Set Review ➟ 71816 LEGO® Ninjago Dragons Rising™ Zane’s Ice Motorcycle
Ninjago motorcycle collectors rejoice, the latest bike is here.
Sparing no expense, LEGO went all out and included exactly one sticker with this set.
LEGO also went to insane lengths to make sure the one tiny rubber band was extraordinarily well protected and easy to find.
The set has one minifigure, Zane. He is a flat-silver robot-looking Zane with no regard for motorcycle safety…he has no helmet…but maybe the metal hair will protect his head. His head and torso are printed on two sides and his legs are printed on the front side. His hair and mask hide some of the detail on his head.
So. The bike. It certainly has the Ninjago aesthetic with the long blades sticking out the front of it, and it has the handy kitana-holders incorporated into the back seat. The gold-white-blue color scheme exudes cool and the new wing parts convey a real feeling of some brittle ice. There is a gimmick where when you push down on the tail of the bike, the ice wings open out wide, so that's fun.
Then there are what strike me as odd things.
Zane has to stand in the seat to ride the bike. He can’t really sit because his lower body would interfere with the rubber-band dingus that makes the ice wings open and close. He can magically sit if you attach his hands to the handlebars and bend his legs and position him such that his bottom is above the rubber band…but his butt is floating and not sitting, per se. Standing, the figure is kind of a long way from the handlebars.
The 35578 tire is used on the back. It’s an asymmetrical design with one side solid and the other side with voids. Maybe this decision had more to do with the diameter of the wheel providing the proper height for the wing gimmick to work than it had to do with aesthetics, but I always find it odd when these asymmetrical wheels are used on a motorcycle…the two sides looking different.
On the front of the bike there are long blades. They are soooo long. Combined with the gimmick that makes the wings do their thing, the pitch of the blades when the wings are forward is downward and the tips are very low to the ground, so there is minimal clearance. Heaven forbid that Zane encounter any sort of hill or pothole as the blades will impact and Zane will go ass over teakettle. I hate to think what might happen if he encounters a chicken trying to get to the other side of the road. And with the wings extended, the long blades only move slightly from chicken breast to chicken neck height.
With the ice wings out, they are just about perfect minifigure decapitation height. But the set does not come with an additional minifigure to decapitate. Or chickens. I do not know if these wings are intended to be minifigure decapitators or wings for flying or what, but I feel the play value would have been enhanced if there were something for these wings to run into or knock over or something.
Being that this is supposed to be an ice motorcycle, ice and motorcycles really don’t mix. Maybe that's the point of the wings, to provide stability on the ice. Maybe? I have no idea what might be providing traction, though, because the near-bald front tire would just slide.
Being a small set, there isn’t content to justify a Randolph T. Fielding Absolutely Administrivia Section in this review, but there was an extra light bluish gray pin and an extra mask in the set.
Summary
Zane had better keep to freshly paved roads with this bike lest it become a road grader and he acquires some severe road rash. The moving wings are fun and the gimmick is clever, but unless you have some spare chickens or penguins or minifigures or something for them to hit, the gimmick doesn’t live up to its full potential. Bottom line is that this is just another brick-built motorcycle in a long line of brick-built motorcycles. That said, the wing gimmick is certainly refreshing compared to being just another motorcycle with stud shooters or disc shooters or other shooters or no shooters.
Disclaimer
Thanks to LEGO for kindly providing the set for review.
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