LEGO Indiana Jones 77012 Fighter Plane Chase review

77012 Fighter Plane Chase ensures the return of LEGO Indiana Jones is entirely welcome, very fun and incredibly affordable.

Flying low at the £30 / £35 mark, 77012 Fighter Plane Chase feels like not only a nice nod to the original LEGO Indiana Jones sets that released back in 2008, but also priced like it’s still 15 years ago. With three minifigures and two credible vehicles included, 77012 Fighter Plane Chase looks like a sure-fire winner before even opening the box.

The stand used to display 77012 Fighter Plane Chase in this review is kindly provided by iDisplayit – click through to view their full range of display stands that offer a variety of heights and angles to showcase your airborne LEGO sets.

— LEGO Indiana Jones 77012 Fighter Plane Chase set details —

Theme: LEGO Indiana Jones Set name: 77012 Fighter Plane Chase Release: April 1, 2023

Price: £29.99 / $34.99 / €34.99 Pieces: 387 Minifigures: 3

LEGO: April 1, 2023

— Where to buy LEGO Indiana Jones 77012 Fighter Plane Chase —

LEGO Indiana Jones 77012 Fighter Plane Chase releases on April 1 at LEGO.com and in LEGO Stores, and should also be available from select retailers from either the same date or soon after.

— LEGO Indiana Jones 77012 Fighter Plane Chase build —

Inevitably the sentiment is the same once you’ve opened the box and built the set – LEGO Indiana Jones 77012 Fighter Plane Chase offers two very interesting and movie-accurate vehicles straight out of a memorable chase sequence from Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, packed with detail and authenticity true to what you see on film, but also translated so cleverly into LEGO form.

This begins with the car, which is – for an 8+ LEGO set – a rather interesting and quite detailed LEGO model to put together, in a manner that is satisfyingly unique to this set, whether this is your first or 99th LEGO car. Parts usage is somewhat non-standard, with an effort seemingly made to prioritise accuracy to the vehicle over what could otherwise be a simpler way to put it all together. Think Speed Champions and you’ll know what to expect here. 

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Likewise, while the fighter plane has a more simplistic nature to its design, there are curiosities and clever techniques that ensure it is anything but basic. Blocky aspects to the central body of the plane hide smart attention to detail – the angle that the wings sit at is not for nothing, nor the play feature to break away the wings, reflective of the moment in The Last Crusade when it flies into the tunnel (meanwhile the tunnel is also referenced through a neat little road sign too).

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If there’s one complaint, it’s with the sticker that sits across the canopy of the plane’s cockpit. Transparent stickers can only be applied once, so line it up wrong and you are quite literally stuck with whatever you attempted. Combine that with applying over a large, curved area and it’s even trickier. Add to that too that the design includes dark lines running up and across it that need to sit centrally, and the margin for error is tiny. We got ours off-centre and we can’t unsee it, nor can we fix it. So, be careful, because getting it wrong can take away from the design of the final model.

That aside, as a one-two combination, LEGO Indiana Jones 77012 Fighter Plane Chase is incredibly strong, offering substantial builds for both vehicles, plenty of easy-to-see and movie-based play potential, and all told a whole lot of LEGO for your money.

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— LEGO Indiana Jones 77012 Fighter Plane Chase characters —

Included within LEGO Indiana Jones 77012 Fighter Plane Chase are three minifigures – Indiana Jones, Professor Henry Jones Sr. and a Fighter Pilot.

Indy comes with a set-exclusive torso design as he’s wearing a tie, but the head, hat and legs are the same as in the two other LEGO Indiana Jones sets releasing at the same time as this one. As a character design, there are clear echoes of the LEGO Group’s previous design from 15 years ago, alongside modern updates in detailing and, of course, in the hat-hair piece, which is dual-moulded between the hat and hair and includes the two shades of brown for the hat.

As a piece it is excellently executed and is a highlight among each minifigure line-up across all the Indy LEGO sets, as a quality LEGO piece that is true to the character and a step up on what came before. However, the total minifigure design actually feels ever so slightly off and we can only put it down to the proportional size of the piece, particularly in comparison to the minifigure’s face print – either the hat would be better off 10% smaller or Indy’s face could have been printed 10% larger, but the current result is that the hat-hair piece throws the proportions of LEGO Indy ever so slightly out. It’s a small observation and perhaps with time our eyes will accept it.

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Alongside Indy comes Professor Henry Jones Sr. complete with Grail diary, which in the character’s original LEGO minifigure design from 2008 was only represented in print form on his torso. Given the strength of design of that minifigure from a decade-and-a-half ago there’s quite a lot of similarity to be found in the one included in 77012 Fighter Plane Chase, but as with Indy, benefitting from even finer detailing where possible, to make for another credible upgrade.

The third minifigure is the Fighter Pilot, with a more simplistic design but actually better representative of what we see on screen than the Fighter Pilot we got in 2009’s 7198 Fighter Plane Attack (which, fun fact, was inspired by an earlier part of the same chase sequence that 77012 Fighter Plane Chase is based on).

As a trio of minifigures they are true to both the design standards of LEGO in 2023 and the on-screen appearances of the characters in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. And to get all three in a £30 / $35 set in 2023 is a pleasant surprise.

— LEGO Indiana Jones 77012 Fighter Plane Chase price —

 We are half expecting the LEGO Group to correct us on the price before April 1, because £29.99 / $34.99 / €34.99 for a licensed LEGO set containing 387 pieces and three minifigures (including a fancy dual-moulded hat-hair piece) is a real steal in 2023, a time when LEGO sets feel like they’ve never been more expensive. There’s so much to love in quality, accuracy and play to LEGO Indiana Jones 77012 Fighter Plane Chase, and the price just makes everything so much sweeter.

— LEGO Indiana Jones 77012 Fighter Plane Chase pictures —

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— LEGO Indiana Jones 77012 Fighter Plane Chase pros and cons —

LEGO Indiana Jones 77012 Fighter Plane Chase is a refreshing return to the LEGO Indiana Jones line, offering modern design and build ideas in a theme we thought we’d never see come back, nor necessarily need to. Everything in this set is an upgrade in the ways you would expect it to be, but to a level much higher than an 8+ set priced at £29.99 / $34.99 / €34.99 has any right to be. Complete with three minifigures, this is a bargain of a LEGO set and one to definitely not miss out on.

LEGO Indiana Jones 77012 Fighter Plane Chase pros	LEGO Indiana Jones 77012 Fighter Plane Chase cons
A true bargain of a price	Indy’s minifigure design needs a bit of adjusting to
Great design across both vehicles	Would an extra £5 on the price have meant maybe a fourth minifigure could have been included?
Three great minifigures	No second plane for Indy and Henry Sr. to fly as in 2009’s 7198 Fighter Plane Attack
Movie-accurate	The sticker across the plane’s canopy is a nightmare

This set was provided for review by the LEGO Group.

The stand used to display 77012 Fighter Plane Chase in this review is kindly provided by iDisplayit – click through to view their full range of display stands that offer a variety of heights and angles to showcase your airborne LEGO sets.

Support the work that Brick Fanatics does by purchasing your LEGO Indiana Jones sets through one of our affiliate links.

— Alternatives to LEGO Indiana Jones 77012 Fighter Plane Chase —

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Representing the return of a quite unique licensed LEGO theme, there’s little that reflects the contents of LEGO Indiana Jones 77012 Fighter Plane Chase, with the best alternatives being the other two sets in the April 2023 wave of releases – 77013 Escape from the Lost Tomb that comes in at just £5 more, or the 18+ set 77015 Temple of the Golden Idol.

— LEGO Indiana Jones 77012 Fighter Plane Chase FAQs —