REVIEW: 3344-3346 Ninja Mini Heroes

[Clone OPatra]

This review may be a little non-traditional. Why, you ask? Well, all I've got to review is a bunch of figures. But not any bunch of figures, the rad-ist, coolest, most exclusive figures…

Set Title: Ninja #1 (so creative, huh?)

Set #: 3344

Theme: Mini Heroes Collection

Subtheme: Ninja

Pieces: Who Cares

Minifigures: 1!

Year of Release: 2000

Price at Release: $1.99 If my memory serves me correctly.

Buy it? Inventory? Peeron Bricklink

Set Titles: Ninja #2 and Ninja #3

Set #'s: 3345 and 3346

Theme: Mini Heroes Collection

Subtheme: Ninja

Pieces: Again, who really cares

Minifigures: 3 each

Year of Release: 2000

Price at release: $4.99 each

Buy Them? Inventory? 3345 3346 Bricklink

The STORY

I'd always liked Ninja when it came out. I never got many of the big sets; the 3053 Emperor's Stronghold was my largest. I got a fair number of the small sets though, accumulating a few Ninjas, robbers, and shoguns, and it was all good fun. The theme died after just two waves, one in summer 1998 and one in January 1999, and then it was over, no more Japanese "history" (you know Ninjas didn't really exist like in the stories), no more katanas, no more Asian styled strongholds. But oh well, good LEGO themes come, and good LEGO themes go.

Then one day, about ten years ago (or in 2000 or 2001 anyway), I came across an interesting page.

Hmm, what's this? Well, besides from being slightly confused by the title "Mini-Figures," since back then I called them LEGO guys and didn't know the term, I looked a little closer and… whoa!

Green Ninjas? GREEN? $4.99? Me like! And so, without out further ado, hoping that "mini-figure" would not mean that these were smaller than my normal LEGO guys, a rang that good old phone number. Yes, we had something called phones back then with which we purchased things by speaking to people. Weird, huh? I kind of recall asking the sales person if these were in fact normal size LEGO figures, since it said "Mini-Figures" and I was slightly confused. Fickle me, huh?

So, in whatever time it took, probably around a week, I got my package of the last three Ninja figures ever to be sold. But were they really the last three? Well, the catalog called the set "Emperor and 2 Green Ninjas" (as you can see in the above picture), so I assumed that was it.

The first thing to do when I get a LEGO set if in a store or in mail order is to glance at the box, if just for a moment. Here's the front. Hmm, that's odd, it doesn't say "Emperor and 2 Green Ninjas" on the box, is says "Ninja #3." What could that mean? Does that title just mean that there are 3 Ninja figures in the set?

It calls the Emperor Samurai Lord on the side, but whatever.

Looks like if this was sold in a store it would be hung on a long peg. I didn't even know LEGO stores existed back then (if they did), and these sets were Not Available in Any Store, so this box feature is slightly odd. I guess I could hang it up on a thumb-tack. Also, they made sure to tell you that it had a UNIQUE figure. I guess this was just the standard printing for the line, since this set clearly has two UNIQUE figures.

Ok, flip it over to the back. Well, obviously my "Fold Catalogues Not in Any Order" sticker wasn't originally there, under there is a diagram showing you how to put the fig together and the card in its stand, the only instructions on the set.

But wait! What's this? MORE exclusive Ninja figures?

OMG OMG OMG! Time for another ring to LEGO!

End of Story.

CONTENTS

I'm going to do the non-Minifugre part first. Let me say that I do not currently know where all of my stands are, nor where all of the cards are. Because really, while you could display the figures, what sane person is going to just display figures and not use them in MOCs, dioramas, or general role-playing games with the other Ninja figures and sets?

So, for each figure, you got one white stand that had Ninja engraved in it in a nice, Asian font. These stands were also used for all of the other figures in these minifigure packs, as well as the collectible basketball players, though of course in different colors and with different engravings for each.

The packs also came with white 2x2 plates to stick the stands together, if that was what you fancied.

Here is one figure from each of the three packs displayed on their stands, with their cards showing the character descriptions. If you are going to display them, this way work well because you see the awesome larger-than-life picture while also seeing the figure.

Alternatively, you could turn the cards around and get the nice, plain, "mountains-of-Japan" background for the figures. Both ways are fine, and this way you can read the descriptions on the cards since they're not blocked by figures, but I prefer seeing the pics of the figures, if I was going to display them, which I never was. If you want to see the all the cards, follow the Bricklink link provided above and look in the Inventory.

MINIFIGURES - All Together

I have decided to display the entire collection first, to show you the whole thing before I break it down. Because, as I get deeper, I'm going to bring in Ninja figures not from these sets and it's going to branch out a whole lot. I've even got a MOD coming up.

All in all, you get five figures exclusive to this series, which is an enormous haul compared to the number of exclusive figs in the other lines of Mini-Figure packs. Sure, Luke in a hood was nice, but I'm talking five completely exclusive figures here! Plus you get six katanas, three light gray and three black, and the Pirate pistol.

PACK #1 - Shogun

According to LEGO, "He is a noble and brave ruler who has attained his position through a combination of wisdom and strength."

The way I saw it, "This guy wears red, has black armor, and has a cowl, so he's one bad son-of-a-b**** who killed a f***-load of people to get power."

In the pack with one figure we get what I call the Red Shogun, and what LEGO calls the "Shogun Warlord." From front and back, his armor looks nice, though of course I'd seen it before, but not in BLACK! Seriously, the black armor was one of the coolest thing to me out of all of the packs. Black is a more usable color to me than the dark grey this armor had been in previously, and it makes for great opposing rulers, as I shall get to.

With his armor off, the Red Shogun displays a nice robe-like printing over a sash with knife, and traditional frock-like shirt. Yes, it's quite worn, but let me tell you that these figures saw a lot of use.

The print on the Red Shogun's shirt may look familiar. That is because LEGO did not design any new prints for any of these figures, they just printed them on different torso colors than before. Behold, the Red Shogun sports the same print as my unfortunately misprinted mouthless Blue Shogun.

SHOGUN MOD

While I usually completely like what LEGO gives me, there were a few things about the Red Shogun that I thought could have been done better. I did make these MODs back then. Taking some shiny pants from one of my emperor figures and a red leg connecter, I created some legs that matched the Blue Shogun. Then, I thought all black would look better, so I swapped in a black helmet. I also gave him a black pistol instead of brown. Now they match!

PACK #2 - Samurai and Black Ninja

The old samurai is a very experienced and skilled fighter. Loyal towards his warlord (the Red Shogun?), and trainer of younger samurais.

The young samurai loves combat and is eager to learn new warrior skills. He trains a great deal and dreams of real conflict.

The Black Ninja is a master of concealment. He is undetectable at night, unless the moon shines on his blade.

These LEGO guys, erhm, Mini-Figures look like nice ones to collect up to build an army of Samurai and Ninjas. With their dark colors and black katanas, I always used these guys as the bad guys. I know it's stereotypical, but I always used black katanas for bad guys and grey katanas for good guys, so these are definitely bad in my book. Ninja (like Wild West) was a theme were both the bad guys and good guys looked awesome.

No Ninja figures ever had back printing, so all there is to see is the nice helmet and ninja wrap molds. There may be dispute about how to put the katana in the wrap, but I always put part of the blade in the clip, not the handle.

The black ninja was the non-exclusive figure of this set, coming in many sets previously. All the black ninjas have this face, the same one used for the Red Shogun. In the first wave, the black ninjas were part of the robber band, hence they were sneaky and bad. LEGO shows how bad he is buy giving him a cowl and angry eyebrows. Oooh, cowl bad.

In terms of exclusivity, the samurai are much more interesting. The old guy sports the face of the other old guy, which makes it a rare head, coming in only two sets, the smallest one of which I never knew existed at the time. The young samurai has quite a common head, as we shall see. Like the Red Shogun, both of these samurai have the same printing as other figures except over red. I do not have the matching figure for the old samurai's torso, since this figure only came in the biggest set (which I passed up on sale for $60 opting instead to get King Leo's Crappy Castle, urgh).

PACK #3 - Emperor and Green Ninjas

The Samurai Lord (not Emperor apparently) is a fair and righteous man. Always fighting against injustice. A true hero of his time. Ok, first of all, the second sentence is a fragment. Second of all, the description of 3053 Emperor's Stronghold in my 1999 catalog says about the same figure that he is the evil Shogun, not this epic, soft-hearted hero guy. Personally, I always used everybody as good except the robbers and Black Ninjas, but this goes to show that LEGO for some reason wanted everybody in a minifig pack to be a good guy.

The Green Ninja is young and agile. He always carries out his assignments with stealth and cunning. His favourite weapon is the knife. The spellchecker doesn't like the European spelling of "favourite" (taken straight from the card, not my own), and it's a shame he has to settle for a katana when his favourite weapon is the knife.

The Green Ninja is good at climbing, laying traps and building secret hiding places. Her favourite weapon is the shuriken. I always pronounced it "sher-kin," but maybe that's because I'm a dumb American. Want to elaborate, def?

Now we get to the rest of the best, the GREEN Ninjas! It makes me even more excited than green army men (actually, a lot more excited). You see, these guys come with light gray katanas, so they must be good. It is interesting that the emperor/shogun/dribbly righteous guy does not have any armor, since he has dark gray armor in all the other sets he's in. Doesn't matter two much though. Notice that LEGO used both ninja prints, more on that coming up!

Nothing on the backs, but here I demonstrate how I attach the katanas to the head-wraps.

Here's the shogun with his helmet off, showing what was a pretty common face (you've seen it already today once, look back). The shirt print is exceedingly lovely though, with its dragons and big sash, knife and different shirt colors.

Here's this shogun with my MODded one from another set. The only thing I changed about the original figure was to add the white leg-attachment piece.

You see, now we get three semi-matching shoguns, White Shogun, Blue Shogun, and Red Shogun. How creative I was.

NINJAS!

Yes, they get their own section. Their own very long section. I will spare you no pics, be warned, there are a lot of ninjas coming up quite soon.

Here are our GREEN ninjas, showing their faces. As you can see, LEGO used two different prints, which is such a nice touch. There may have been shiny gold printing on their weapons on their torsos at one time, but I remember it came off quicker than usual. Both don't look so happy, but none of the ninjas looked very happy. Feudal Japan is serious.

The female GREEN ninja sports the same torso as every black ninja, if you did not already make the comparison yourself from the previous black ninja pics.

The male GREEN ninja has the same torso print as all the remaining ninjas: grey, white, and red. As you can see, the grey, white, and red ninjas have shiny gold on their torsos, while the GREEN one does not. His card shows him with gold, but I think it rubbed off, or was never really there. I can't clearly remember, but it looks like there is a little gold left on him, so it would be the former. It's weird, since all of these figures got a lot of wear, that only his rubber off. It's not too terrible though, he's still awesome.

The male GREEN ninja also has the same head as the grey and red ones (and the young samurai from above). Yes, it's a little annoying that the Ninja theme gave you so many of the same heads, but it's ok. You mostly only see their eyes anyway.

The female GREEN ninja (who Bricklink calls a "princess") has the same face as the White Ninja (who the LEGO catalog called a princess), except that my White Ninja's head has a little beauty mark by her mouth. I've never known if it was a misprint or not, but it looks cool.

And here they are altogether, all the different Ninja variations. The message: colors work for Ninjas, not KK2 knights. Colors make ninjas awesome, they make KK2 knights jelly beans.

Well, that's good, right? You've seen it, done, end of story.

Nah! Because when you get some ninjas together, they all want to join the party. It's mingle time!

Ok, picture time! No, I'm taking the picture, Red Shogun! Fine, you can take the second one. Ok… group up, group up. Ok, looks good. *SNAP*

Let me see that… you call that a picture Blue Shogun? That picture sucks! You can't even see some of them! That guy is waving his arms like crazy! That other guy looks like he's far away from the group!

Geez, ok, you do it oh "so-smart" one.

Come on, closer in you, ok… red guy on the left, move a bit to the right. No, not your right, my right, your left… oh, whatever.

CONCLUSION

Making these packs is among the coolest thing that LEGO ever did. They had completely exclusive, full-quality Danish figures, for quite a good price. Try finding any of these figures for the price of the set, it's going to be really tough. BUt it's not about that really, it's about the exclusivity, it's about that LEGO even cared to put out figures of a line that had had no new sets for at least a year (I don't know when those weird little polybag sets came out, though, I'm talking about the real wave). It reminds me of Young Jedi cards, the card game for Star Wars EpI (which I was quite into), where they put out some exclusive, expensive cards after the fact.

These sets are simply amazing. If the exclusive figures that are coming out this year (or next year) are full quality, then they will be like this, but I have a strong suspicion that full quality and exclusive minifigures is not the way LEGO rolls anymore. Well, we can all cherish the memory of the fleeting moment when LEGO went wild and gave us three exclusive, full-quality figures for one point six six six repeating dollars, or two dollars, for the lone figure. If you're lucky enough to have these guys, hold on to them, cherish them, because they represent something more than just awesome little plastic LEGO guys.

No ratings necessary.

[WhiteFang]

This review simply made my day a very bright sunny day, and I am very excited and happy to read this review of yours, in such a surprising presentation in this trio review!

I never had a chance to own any of these triple minifigs fiesta, and among these many beautiful Ninja and Samurai minifigs, there are a few couple rare ones pointed out by our beloved Clonie. The menacing Shogun Red Warlord, is one of the many priced samurai with its black armour and the Green Ninja princess. These minifigs, judging from all angles contain excellent details. I couldn't mind having to own many minifigs like these to add into my collection.

Seriously, I am speechless and loss for words, when there are so many beautiful images of close up shots.

Thanks for sharing this with us, and certainly one of best interactive review ever done!

Anyone keen to drop a vote in this "Favourite Ninja" topic which was created quite a long while ago.

And, it's is now on our beloved frontpage!!!

[Lordofdragonss]

Just tell me how to get...

How to get to GREEN Ninja street

Thanks for this amazing review Clone O'Patra ! Like always your review is great to read, and now I sooo want to get ninjaa in Newest Minifigs series!

With their dark colors and black katanas, I always used these guys as the bad guys. I know it's stereotypical, but I always used black katanas for bad guys and grey katanas for good guys, so these are definitely bad in my book.

That what she said :D

When I was younger I though that every bad character have black Catana or armor!

[the Inventor]

Great review, Clone O'Patra.

I sadly don't own any exclusive ninjas only the red ninjas.

I really like those green ninjas, but at a minimum price of over $22,- I think I shall never own them.

the Inventor

[RileyC]

I really like the ninjas but I just cant see myself buying some of them for a lot of money. I guess I will just wait until the new minifig packs come out later in the year but they probably wont be as good. You have done a great review and pictures are amazing!

[Big Cam]

Oh man, I see myself making some bricklink orders for mass ninjas, thee look great and I had no idea there were so many colors.

[yumiyoshi]

Envy is making me green...as a ninja!

Amazing minifig, awsome review.

I'm so sad that here there are not such a nice papers with those sales.

[Bobskink]

Nice revieuw.

It seems like your green Ninja's have a printing error:

VS

click to bricklink

Seems the gold is missing

[Legorski]

Ninja... Loved the theme, loved the figs, and know I envy you, I have to get more Ninjas from bricklink! 8D

[def]

Lovely stuff, the only ninjas I have were in black and grey, and I think they're well served by the colours, green and red. Thanks for the rare showcase!

I always pronounced it "sher-kin," but maybe that's because I'm a dumb American. Want to elaborate, def?

Shuriken would be just a little difficult to properly say for an English person, the Japanese "R" is a challenge. Hence 50 years of semi-racist R and L jokes about Asians. Japanese in English writing is closer to Portuguese and Spanish in phonetics. In English phonetics, try saying shoe-dee-cane really fast without stress on any syllable. It will sound about 95% correct. That concludes def's Japanese lesson for today

[Alldarker]

Great review!

The Ninja line came and went during my dark age, but I liked the sets a lot and bought a lot of the castles and larger sets last year (including some rasonably cheap MISB sets!). I've promised to review them in the Reviewer's Acadamy, but still hjaven't gotten around to taking picturs due to bad lighting conditions when I come home after work .

I was lucky enough to be able to win the pair of elusive green Ninja's on e-Bay with minifigs, stands and backing cards in perfect condition a couple of months back. Truth be told, they were slightly expensive... But definitely worth it. I always knew there was a male and female green ninja figure, but I was amazed to find that only now, after reading this review, have I been made aware of the different torso prints for these two figures !!! I never noticed this before!

Actually, I never even noticed the difference between the black ninja's torso print and the other colored ninja's' printing either. Duhhh.

Lastly, the review finally made me see that all these minfigs contained exclusive figures: I always thought only the green ninja's were exclusives.

Edited January 20, 2010 by Alldarker

[Clone OPatra]

It seems like your green Ninja's have a printing error:

Seems the gold is missing

No, it's not a printing error I believe. I mention this twice in the review:

There may have been shiny gold printing on their weapons on their torsos at one time, but I remember it came off quicker than usual.

As you can see, the grey, white, and red ninjas have shiny gold on their torsos, while the GREEN one does not. His card shows him with gold, but I think it rubbed off, or was never really there. I can't clearly remember, but it looks like there is a little gold left on him, so it would be the former. It's weird, since all of these figures got a lot of wear, that only his rubbed off.

Thanks for the comments everyone! Personally, I wouldn't suggest paying the price for these guys. If you weren't into Ninja at the time, then there's definitely no point in my opinion. And even if you were, well, it's up to you. It is nice to have a full collection of the colors, if you're into collecting.

[boba_jagoda]

Nice review. Love the group ninja pictures.

[Delta 38]

Interesting minifigs, but did they use pistols back then? =P

[Clone OPatra]

Interesting minifigs, but did they use pistols back then? =P

Yes, the Chinese invented guns in the early centuries c.e., and remember, Japan was still in partially isolationist, feudal mode into the 1800s. So pistols are not an anachronism.

[Bobskink]

No, it's not a printing error I believe. I mention this twice in the review:

Seems I've red your revieuw to fast, sorry about that.

Good to know I need to take care of my ninja's, they still have the metalic paint.

[def]

Yes, the Chinese invented guns in the early centuries c.e., and remember, Japan was still in partially isolationist, feudal mode into the 1800s. So pistols are not an anachronism.

Even when Japan was closed, there was still trade with Portugal through a single port in Nagasaki (as far from the capital as possible). Nagasaki still has a large area where the architecture is basically European. A lot of Portuguese guns made it to Japan.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nanban_trade#...tural_exchanges

[Zorbas]

What a great review! It's like a tribute to the Ninja theme. Excellent work Clone O'Patra!

The Ninja theme was introduced during my dark ages and to be honest, only after leaving dark ages behind me I realized that a Ninja theme actually existed.

The minifigs are just marvellous and it was one of the reasons for me to buy my first Ninja set.

Great torsos, great faces and absolutely great head-gear.

Modo arigato Clone O'Patra!

P.S

That pack of 6 photos in the end is just amazing!