LEGO Batman 76271 Batman: The Animated Series Gotham City review

76271 Batman: The Animated Series Gotham City is the latest supermassive DC Super Heroes set indicative of how it really is feast or famine for LEGO Batman fans.

Straight out of the iconic world of 1990s animated classic Batman: The Animated Series, LEGO Batman 76271 Batman: The Animated Series Gotham City is a massive LEGO Art-inspired collage that offers LEGO Batman fans yet another wholly unique and oversized brick-based concept to explore.

As unexpected as it is different, this is the latest huge LEGO Batman set specifically released for Bruce Wayne, because all that scope and scale that is explored here comes at yet another hefty price tag. Big Bat-LEGO sets require big Bat-bucks.

— LEGO Batman 76271 Batman: The Animated Series Gotham City set details —

Theme: LEGO Batman Set name: 76271 Batman: The Animated Series Gotham City Release: April 1, 2024

Price: £259.99 / $299.99 / €299.99 Pieces: 4,210 Minifigures: 4

LEGO: Order now

— Where to buy LEGO Batman 76271 Batman: The Animated Series Gotham City —

LEGO Batman 76271 Batman: The Animated Series Gotham City releases on April 1 at LEGO.com and in LEGO Stores.

— LEGO Batman 76271 Batman: The Animated Series Gotham City build —

Following on from the likes of still-available duo 76252 Batcave – Shadow Box (£344.99) and 76240 Batmobile Tumbler (£229.99), and before them 76161 1989 Batwing (£174.99) and 76139 1989 Batmobile (£219.99), 76271 Batman: The Animated Series Gotham City is the latest example of LEGO Batman fully embracing the potential and the madness of an unlimited piece count and uncapped budget.

This time on offer is a 4,210-piece dive into Gotham City as imagined in early 1990s show Batman: The Animated Series, and all the LEGO Group is asking for in return is £259.99 / $299.99 / €299.99. LEGO Batman fans don’t have it tough, per se, but the choices of recent years are very much either feast or famine, with every feast like this costing more than a pretty penny. 76271 Batman: The Animated Series Gotham City is the latest plentiful serving and, as we say, it fully leans into all the potential and madness that such an opportunity represents.

We talk about potential because LEGO Batman 76271 Batman: The Animated Series Gotham City is yet another deep dive into a specific area of Bat-lore, taking inspiration from the city of Gotham as it appears in Batman: The Animated Series and offering up a microscale build packed with towering art deco skyscrapers and buildings surrounded by Gotham City’s dark, shadowy atmosphere, every building and alleyway filled with detail and all sorts of criminal activity that Batman, Commissioner Gordon and the Gotham PD aim to fight every night.

Without needing to read on, you can all see how beautiful and engrossing this LEGO interpretation of such an iconic skyline is and, for any fan of Batman: The Animated Series, just how effectively such a concept translates into brick form. The use of colour (purposefully limited as a design rule by the LEGO Batman team here) is brilliant and fully evocative of the opening titles to BTAS, whilst the moody art deco aesthetic (coined ‘dark deco’ by the television show’s producers) is expertly captured across any number of landmarks within the city that have featured in the cartoon. It’s an architectural style that embraces strong angles, distinctive shapes and smooth textures, perfectly serves the dramatic nature of Gotham City and its repertoire of characters and helps make Batman: The Animated Series as iconic as it is memorable.

And it is an art form perfect for translation into LEGO and perfectly translated in the form of 76271 Batman: The Animated Series Gotham City, thanks not only to that supermassive piece count, but also to a very considered design that keeps you interested across the very many numbered bags – all those buildings merge so nicely and effectively into an epic and busy skyline, but each is different in how it comes together, through technique, colour and perspective. Clearly from initial idea, through design and build and into the finished model, this is LEGO Batman as a theme embracing its full potential and the result is everything you could want from such a concept.

And alongside that word potential we also speak of the madness of 76271 Batman: The Animated Series Gotham City, because how else would 2024’s version of the LEGO Group take the opportunity of fully recreating this distinctive landscape than in all its glory across a 44-bag build involving a massive 4,210 pieces and priced at £259.99 / $299.99 / €299.99?

Much like the divisive-but-brilliant 76252 Batcave – Shadow Box that offered a fresh concept that wasn’t to everyone’s tastes, and 76240 Batmobile Tumbler that represented a practical 1-for-1 remake of a previous set, 76271 Batman: The Animated Series Gotham City is the latest example of how for a theme that should be limited in creativity to three things – Batman, the Batcave and the Batmobile – there is actually so much variety and depth to explore across the ever-increasing number of versions of this character, his story and its setting.

This is also the latest example of how for every different and genuinely interesting idea that the LEGO Batman team have like this, they always choose to fully launch themselves into it, whether or not you asked for a big-budget version of this concept or that one. It’s great, but it’s also an increasingly mad approach from the theme, because for everything you could want from such a concept, it’ll ask for a hefty amount of money in return, yet again.

76271 Batman: The Animated Series Gotham City isn’t a snippet of source material, but rather the entirety of an idea – there’s a full city captured across a 128×48-stud canvas, absolutely packed with details. It’s so big and immersive that by the time you have finished putting it together there’s no way you’ll remember all the details you built into the set, nor – for instance – where all those stickered 2×2 tiles with tiny stencils of each character on them are hidden. Good luck finding them all again without inadvertently ripping an entire skyscraper off in error.

And even though it’s so sizeable as a build, it holds your attention so as not to feel repetitive or laborious to put together, just as it does when complete too. It’s smartly designed so as to offer genuine variety and depth to each segment of the skyline that you build, and it is filled with story-based details to pull you right back into various episodes of the show we’ve all watched a good few times by now. Clearly, as you can see, the finished build is really quite awesome to take in, from the clever use of colour throughout, to the artistic nature of that art deco style, and overall just the sheer amount that is going on visually. This thing can be wall-mounted too, for those of you who can find a way to convince your non-LEGO-loving loved ones that it can indeed be permanently fixed on display in the living room.

Ultimately, 76271 Batman: The Animated Series Gotham City is a brilliantly realised concept, even if it is not something that LEGO Batman as a theme needs most right now to reassure its fans of its longevity. It’s an example of untold potential channelled in perhaps the wrong direction, and it only contributes to this weird feast-or-famine journey that the theme is going through. It’s not sustainable to lurch from 4+ £20 sets that nobody old enough to read this appreciates to £250-300 behemoths that take months to save up for and contribute to a collection of ludicrously-sized – albeit wonderful – toys.

Where the LEGO Group is being smart in looking back across Batman’s history to continually find brilliant inspiration whilst Warner Bros. sort themselves out, it would be just as wise to look back at its own history to see where LEGO Batman has excelled most. Rediscover that balance between brilliance and value and re-energise the fanbase without asking them every time to have to drain their bank balance in the process.

— LEGO Batman 76271 Batman: The Animated Series Gotham City characters —

It feels like a bonus that LEGO Batman 76271 Batman: The Animated Series Gotham City comes with four minifigures, which is just as well given how disappointing the main man himself is here. Batman just doesn’t look right in that over-juniorised cowl that is nothing like the version we see in Batman: The Animated Series. That and the oversized printing of the pants on the minifigure’s legs put the entire character’s proportions out of balance in a way that renders this Batman incomparable to the on-screen version on which it is meant to be based.

This cowl design has been a disaster since its introduction because it has now ruined the titular character in both this set and 76252 Batcave – Shadow Box. If you are paying so much for a set with Batman, he needs to not look like this.

That being said, the designs for Catwoman, Harley Quinn and Joker are all brand new, exclusive and very much take clear and clever inspiration from how they appeared in the cartoon. This trio of characters showcase excellent LEGO minifigure design, are fine additions to the collection and add real value and relevance to the wider set, as any good line-up of collectible characters in a LEGO display set should do. They also serve as excellent examples for why Batman: The Animated Series’ character designs translate so nicely into LEGO form.

— LEGO Batman 76271 Batman: The Animated Series Gotham City price —

LEGO Batman 76271 Batman: The Animated Series Gotham City is a little pricey at £259.99 / $299.99 / €299.99. For how heavily it ventures into this build concept and explores Batman: The Animated Series from such a unique perspective, it’s not going to be for everyone, and for those it does appeal to it comes at a price that isn’t wholly welcome and does – even for how good this is – have you wondering what a smaller snippet of the skyline could have come in at, perhaps even something twice the size of the regular Architecture Skyline sets of recent years.

There is increasing sensitivity around the price of LEGO Batman sets – or at least there should be – because this is a theme that seems to offer its fans either one or two 4+ and juniorised little builds per year, one single mid-range set, or one high-end, high-price set, and nothing else. A theme that offers such creativity and depth in single, supermassive LEGO sets seems to struggle to offer fair choice across a range of prices, and it means these higher-priced sets hurt more and more each time.

76271 Batman: The Animated Series Gotham City will deliver something new and unique for LEGO Batman fans, and will have fans of Batman: The Animated Series fully re-immersed in the classic cartoon. Yet its experience falls within a wider context for the theme and where we are in 2024 in that it follows directly on from several other pretty expensive sets.

— LEGO Batman 76271 Batman: The Animated Series Gotham City pictures —

— LEGO Batman 76271 Batman: The Animated Series Gotham City pros and cons —

When reviewed independently of the theme it belongs to, LEGO Batman 76271 Batman: The Animated Series Gotham City is an evocative, nostalgic and clever deep dive into an iconic version of Gotham City, the likes of which LEGO Batman fans will not have experienced before. It’s an interesting and relatively unusual LEGO interpretation to take the direction of this source material in, but it works way better than you may expect. This isn’t a boring or repetitive build, but one that genuinely and cleverly celebrates a classic version of the Dark Knight’s home city in a way you didn’t know you would enjoy this much. It’s a set that also looks even better in person than any photos or box art can show you.

However, when considered within the context of LEGO Batman as a theme right now, the price stings, as does the decision to go this big yet again. This is clearly a theme with particular limits at the moment thanks in no small part to Warner Bros., but switching between a handful of tiny sets designed for four-year-olds and awesome behemoths that cost a small fortune should not be the entire experience of any LEGO theme, let alone one with decades of lore and story to draw from, because it detracts from both ends of the spectrum and increasingly threatens to devalue the impact and impressiveness of sets like 76271 Batman: The Animated Series Gotham City.

76271 Batman: The Animated Series Gotham City is a lovely and unexpected interpretation of a version of the Batman story that will speak to a lot of fans. Just, we’re not all Bruce Wayne, so it’ll require a bit of saving up for. And with not much else to go on, we don’t have much of a choice but to start saving…

As Matthew expertly sums up in his video on the set, LEGO Batman 76271 Batman: The Animated Series Gotham City is the set LEGO Batman fans deserve, but is it the set that the LEGO DC theme needs right now?

76271 Batman: The Animated Series Gotham City pros	76271 Batman: The Animated Series Gotham City cons
Immersive, interactive display piece	Three great minifigures, one terrible Batman
Beautiful use of colour	Quite pricey
Way more interesting to build than you think	Doesn’t help the theme’s wider issues

This set was provided for review by the LEGO Group.

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— Alternatives to LEGO Batman 76271 Batman: The Animated Series Gotham City —

LEGO Batman 76271 Batman: The Animated Series Gotham City is a one-off exploration into a particular interpretation of the Batman story, much like last year’s 76252 Batcave – Shadow Box. Both will divide Bat-fans for how specific and deep they are, as well as how they’ve been adapted into LEGO form, but the willingness to take such creative risks is one thing that this theme does still impress with.

— LEGO Batman 76271 Batman: The Animated Series Gotham City FAQs —