20 replies to this topic

[Velika314]

I decided to take advantage of the Black Friday sales out here in the USA and picked this set up along with 9441 Kai's Blade Cycle at a discount. These new sets appear to have a "convert" ability which grabbed my interest. The last time I saw that was back with Alpha Team!

Set Name: 9442 Jay's Storm Fighter
Theme: Ninjago
Released: January 2012
Pieces: 242
Price: $24.99
Place of Purchase: Toys R Us

First off, the box:

Box Front



Box Back



The box appears to be the same format as all the other Ninjago 2012 boxes. I like the little electricity flare-ups on the box.  

Parts, Instruction Booklet, and DSS



Bags full of parts, a dreaded sticker sheet, and a horribly bent instruction booklet. The key elements of a Lego set!  

The Parts



A very nice selection of parts.

New and Interesting Parts



Bricks, giant golden blades, a shapely cockpit...





The Instruction Booklet




It's hard to differentiate between black and dark grey sometimes.





Perhaps people were just skipping past the ads at the end, so Lego put them in the middle as well...  

The DSS



I love the lightning for the wings of the storm fighter.

The Minifigs



Jay ZX has no armor or sheath, a major downside to the set. At least give him some sort of unique weapon to compensate!  



Nice back detailing.



Helmet-less!  

The Build



The stand that holds the staff.



The base of the storm fighter is constructed. There were 10+ blue hinged plates to put on.  



A mechanism in the making...  



Not much to say here.



Ready for the wings!




The green and red translucent stud tiles sort of detract from the overall look of the set in my opinion.



The stickers are added and the fighter looks much nicer. Finished!

Conversion

Before



After



The wings use a rubber band which pulls them back from their "locked" position. It works well in the air, but not so well when on the ground.

The Conclusion

Extra Pieces


Extra gold stud tiles!  

Overall

Playability: 5/5 The conversion bit works nicely and is a welcome addition to an already playable set.
Design: 4/5 A little slow on the wing pop out when the fighter is on the ground.
Build: 4/5 Fun, but tedious at times (blue hinges   )
Parts: 5/5 Lots of nice new parts in nice new colors. Would have liked armor for Jay ZX though.
Price: 5/5 The price-to-parts ratio is 7 pieces short of perfection. Great in my book.
Overall: 5/5 The storm fighter looks good and works nicely. A good parts pack as well.  

The Finished Set



Click here to check out my other Ninjago 2012 review of 9441 Kai's Blade Cycle

Edited by Rufus, 11 February 2012 - 04:24 PM.
Indexed

[Nightshroud99]

This is another great Ninjago set. I quite like Jay although he doesn't have any weapons...  
Snappa is also nice.

The set itself comes with a nice selection of parts.  

Good review!

[J4ke]

Massive want.

But the fact that we get 1 L 2x3 red wedge and 1 R 2x3 green wedge frustrates me.

Also, if you don't want those blue hinges, give 'em to me. I'll make use of them, lol.

[Velika314]

J4ke, on 26 November 2011 - 01:37 AM, said:

Massive want.

But the fact that we get 1 L 2x3 red wedge and 1 R 2x3 green wedge frustrates me.

Also, if you don't want those blue hinges, give 'em to me. I'll make use of them, lol.

It's not that I don't want them, it's just that I've seen so many times where they have been used in massive quantities. Perhaps LEGO should make a big hinged piece?

[Legocrazy81]

Well, we know they(LEGO) like Kai better than Jay. Kai gets that awesome armor piece and 2 swords, while poor Jay gets nothing...

Edited by Legocrazy81, 26 November 2011 - 06:40 AM.

[surrideo]

Im reading right, thats what the ZX/DX upgrades for the characters look like this year? Nice enough torso prints but the Dragons ones were so much more ornate.

The Jet reminds me of 1980s Transformers with a ninja twist. Good set, now if only someone would review the rattle copter.....and not on Youtube

[lightningtiger]

Thanks 'Velika314' for your review, Hmmm, I'm not as impressed by this as I first thought I would be....the nose of the jet doesn't seem right, plus what is Jay meant to fight with....not even dare I say flick-fires...Lego you missed something.
Unless the wings are the weapon, right travel at high speeds and open those wings....they are ninja's not Jedi's - again miss.
Sorry, but I'm not a fan of this theme extension....I wrote in the replying to the last review....CN inspired !

[Velika314]

lightningtiger, on 26 November 2011 - 09:59 PM, said:

Thanks 'Velika314' for your review, Hmmm, I'm not as impressed by this as I first thought I would be....the nose of the jet doesn't seem right, plus what is Jay meant to fight with....not even dare I say flick-fires...Lego you missed something.
Unless the wings are the weapon, right travel at high speeds and open those wings....they are ninja's not Jedi's - again miss.
Sorry, but I'm not a fan of this theme extension....I wrote in the replying to the last review....CN inspired !

This is a possible weapon for Jay ZX to use as depicted on the back of the box:



The "weapon" pieces are found on the sides of the plane, but I always thought they were meant to stay there to go with the "blade" feel. I'm not sure why Lego didn't include a nicer weapon.  

[vexorian]

I liked the prelims, and I usually like gold. But I gotta say that the large gold wings are making this set look not very pretty to me. Pearl gold and normal blue don't seem to go too well. hmmn.

[horizon]

New torsos are meh-ish. The original ones and DX ones have more appeal.

Good review though.

[Velika314]

horizon, on 27 November 2011 - 08:24 PM, said:

New torsos are meh-ish. The original ones and DX ones have more appeal.

Good review though.

Thanks! Yes, I'm disappointed there is no gold bits on the new ZX suits.    I loved the gold details on the DX ones. I guess TLG was going for a different "feel" this time around.

[Space Terrapin]

Thanks for the review!  This is a very, um, interesting set... I like the opening mechanism and all the new parts, but the whole concept is a bit odd.  It's a fighter whose only weapons appear to be blades, so presumably it fights things by flying into them?  Bizarre.  As someone else has said the nose piece is pretty clunky too.  Having said that, for these parts at this price, it'll be a hard set to pass up when they finally get released on my side of the Atlantic!

[M'Kyuun]

I like this set more for the aircraft than anything else. While the blades have a neat anime look to them, as weapons, I must agree, they're quite impractical.   The red and green round tiles at the wingtips are navigation lights. All modern aircraft have them to avoid collisions, and I love it when the designers add in these little touches of reality. Conversely, the turbocharger sticking up on the plane's back is awesomely silly. Wish they'd used a cone instead of a slope for the nose (like the Agents' jet fighter), and black blades instead of gold. These are minor nitpicks, however, and I'll be picking it up at some point.

I like the transforming vehicle theme (fond memories Of M.A.S.K.). Not crazy about Snappa's hairpiece or the Power Ranger-esque headwraps, but overall I like the new Snake themed sets.

[meyerc13]

My son received this set as an early Christmas present, and I built it with him today.  This set is an awesome parts pack, lots of new parts and lots of useful but uncommon parts (plates, slopes, hinges, clips).  I'm sure I'll pick up another copy to use for parts.

The set itself is fun to play with.  Yeah, sword blades on the wings are silly, but isn't all of the Ninjago theme?  It will be interesting to see the storyline on why the Ninjas switched from dragons to jet fighters... did the snake people charm the dragons and turn them against the Ninjas?  We'll see when the cartoon is back next month.

The jet itself is fun to play with.  Put the snake guy on the edge of a table and Jay can swoop down and make some snake sushi with those wings (try it, it's fun).

The wing mechanism on mine doesn't open much on one side, I can't figure out why.  Maybe one of the hinge plates is more sticky than the others.  Overall the jet is a really solid build.  One missing thing is some type of landing gear, but honestly the jet is so fun to swoop around, who wants to land it?

Definitely a great set that I'd recommend picking up.  Even if you hate it, you'll still have lots of great parts to use for MOCs.

[marrie11]

Hmmm, I'm not as impressed by this as I first thought I would be....the nose of the jet doesn't seem right, plus what is Jay meant to fight with....not even dare I say flick-fires...Lego you missed something.
Unless the wings are the weapon, right travel at high speeds and open those wings....they are ninja's not Jedi's - again miss.

[VBBN]

Thanks for that review,
The set seems a bit bland to me, just a pile of blue angle pieces built together really.
The functionality is neat, but I'm not really a functions person, more of just display
At the same time, it is a lovely looking parts pack, especially those golden blades, which do indeed use an axle connection point, makes me very happy indeed

[JackJonespaw]

Great review! That plane is really cool, although the minifigs are a bit odd...what happened to the skeleton army?!?!

[VBBN]

JackJonespaw, on 20 December 2011 - 12:22 AM, said:

Great review! That plane is really cool, although the minifigs are a bit odd...what happened to the skeleton army?!?!

Stepped aside to allow the Snakes to take their place, to keep the theme fresh lego switches the villains.
While I do like skeletons, a change in villains is nice. it's only so long that I could stand skeleton sets before a change in theme would be desired

[JackJonespaw]

VBBN, on 21 December 2011 - 01:51 AM, said:

Stepped aside to allow the Snakes to take their place, to keep the theme fresh lego switches the villains.
While I do like skeletons, a change in villains is nice. it's only so long that I could stand skeleton sets before a change in theme would be desired

True, but Lego could have done some more evil looking skeletons...

[Faefrost]

Kind of a neat set. I know nor care anything for the whole ninjas story. But this nice classic blue fighter caught my eye. With only the slightest adjustments it makes a read good earth defense ship or even a clone or Mandolorian craft. Good stuff

Edited by Faefrost, 26 April 2012 - 12:39 PM.

[vynsane]

I love this set. The one thing to note is that the rubber band that supplies the tension for the snap-open action feature can over-stress the technic pieces

These:


and these:



causing torsion in the axle of the larger piece. Over time, they actually twist towards the center of the vehicle a bit. It's probably best to remove the rubber band if just displaying or it's not being played with regularly.

If it's already happened to yours, I recommend taking the rubber band off, swapping sides with the technic bits, and replacing the rubber band so as to equal out the stress already applied.