Welcome to the world of JADA’s Nano Hollywood Rides – an interesting intersection between their love of those little Nano Metalfigs and their production of model cars! There’s a whole line of these things from different IPs, such as Back to the Future, Fast and Furious, and Transformers, but today we’re looking at this particular pack paying homage to Batman Returns, easily the most vile, depraved, and disgusting rendition of the Batman Universe to reach the mainstream.
We get 3 pieces from the movie, I’m guessing at or about 1:128 scale. The most iconic of them is the colloquially named “1989 Batmobile” carried over from the previous film. It’s tiny, but the details are immaculate, from the gun housings on the hood right down to all that mechanical stuff and intake port on the sides and the textured fins. Surprisingly it even has a few colors to speak of – obviously the main event here is black, but it’s got orange front lights, red tail lights, and small silver accents. The wheels all work and they work well, which is something you can’t always say as models decrease in size. It really is a nice micro-replica, especially considering the price. I know it’s hard to tell just how small it is in these pictures without anything to compare it to, but sit tight; I’ma try to bang out a short piece before too damn long where I just throw a whole buncha ’89 Batmobiles on the ol’ poster board just to compare some sizes.
If there’s one thing about Batman Returns that you remember apart from the absolute grotesquerie that was The Penguin, it’s probably that big, yellow, happy-looking rubber ducky, dubbed “The Penguin Duck” for lack of better term. This is like Penguin’s version of the Batmobile, for whatever reason. I can only surmise that it existed as some part of the defunct zoo where Penguin and his crew were holed up. The tiny replica looks great! My only complaint is that the middle “wheel” is static…I dunno, maybe 3 axels that small and that close would cause problems.
The last one is a bit odd, but I guess it makes sense. The card simply calls it “The Penguin Ride” but I like what’s written on the underside of the piece itself: “The Penguin Bat O’Ride”! In the event that your memory eludes you – or, if like me, you were escorted from the theater in a barely contained bundle of nerves and tears by your mother and never looked back – this Bat O’Ride stems from a contraption made my the Penguin whereby he gained remote access to the Batmobile. So while Batman’s workin’ the beat, Penguin hijacks the Batmobile via this little coin-op version of the Batmobile like you would’ve seen outside of grocery stores. The idea here is to make Batman look like the bad guy while Penguin gains acceptance among the people of Gotham.
Yeah it’s weird…but it’s also kinda cool that JADA picked such a strange thing. The blue base is obvious, as is the viewer that Penguin used to witness his joyride of carnage.
Aren’t tiny things cute??? They immediately reminded me of this set of old Ertl toys I had from the first movie which included 1:128 versions of the Batmobile, Batwing, and a Joker van…kinda makes me want to go out and order it… Anyway, that’s about it. Yes they’re small, but they’re done very well, so if you’ve always wanted a tiny ass Batmobile, well, you could do a lot worse.
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