics ('how much did you spent on comics this week, Mr Johnson?!' 'Um, not too much, Mrs Johnson. Quick, must hide the receipt...'), I don't read a lot of DC ones. Obviously I've read all of Sandman and (most of) Preacher, but they're probably not a great basis for a child's toyline (but then there was an Aliens line). Alan Moore's Swamp Thing run was a favourite, but that's the closest I've gotten to mainstream DC Universe.

The idea of rebooting is to refresh something old and bring in a new audience(/readers). DC's reboot has kinda worked, as I'm now buying Swamp Thing and Animal Man.

And so we come, via a semi-relevant route, to the rebooted Batcave.

 

Okay, so it's not a 'reboot' in the technical sense, it's simply a new version of the Imaginex Batcave.


When my 4yo was a 1yo he used to love watching Batman: The Animated Series. He's gone off it a bit in his later years (though he still likes to have a little Wii with Batman Lego every now and again), but now 2yo runs about the house wearing his red (yes, I know) hoody as a cape & cowl and pretending to be the Dark Knight.

So they were pretty darn excited when they saw they had this giant Batcave to play with.


It's great that the Batcave comes with Batman and Robin. Too often playsets only come with a single figure, or even none at all. The Batcycle is a great addition too - by far 2yo's favourite bit.


He has a complaint though - neither Batman nor Robin can sit on the bike and hold the handlebars. He really, really hates it when figures can't hold the handles on vehicles.


There are a load of action features in the set, so many it was hard to show them all in the video. Most are activated by the large red knobs. The idea is to stand your figure on the knob and then turn the figure to activate. I found this a little tricky to do - I actually found it much easier to ignore the 'figure' bit and just turn the red knob by hand.

Wondering if this was just because I'm a Big Person, I asked 4yo if he thought it was easier to just turn the knob by hand.
"Yes it is, but you can do it with Batman as well."
The door in the centre (above the light-up bat-logo) doesn't open very well. You have to turn the knob with quite a lot of force to get it to open, which then prematurely fires the missile. It's a bit annoying, to say the least. Mostly we now leave it permanently open.


Overall this is a great toy. You get a lot of plastic for your money and loads of playability. It's a big thumbs up from us!


Other Toyology reviews can by found in the Toys R Us Toy Box on Facebook.

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