A set that's worth the green.
TL;DR:
- Original Price: $109.99
- Pieces: 1050
- Minifigure(s): Lloyd dragon form, Earth monster, Loyalist leader (Dr. LaRow), Arin, Acid monster, Zane, Sora, Cole dragon form
- Sticker Sheet: Yes
- Pros: Minifigs, good value, creative build
- Cons: Only a small landscape piece for setting, poseability is limited
Assembly:
Bag #1 - Lloyd dragon form, Earth monster, mech
Bag #2 - Loyalist leader (Dr. LaRow), sword oasis
Bag #3 - Torso core
Bag #4 - Torso "skin"
Bag #5 - Arin, Acid monster, tail
Bag #6 - Zane, head
Bag #7 - Cole dragon form, hind legs
Bag #8 - Forelegs
Bag #9 - Wings
Leftover Pieces
- Interesting Steps:
- 14: Using the dark tan rock pieces make the mech's legs look like bellbottom trousers, but are also very stable, especially with the slope piece behind and the claws in front.
- 35: The combination of lantern bricks with a SNOT brick result in studs that are placed just a hair too far apart to fit comfortably within a normal 1x2 brick, putting stress on the lantern/SNOT connection point. These are covered over in step 57 by a 2x2 plate (on the lantern bricks' tops) and 1x2 45 slope pieces (connecting to the SNOT's front studs), which has a little more give than if a 2x4 brick were placed atop all the studs, but it's still odd that the designer deemed this technique necessary.
- 44: The drop-in assembly to anchor the 1 x 2 x 1 1/3 Technic brick with rotation joint socket for the neck to mount onto is complicated, but sturdy. It's a pity there wasn't a more flexible option, to keep the neck from being so ramrod-straight upright.
- 236: The use of "mug handles" (1x1 round with bar handle down) to anchor the movie camera brick on the inner side of the wings is pretty neat, and gives a bit of a biomechanical feel to the wings that otherwise would seem entirely mechanical.
- Interesting Techniques:
- Note the plates in the bottom of the mech's pilot's compartment, raising the earth monster up above the built-up front and back plates (most mechs that I've seen using this cockpit piece don't build much higher than the upper edge of it).
- Use of dark bluish grey 1x1 round with bar handles enables the claw pieces to be attachable to the mech's shoulders or removed (by sliding) for the earth monster to use as hand-held weapons.
- The dragon's jaw brick-built and held on with clips, instead of being a single molded piece as in many other Ninjago dragons.
- While the wing armature isn't very organic looking (being more reminiscent of the fold-out droid sets released after Star Wars Episode 1 in 1999 and 2000), it is still masterfully engineered. The friction of the gears and axles tied to the actuating lever (the one with the little branch piece at the bottom-right) means that the wings open and close only with a bit of extra effort, instead of flopping all over like the tail does.
- Interesting Pieces:
- The claw piece (or "Dark Tan Minifigure, Headgear Stone with Large Molded Pearl Dark Gray Pincers Pattern" as BrickLink calls it) looks really good, and could have applications for bugs as well as rock monsters.
- The dragon's head is well-molded and has some nice printing, but the only attachment point is the Technic hole at the back.
- Pain Points:
- As nice as they are (and I can see many uses for these as background foliage, treehouse roofs, etc) it can be hard to tell which side of the wing pieces is right. My advice is to look for the copyright text.
- The dragon's limited poseability:
- The shoulder and hip joints are Technic rotation joints, which are very stiff (good for holding poses, but require a firm grip to move), as are the friction gears that control the wings' opening/closing mechanic.
- The ankle and wrist joints are Technic ball joints, which are stiff but not inflexible (and allow for more varied angles, appropriate given the limited positions provided by the rotation joints' detents)
- The tail's lower portion is linked by ball joints, but joins to the body with a floppy hinge (an axle through two 2x3 plate-with-hole pairs), which gives it something of a mind of its own when trying to pose it, depending on what angle the torso's currently at.
- The wings join to the body with more rotation joints, which limit their position to up, down, and rotated. They are unable to angle forward and back, and their bulk does put them very much in the way, leaving them unable to tuck up properly against the dragon's body (the wings' "fingers" are also immobile, further reducing possible tucking-up)
- The neck is locked in an upright position, only able to rotate around the vertically-oriented rotation joint socket (see Interesting Step 44 above), while the Technic ball joint at the base of the skull does allow for more expressive posing, it's limited by that same upright position of its support. Imagine a more flexible neck that could bend and dip, or raise up in a mighty roar!
- Stylistically, the wings also feel a bit off: great care is taken with the rest of the dragon to give it an organic feel, blending rocks, dirt, leaves, and branches into an Archimboldo-esque amalgamation, as though a section of jungle were swirled together and given life (appropriately, given the name of said dragon). By contrast, the Technic liftarms and the sword blades attached to their end feel industrial and inorganic. Perhaps adding some vine or leaf elements mounted to Technic pins might have helped disguise this contrast a bit more.
- Play Features:
- The sword oasis's campfire rotates with a turn of the log piece at the base of the palm tree...but only when all the mystical flame pieces (trans-bright green angular plant leaves) are upright
- Side Note: the box
- I know LEGO is always working hard to be environmentally friendly, and also out of necessity to reduce costs as much as possible (after all, as essential as they are to our happiness, LEGOs are, by definition, luxury goods). That being said, I have to wonder what the reasoning is behind the new cardboard boxes: cutting costs, cutting environmental impact, a change of manufacturer, or some other cause. Of course, it's more likely that it's some or all of these factors. The lift off box top is reminiscent of the old sets from my childhood with the flip-open panel and the clear plastic display windows (for example, the Time Cruisers set Magic Mountain Time Lab 6494).
- As you can see in this second picture below, the cardboard on this set is about half the thickness of the old cardboard boxes, but on the other hand there is printing on both upper and lower halves.
- And in this third picture, you can see how the bottom portion is half held together with glued tabs, and half with papercraft-style overlapping tabs.
- And finally, you can see how both the top and bottom portions are designed to fold flat, which might be part of the reason behind this new design, making it easier to store them before assembly, and maybe working better with the packaging robots too.
• Overall: This is an impressive set, with a great many good features. While sets in general have been getting more expensive lately (for many varied and understandable reasons) this set feels worth the price. First, we get eight minifigures, all nicely detailed, including the two exclusive dragon form ninjas. Second, while the sword oasis sub-build feels a bit tacked-on, it is an efficient piece of scenery and makes good use of the new seven-point leaf pieces. And finally, there's the dragon.
As you can see, the dragon is an impressive build, elaborately textured and well designed. Granted, there are limitations to its poseability, as delineated above, but once the dragon is posed, it goes back to looking great. The stiffness does make it a little harder to actively play with (not having wing-flap mechanisms like some dragons of the past), but it works well as a display model.
The build process for the dragon was particularly interesting, with many confusing-at-the-time steps that kept me guessing. I'm definitely curious to see what it's like in the show: will it talk like Egalt and the Arc dragons, roar like the Ultra dragon, or just make cute sounds like Riyu?
Score (out of 5 🧱):
- Price: 🧱🧱🧱🧱
- Process: 🧱🧱🧱🧱🧱
- Presentation: 🧱🧱🧱🧱🧱
- Play: 🧱🧱🧱
- Pieces: 🧱🧱🧱🧱🧱
- Total: 🧱🧱🧱🧱
Lego Instructions: here
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