lego: the lego batman movie - killer croc tail-gator

My farewell present from work was The Lego Batman Movie Killer Croc Tail-Gator set... not really surprising when I had Lego minifigures on my desk the whole time I was there... it was a very welcome surprise though. It's also not a set I necessarily would have (or had) bought for myself... but I do love it, and the fact that people knew me well enough to choose it for me makes it even more special.

I was always planning on putting together one of the Lego Batman Movie sets today, although I'd originally planned on the Joker's Lowrider... but it seemed more appropriate to put this one together to be honest.

It was a fun build, and I put on the 1989 Batman movie for some colour and sound while I was building, which was nice.

The set itself came in four bags... five if you include the extra bag that Killer Croc's body came in, along with a set of stickers and two instruction books.

As always, I would have preferred printed tiles to stickers, especially on several of the decorative tiles, but I get why they didn't go that way on some of the other pieces.

The first bag contained the rest of Killer Croc, Batman and his little jetski... so I started with Croc. I haven't had one of these maxifigs before, but I do really like the design of Croc... especially the head and neck... and those ridiculously long fingers.

Batman's jetski is a little... m'eh. I know that they have to include the hero in all of these sets and it's either a big hero vehicle and a little villain vehicle or the other way around (The Scuttler has a slightly ridiculous Poison Ivy... plant thing, for example).

I do like the colouring though, and the placement of the new little flick fire guns on the side is nice... but it doesn't actually stand flat on it's own. It has a tendency to fall to the side which is annoying, and I had to add a couple of the leftover round bricks to the bottom to keep it level in the photos.

The two other villain minifigures are Zebra Man and Tarantula (because of course they are)... and I will admit that I fell hopelessly in love with Zebra Man pretty much as I unwrapped the present. I couldn't even tell you why, he just seems very cool, and a minifigure I just want to tuck in my pocket and carry around.

Reading up on the two of them, it seems that Tarantula has a history with Nightwing (ie Dick Grayson, the original Robin), and he's become a favourite character of mine in recent years.

The second bag contains the base of the Tail-Gator truck as well as the two minifigures, and it's an interesting build... the two bricks at the back allow for parts of the truck to come off as part of an offensive/defensive mechanism, and there's a fair amount of Technic bricks used throughout.

The third bag is smaller than the other two, and just concentrates on the cab of the truck. Given that this is a beat up old truck, the colours purposefully don't match, with red being dominant, with a number of brown elements (possibly rust) and with a blue wheel arch and a white hood.

The larger pieces all have some kind of sticker denoting either decay or else damage from Croc's massive claws.

The final bag is fairly large and finishes off the model. I really like the massive tyres... having not really dealt with wheels all that much in my building, these are impressive, and are placed on the model "the wrong way around", which adds to the monster truck vibe.

The greeblies and decorations around the truck are really fun, from the skull hood ornament to the crates and the lights and signs. I also love that the idea is that this truck has been hastily modified so that Croc can drive it himself from the back... both the gear level (with the fantastic 8 ball knob) and the steering wheel are accessible from the back, even if it doesn't look like Croc's arms could really reach the steering wheel.

The truck also has some limited suspension care of both the Technic bricks and a set of yellow rubber bands. I always worry that those rubber bands will decay at some point, messing up the model (Emmet's Construct-o-Mech from The Lego Movie has them on one of the hands, but they're okay so far).

All in all, it was a fun build, and while I don't really know where the hell Killer Croc and his Tail-Gator are going to find a permanent home (there may have to be some reorganising and culling of other tchotchkes), it's a nice reminder of my former workplace.

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