70596 Samurai X Cave Chaos offers an impressive base of operations for the ninja to inhabit, and includes a sophisticated modular vehicle construction station. Other sets have proven a little more ambitious. Recent examples of these include 71737 X-1 Ninja Charger, 71736 Boulder Blaster and 71750 Lloyd’s Hydro Mech. In their fights against evil, the ninja employ many different vehicles – bikes, planes, cars, mechs, drills, and other things that defy easy classification. NINJAGO’s target audience can benefit from some seriously fun playsets. However, the increasing quality and diversity of sets has attracted many a LEGO fan, regardless of age. Much of the product range has an explicit focus on younger fans. The NINJAGO theme boasts more than 400 sets, which broadly correspond to successive seasons of the TV show. What does the future hold for NINJAGO? It’s hard to say, but given its success so far, we anticipate trips to NINJAGO for a while to come. 2021’s The Island subtheme is reminiscent of ’90s Pirates sets, while the Seabound wave continues a rich tradition of underwater LEGO products. While the Japanese influence continued to run deep, the ninja would go on to fight mummies, enter cyberspace and explore lava-filled dungeons. This precluded a broader push into more diverse subject matter for NINJAGO products. A year later, the Skybound theme introduced a range of pirate-inspired sets. 70751 Temple of Airjitzu launched in 2015, delivering a NINJAGO set with new levels of detail and complexity that to this day attracts significant attention from older LEGO fans. Their ranks would also expand – Lloyd, a son of their enemy Lord Garmadon, joined the team, as did Kai’s sister Nya.īy mid-decade, the NINJAGO theme had started to move into more exciting territory. Guided by their teacher, Master Wu, the ninjas would face anthropomorphic snakes, robots and ghosts. Similar toys would prove a fixture of the NINJAGO theme more generally.Īs the theme continued through the 2010s, NINJAGO sets would continue in a similar vein. A range of spinner sets was also introduced, allowing children to replicate the Spinjitzu martial arts technique from the show. These early waves mixed outlandish vehicles and characters with more realistic settings, which drew heavily from traditional Japanese architecture. Early models focused upon a quartet of ninja – Kai, Jay, Cole and Zane – defending their island home from villainous and supernatural forces. On a basic level, NINJAGO could be said to have built upon these themes indeed, explicit references to both Ninja and Exo-Force have popped up in NINJAGO sets. With 44 products over three years, Exo-Force offered a lot for mecha fans to sink their teeth into. This range of sets took inspiration from Japanese mecha fiction, with humanoid robots and characters inspired by Japanese culture. The Exo-Force theme, first launched in 2006, also shares some characteristics with NINJAGO. While its historical accuracy may be disputed, this was still a fairly sober, grounded take on the concept. Twenty-nine models were released in this range, with a mixture of ninja and samurai fighting across strongholds and fortresses. The most obvious antecedent is the Ninja theme, which ran from 1998 to 1999. We can see the roots of NINJAGO in some of the LEGO Group’s older product releases. To date, more than 180 episodes have been produced across 14 seasons. The two continue to enjoy a symbiotic relationship, as characters, vehicles and scenarios in the show inspire models in the NINJAGO range. The NINJAGO theme first debuted in 2011, running in parallel with the animated TV show NINJAGO: Masters of Spinjitzu.
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