Decool 2113 Bell Boeing V-22 Building Set Review (Not Lego)

Hello and welcome back to Its-Not-Lego, my blog that reviews the good and bad of Lego knockoffs and alternate brick brands.  In this post, we will be taking a detailed look at the Bell Boeing V-22 tilt motor airplane building set.

TL;DR

Here's the quick details:

Model: Bell Boeing V-22
Set Number: Decool 2113
Number of pieces: 318+
Number of minifigures: 5

Fake Lego?  No.
Missing Parts: Y/ Deformed pieces: N/ Scratched pieces: N
#itsnotlego Rating:  3 out of 5 stars.  I wish the plane was bigger.

Intro

I bought my set from Aliexpress in late July and received it about a month later.  There are 9 bags of parts, of which 5 bags belong to the minifigures.  When I ordered the 318 piece set, there was no indication that 5 minifigures were included, so this was a bonus.

The instruction booklet has 47 pages and 44 steps.  According to the front and back covers of the Decool manual, this V-22 aircraft is part of the Modern War series.  Other sets in this series include what looks to be like a Hummer, a troop carrier and a helicopter.  It looks like you can supplement the sets with additional minifigures that are sold separately.

Here are the 5 minifigures you get with the set.  There are 4 soldiers decked out with vests and camo pants.  There's one figure who has a black helmet and vest so I will assume he's the V-22 pilot.  Each minifigure comes with several weapons including rifles, pistols and knives.  I should point out that the legs don't clutch very well to the torsos on any of the minifigures.  I will probably add a dab of glue to keep them in place.

The Build

Ok, let's start building!  Although there are number bags for the parts, they don't correspond to the build steps, so I just unpacked all the parts into a pile and then sorted them by colour, more or less.

The aircraft fuselage consists of a cockpit with printed control panel. There are some additional windows on the side, but the rest of the interior is quite small.  There's rear hatch but I don't think I can actually fit the other minifigures through it. Brick clutch is good though.  I would like to be able to extend the fuselage and make it taller so the minifigures will fit inside, but not sure how to do it yet.

With the fuselage completed, it's time to focus on building the wings.

Here's the progress so far.  Got the wings attached to the body and also have the 

landing gear attached.

Here's a quick peek at the aft section of the plane.

Assembling the tilt motors.

So I ended up getting two plates the same, but they are supposed to be mirrors of each other, so I can't fit it into one of the engines. I don't have a piece like this in my stash, so I'll just leave it off for now.

Here's the engines attached to the wings.

Pictured with propellers facing forward.

And with the propellers in upright position.  The tilting is simply performed by clicking the hinges up or down.

These are the extra pieces leftover after the build.

Final Pictures and Thoughts

So, in conclusion, I thought this was an ok build.  The Decool tilt motor V-22 model is based on Lego's Cargo Heliplane set 60021, but the colour scheme has been changed to dark gray to reflect it's military purpose.  

Play value is acceptable with opening hatch and cockpit and tilting motors. The plane is very swooshable with very good brick clutch for the plane but not so good for the minifigures.  The minifigures are quite detailed and you get a lot of accessories with them. I find the plane rather small and not proportioned to minifigure scale, hence me giving it a rating of 3 out of 5 stars.

What did you think of this set?  Do you agree or disagree with my rating?  Please feel free to leave your comments below!  Thanks for visiting and see you in my next post. Bye for now!

Update!

The knockoff of the 1636 piece Lego technic version of the V-22 Osprey is showing up on Aliexpress.  This is the version which Lego cancelled.