REVIEW: NinjaGo Skull Motorbike

[hawkyboy4]

I was in England for the new year, and was lucky enough to be in Tesco on New Year's Eve, where just that morning a stand with about half of the new NinjaGo sets on display had been revealed. Not to miss an opportunity, I snapped up two of the spinner sets, and decided to buy the Skull Motorbike as it was cheaper than buying two seperate figs.

Hence this review:

Product Name: Skull Motorbike

Set No.: 2258

Minifigures: 2

Year: 2011

The NinjaGo Skull Motorbike is scheduled for release this year in January/February, alongside 4-5 "proper" theme sets, and several "spin-off" sets. (Excuse the pun.)

First, the box. The bike takes up roughly 30-45% of the box's front, with our hero Jay only holding 10-20% of the box (including the picture of him at the top. Chopov looks like he's ready to pick up all the skeladies on that huge bike of his, and with his new black army helmet, he's going to be having trouble fitting them all on his bike (believe me, I've tried).

Jay however, appears to be jealous of our helmet-loving friend, despite the fact that he has a pair of golden nunchucks, and the ability to fly around on a whirlwind.

Next is the DSS, which is tiny, with two stickers taking 90% of the sheet's space. It didn't come crumpled, however I dislike having any pieces with print on them, printed or not, so I left them off.

Now we move onto the special parts, which there seem to be a lot of, due to Chopov being made of either new or recoloured parts. Other noteworthy parts are the 1x4 flat trans-red piece, which is used for red, evil eyes, the black katana with the "square" guard, the golden handles and the small, 5-link golden chain.

The minifigures in the set, which is two, one of each warring faction, make for a nice, 1-on-1 battle, though due to Chopov having a huge motorbike (and a large bone, which he can't seem to put down, and also seems slightly off), it's a bit on the hard side for Jay. Jay is nothing special, he has what appears to be a young, scowling child's face underneath that beautiful blue ninja mask, while Chopov doesn't care of his appearance, sporting bolts all over his body. He is dead after all, so why would he care what anyone thinks.

The random insruction page shows the motorbike taking up most of the page, as do the other pages. The back six pages show (respectively) the function of the set (a giant whalloping skull that flies down at the flick of a switch), the inventory, two of the larger NinjaGo sets, a page showing off some of the Spinner sets, and two kids playing it (first time I saw it, in the catalogue, the androgynous kid appeared to have called his ninja from the comfortable space behind his backside, into battle, and also had his hand in a place that was very inappropriate. I don't care if you just beat your friend at something, you don't start air-you-know-whatting in front of a camera! This is a LEGO magazine, not an 18+ one). The last pages are the usual competition page and Max talking about Club magazine.

And now, the main event, the Skull Motorbike. This baby goes an amazing as-fast-as-you-can-run mph, and sports a super-cool angry skull front "design"! But the skull has a secret, it flies forward at the flick of a switch, whacking anyone in the way. Unfortunately, I can't show you how it works, but the technique is very useful, so if you see it in-store, buy it for the technique at least! It has a good "swoosh" factor, though this brings out a problem. The flames that come out of the back are too long for the bike to change terrain, and you'll end up with your bike's back end flying. If these are removed, then the swoosh factor gets better, however it doesn't have a turning option, so long, 60cm turns occur frequently.

The spare parts of this set would appear to be quite useful in MOC's; a third skeleton arm is included, and the purple pieces would be useful for alien MOC's. the fang should also be good for prehistoric MOC's, though there have been several sets lately with them, so this would be classed as an "everyday" piece.

This here is an overall view of the set. What drove me to buy it was the ability to get two characters and extra pieces for less than buying two spinner sets together.

Marks:

Playability: 7/10: This set is great for "swooshing" around in your living room, driven by your child at heart, or by your actual child, and with some modifications, it would be much better than it already is. And the flicking skull is also great, kids will enjoy whacking Jay, and other ninjas dead with its big white face.

Pieces: 6/10: The pieces aren't very special, apart from the newer parts, which build up most of the product's worth (to parts collectors, or those who want a lot of pieces for a special MOC's)

Build: 7/10: At first, it lost marks for being too square at the middle of the motorbike, but was quickly made up for by the flicking-skull feature, which makes up an important part of the set to me.

Price: 8/10: The fact that you get two characters and loads of pieces for less than the price of two figures purchased separately is a great bonus, but it loses marks for being over 11 pounds (cash). Bad LEGO, stop raising the prices and lowering the quality, it's not on (no, all of the pieces were fine in this set, just a warning).

Overall: 28/40: In my books, this is an "average" mark, however I still suggest you go out and buy this set, regardless.

Edit: I did resize the images, trying different sizes, however the same result surfaced: "You have don't have permission to use this file extension." Eventually I gave up, and deleted most of my resized images off flickr, and just left the original images and the first time resized ones.The images though, still can be found here, though not in the correct order.

Edited January 4, 2011 by hawkyboy4

[Peppermint_M]

If you could deeplink the images, it would be great. Here is a tutorial on how to do so, also here is a tutorial on re-sizing them if size is prohibitive to posting.