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Under the tree this morning was a mysterious gift with my name on it from my two little girls. It was HEAVY... in a box size that said "!/18 diecast". Well they had help from my good friend, obviously, with this gift. Opening the package revealed the HW Batmobile from the Michael Keaton movie. Man... this should be neat. That weight must signify some significant content and neato working features.
Well, there's virtually NOTHING to this diecast for all you Batfreaks. Finished in semigloss "Batfuzz", which looks like a heavy coat of sandable primer sealed with Future Floor Finish,the car has all the realism of my beloved Batmobile touchtone phone. There's not much to break up the blackness here so what there is better be right. The front end has two yellow lenses. Well, on this diecast they're ORANGE. To make matters worse, there's two large locator pins in each lens that are painfully evident and, worse, the pins are asymetrical left and right. The 4 tailights also suffer from black hole locator pins that are 1/2 the diameter of the lenses themselves. I assume this diecast was designed to be assembled by Braille. Two other major external features were virtually passed over. The huge roof intake is blocked out and the rear quarter porthole windows are only round detents in the metal.
Operational features? You'd wish there weren't any. The canopy slides forward on an overscaled slot in the hood to reveal an interior that totally underwhelms. Most everything is molded in with some differences in textures. The steering wheel center is painted a flat aluminum. The panel board on the vertical aspect of the console is a blackened chrome piece. The bulkhead board is molded in and almost invisible. OK... the nifty wraparound dash? It's two dimensional peel-and-stick!!! My girls' Barbie cars are more detailed! The only other feature is the two fender panels that rotate to reveal a preposterous pair of Browning M2 .50 calibre aircraft machine guns that are molded with solid barrels, aligned so that if fired, they'd rip through the front fenders. Bolt operated, it's hard to figure out how these things could be remotely operated. They're belt fed and I don't think anyone thought about where exactly the magazines would be when the guns are fixed to the underside of the exterior panel.
Well, that's it folks. All that weight? I think there's probably lead weights inside. For all the fidelity here, I'd have rather seen this done with a Fifties friction motor and spark generator to spray out the afterburner nozzle. At least I could relive my childhood. After all.... it's Christmas.
OK... my fondest and most desperate wish? I PRAY HW does not land the coveted license for the Barris Batmobile. If this version is any indication of what HotWheels would do with the Barris version... just shoot me now. As for those of you who were looking for a definitive model of this movie version, go find the old AMT plastic kit. It's infinitely better.... or, Hell, I'll even let you borrow my phone. One Star... a real disappointment
(12/27/2003)
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