display set

71426 Piranha Plant: Hands-On Review

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The Piranha Plant first appeared in Super Mario Brothers, back in 1985 and has been a stalwart enemy of the franchise since that time. We have seen several of these gigantic carnivorous plants crop up in the LEGO Super Mario sets, but they have been a relatively small scale models, designed to be used in the Gamer Mode for LEGO Super Mario. This 540piece sculpture looks like it might promise to bring a little more joy to a bookshelf than previously encountered Piranha Plants. I was delighted when the LEGO Group sent a copy of this set over: it feels that while we have had an onslaught of LEGO sets aimed at adults in recent years, there has been a relative paucity of sets that might come at less than $100 AUD, not releated to flowers, Star Wars or Super Heroes while still leaving enough room on your shelves for other things. This set does both with a RRP of AUD94.99 (59.99USD). This is just shy of the $99.99AUD shelf price of your standard botanical Collection set

So, is this set worthy of your time, real estate and hard earned funds? Lets take a closer look…

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Keaton’s Batman Returns with the Batcave Shadowbox

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It was 1992, and the long awaited sequel to Time Butron’s Batman was released: Batman Returns took a left turn on the tone set by the first film, and felt like Tim Burton was well and truly establishing the franchise as his own. While 1989’s Batman was a single villain romp, retaining a bit of campiness thanks to Jack Nicholson’s portrayal as the Joker, this film felt more serious, introducing Catwoman, the Penguin and the self-serving Max Shreck. With a more wintry setting, it was a darker film to watch, without the same bursts of colour that we saw from the Joker in the earlier film. We have seen a couple of releases related to Batman – the 89 Batmobile and the ’89 Batwing, along with a smaller version of the Batmobile, but we have not ventured further in to franchise yet.

Today, we see a unique display model with play features unveiled: the Batcave Shadow Box. With 3981 pieces, and priced at $USD399.99 /£344.99/€ 399.99/ 599.99 AUD/8999.9 TRY/3699.0 CNY/169990.0 HUF/519.99 CAD, this set pushes the boundaries of what has been previously attempted with LEGO Batman, and brings us a new format for displaying such models.

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