LEGO Ninjago: Lightning Jet

With the LEGO Ninjago Movie releasing in theatres today, and the LEGO Ninjago Movie Video Game hitting stores shelves, it is important to not forget about the third peg to this stool: the actual LEGO sets that have been available on the market for a few weeks now. Thanks to the good people over at the LEGO Group, we were able to review one of these sets. See what we thought of the Lightning Jet LEGO Set!

Details:

Set #: 70614

Pieces: 876

Ages: 9-14

The Build

Despite being tagged with a 9-14 age range, the LEGO Ninjago Lightning Jet is definitely scaling towards the 14 year olds in terms of build difficulty. The basics aspects of the jet are easy to put together, and my almost 8 year old son worked through the first few bags with no problems. Then the problems began to set in, and even our 10 year old neighbor was having issues.

The Lightning Jet has a fairly complex LEGO Technic portion. Using a number of pieces in conjunction with some gears, you will build a handle and trigger that will allow kids to easily grip the Lightning Jet while playing, and it will also spin a lightning propeller on the top when you pull the trigger. Putting this section together was pretty tough, and required my help to complete. When this section was finished, however, the boys took over again with very few problems along the way.

The 876 pieces you get in the Lightning Jet are fairly varied, and overall the value is really great, especially for the price (74.99, under 10 cents per piece)! There are a ton of unique and hard to find pieces included with this. If you reference the picture below, you can see the large ‘wings’ and fins (4 total of each piece), the black wheel that helps spin the lightning propeller, and of course, the two exhaust, flexible pipes that can be useful in many custom building scenarios.

Even some of the more common pieces come in huge supply here, which again is great. Their are tons of Technic pieces that will quickly grow your collection, and the more than 15 grey antenna blocks really make this set pop, and could also be useful in the future as antennas for buildings in my LEGO City. Of course there is so much more I haven’t even touched on yet, like the cockpit window and those stunning clear-blue lightning bolts. While the bolts won’t have a ton of uses in custom builds, they are phenomenal none-the-less.

Minifigures

The great part about purchasing more expensive LEGO sets is that they generally always come with a handful of minifigures. This is great for bot the collector, and those looking to play with the set as it gives many options to both. Included in the Lightning Jet set are: Jay, Ed, Edna, Crusty, Jelly and Shark Army Thug.

The quality of each and every figure in this set is outstanding. Jay is wearing a blue ninja suite, unique to these LEGO Ninjago Movie sets I believe. Ed and Edna are great as well. Ed has the hair we’ve seen from the Dr. Who and Beetlejuice LEGO Dimensions sets, and Edna has a great bun hairstyle that is not very common, even in many of the LEGO City sets.

The ‘baddies’ in this set are all unique as well. They all sport the same great armour pants and torso, but are unique after that. Crusty sports an impressive headpiece and wields a fish weapon with a buzz saw on the end. Shark Army Thug is wearing your traditional prison beanie and is also sporting a fish weapon, this time a hammer. The most interesting of the thugs is Jelly, who wields a gun and a fish weapon, but has the unique feature of having a air tight bowl over his head, presumably to breath under water!

Playability

One of the most difficult things about large LEGO sets is how portable and playable they really are. We’ve purchased many large LEGO sets, and they don’t always lend themselves well to playing. My son has rounded up all his Ninjago LEGO sets – and we have a TON! – and has been playing none-stop since we got this set put together. The handle on the jet makes cruising it around the skies of Roffel Ninjago incredibly easy, and in fact, probably saves the set from breaking apart. Having the handle is a huge bonus, and hopefully it is something LEGO will incorporate into sets in the future.

Although I was initially worried that the handle would look tacky when the set was together, it doubles as landing gear, and when displayed on our shelves after playing, it doesn’t look out of place at all.

Conclusion

If you are a huge LEGO Ninjago fan, this is definitely a must own LEGO set. For those who are purely collectors, or are looking to expand their pile of unique and exclusive LEGO pieces, there isn’t as much here for you. The LEGO Ninjago fans in my house, however, are thrilled with this set. It took them roughly 2-3 hours to fully put together, and it has – so far – provided numerous hours of play time fun!

Grab your own LEGO Ninjago Movie Lightning Jet today on the LEGO Website!