One the first (if not THE first) Ninjago sets I got.I always liked the swing-wing function that revealed the huge blades. It's also got that hot-rod engine piece, which is always a plus for me.

It's always annoyed me that Jay doesn't have his shoulder armor in this set. I know you'd have to remove it to fit him in the jet, but still...
Those giant gold blades under the wings are all bent on mine. Still a cool set, though. Makes me feel old. I can still remember the five Serpentine tribes: Fangpyre, Venomari, Constrictai, Hypnobrai, and Anacondrai. At least, I think that's them.

@SolidState said:
" @Brickchap said:
"If Lego can make realistic fighter jets in Ninjago, City, Creator etc. (some of the City ones are VERY clearly based on real life operational military jet fighters, just recoloured and called 'airshow jets'), then I really don't understand why we can't have more vintage aircraft in similar situations? (eg there was a Creator non-military version of a WW2 Mosquito bomber). Indeed there are plenty of non-military vintage aircraft that could be used for inspiration. "

Realistic huh? I'm still waiting for a military to make a jet where the wings fold back to reveal 4 giant gold blades myself."

Uhhhh 3451 10226 40049 10024.

Wow, this set looks basic compared to the ones we have now.

Looks across room at shelf...:D, right there; next to the ADU's "Chunky Monkey" of a chopper...my 'air force' shelf if you will...

Seriously; if the Zane and Nya's 'spinners' got me interested in Ninjago, this set fully grabbed my attention. Jay may switch to...mechs...cars...motorcycles; but sooner rather than later, he's a "flyboy" again, in a new variant of this little beauty...

And one day, when I figure out how to anchor it; I'm going to do...a diorama I guess: Jay's fighter held like a paper airplane by Nya's Samurai X mech (also 1st ed) in a 'wind-up' stance. Why? Cause in my mind/head cannon I can see a scene something like this:
Nya/S. X.: "Are you sure about this?"
Jay: "Not as sure as I was five minutes ago..."

I remember always wanting the sets with the Ninjas to include a hair piece to swap out with the hoods.

Ah, the Storm Fighter. I owned one since 2012, sold it to make space, and repurchased it in 2020. One of the first of many to come.

I wasn't that impressed by it at the time, but now I really like it because of its simplicity. Without the wings the middle section is as narrow as two studs at points on the bottom and it uses a few 2x4 bricks. It always struck me as classic to have those in your build despite all the new things like the blades and those 1x1 round tiles (which debuted at the time). Still, it's not blocky because of the excellent use of wedge plates.

Another thing I initially didn't like was the lack of weapons on both the jet and for Jay. I'm not that concerned about that anymore. In the show these vehicles are purely transport (except for Cole's) and if needed the blades can deter enemies. You can always use the blades from the cockpit for Jay if you need to, too.

Add in that cute little shrine and Snappa and it feels like a nice package. The visual balance on the shrine is just nice.

One of many of really nice models that have only one place to sit and no cargo space :(

@MCLegoboy said:
"Hehe, his name's Jay, and his color's Blue, and it only took until like the latest Season of Ninjago for them to make that Bluejay joke. At least, that's all I remember, maybe it happened before, but it's been forever."
It’s not a joke that travels well which may be why it doesn’t come up much. Blue jays are native to parts of the US and Canada only. I was an adult before I saw my first blue jay. My guess is that most kids - Ninjago’s primary demographic - don’t know what a blue jay is.

Got this for free in like 2015 and then bought the reimagined version in 2019. Both were great sets but I never watched Ninjago so I ended up selling both. Still though I liked the wing opening function for them.

I realise that what I'm about to say here goes for basically all of the ninja and their colour-coded vehicles/animals/animehicles, and while we're at it, all other action-based toys as well, but - why does Jay keep needing new jets? Does he keep crashing them? Is Jay even a licensed pilot? Isn't Jay just a highschooler who's slightly obsessed with martial arts, should we really be trusting him with a multi-million dollar experimental military aircraft when he's not even allowed to legally drive a car? And if that's the case, why do we keep giving him new jets to destroy? Should we be blaming Jay here? Are we ourselves not responsible? Are we not enabling this poor delinquent? Are we not the real villains?

Anyway, this is a cool jet. I suppose that outweighs everything else. Strap yourself in, Jay, you're going for a ride.

Not many sets have used those large wing plates in blue.

Just this set + a 3865 : City Alarm game in 2012, and then much later in 2021 41936 DOTS

Handy for stowing all your over-sized Ninja blades, although missing some landing gear popping out like the creator planes. Plane body design was cool, just felt a roof slope for a plane nose was a bit 1970's and could be vastly improved.

@Brickalili:
Like bringing a knife to a jet-propelled gun fight…

@brick_r:
Are you aware of that new clear stanchion?

https://brickset.com/parts/6400117/brick-2x4x13-w-4-85-holes

@Binnekamp:
Yes, I find that plowing into them with a jet plane does wonders to deter my enemies…

@Zander:
21301!

@Binnekamp:
"How do they get the parts? Who knows? Jay's parents own a junk yard, so I presume they either get deals or are allowed to just pick out stuff when needed."

I kinda feel like that right there does an adequate job of explaining why they go through so many vehicles…

I remember seeing this set in the Lego catalogue as a kid, and that being the first time I noticed the new 1x1 round tile pieces. At the time I thought they looked very "un-Lego" and I thought they should've just used 1x1 studs. Of course I've gotten used to them by now. Hard to believe that was 11 years ago...

@Binnekamp said:
" @Ridgeheart said:
"I realise that what I'm about to say here goes for basically all of the ninja and their colour-coded vehicles/animals/animehicles, and while we're at it, all other action-based toys as well, but - why does Jay keep needing new jets? Does he keep crashing them? Is Jay even a licensed pilot? Isn't Jay just a highschooler who's slightly obsessed with martial arts, should we really be trusting him with a multi-million dollar experimental military aircraft when he's not even allowed to legally drive a car? And if that's the case, why do we keep giving him new jets to destroy? Should we be blaming Jay here? Are we ourselves not responsible? Are we not enabling this poor delinquent? Are we not the real villains?

Anyway, this is a cool jet. I suppose that outweighs everything else. Strap yourself in, Jay, you're going for a ride."

This is a magic jet literally made with the legendary Nunchucks of Lightning and Jay's imagination. If he loses concentration it will disappear. As someone already explained in a post above this... the Nunchucks were melted. So no more jet. Jay didn't really get a new vehicle in the original run of Ninjago, but after it was uncancelled the ninja getting new vehicles every other wave became a thing.
Btw, the highschooler thing is specific to the 2017 movie universe. The Jay from this set is of vague age, but at one point the team actually became teachers themselves.

The Watsonian answer:
From memory from the show: Some vehicles were too specific to use again (who needs the ghost-busting Jay Walker One after the ghosts are all defeated?), some disappeared from the show after they weren't needed anymore (Jay's Electro Mech, which inexplicably re-appeared for one scene a season later), some crashed almost as soon as the ninja used them. Yet more were so location-specific that they are only available there (such as the Prime Empire vehicles, which are a thing in the game only except for the final battle of that season).
At least as of season 8 (which was a soft reboot) the vehicles are usually still around if they haven't been crashed, just offscreen in the Samurai X cave underneath the ninja's dojo.

As for why there are so many? Some are hacked, stolen, gifted, built, found or apparated into existence. It helps that the team always had at least one more passive team mechanic character that would reveal that they had built stuff in between seasons. First this was Nya, then Cyrus Borg, then Pixal. How do they get the parts? Who knows? Jay's parents own a junk yard, so I presume they either get deals or are allowed to just pick out stuff when needed. Oh, and Borg is also the Ninjago equivalent of Steve Jobs or Bill Gates, so he's rich.
Oh, and the sets often feature vehicles that don't really appear in the show. This is often the case for the smaller side builds.

The Doyalist answer is: The vehicles are there to sell toys and are usually written into the show to do something but are often not really needed afterwards. Orignally the ninja were the ones with buildings and dragons while the skeleton army had vehicles. Then the ninja each got one vehicle and a land and air team vehicle. And after the uncancellation the new sets would often feature vehicles needed for one or only a handful of scenes. If the writers need a specific vehicle type they sometimes re-use older ones, but since the uncancellation they got around this problem by just spamming more new vehicles into the theme.

And with CORE we now even get entire waves of extra vehicles that aren't canon unless the show writers want to include them.
"

Oh, okay. Thanks. That genuinely does help, I've seen the all the movies including the Ninjago one, but I think I've seen fewer (and less) than one episode of the series.

@PurpleDave, Sure but 21301 was aimed at teens+, not kids as Ninjago is. Also, it has visual appeal regardless of whether or not you know that the bird is called a blue jay. So the fact that LEGO released a model of a blue jay in 2015 would not help the understandability of the Ninjago joke.

@Slithus_Venom said:
"It's always annoyed me that Jay doesn't have his shoulder armor in this set. I know you'd have to remove it to fit him in the jet, but still...
Those giant gold blades under the wings are all bent on mine. Still a cool set, though. Makes me feel old. I can still remember the five Serpentine tribes: Fangpyre, Venomari, Constrictai, Hypnobrai, and Anacondrai. At least, I think that's them."

I remember that the armor would even influence my purchases as a kid. I viewed the characters without armor(especially in this wave) as incomplete. They have gotten a bit better, but they still have sets that should and don't include the armor. And yes, you did remember the correct names for the tribes!

wait... 2012 was eleven years ago?!? I now feel old, and have the sudden urge to yell at kids to get off my lawn while shaking my cane at the sky.

Something they still need to do to this day. They seem to only include hair as an alternative in playsets. Although at this point, Kai's hair hadn't been made.

@Ridgeheart said:
"I realise that what I'm about to say here goes for basically all of the ninja and their colour-coded vehicles/animals/animehicles, and while we're at it, all other action-based toys as well, but - why does Jay keep needing new jets? Does he keep crashing them? Is Jay even a licensed pilot? Isn't Jay just a highschooler who's slightly obsessed with martial arts, should we really be trusting him with a multi-million dollar experimental military aircraft when he's not even allowed to legally drive a car? And if that's the case, why do we keep giving him new jets to destroy? Should we be blaming Jay here? Are we ourselves not responsible? Are we not enabling this poor delinquent? Are we not the real villains?

Anyway, this is a cool jet. I suppose that outweighs everything else. Strap yourself in, Jay, you're going for a ride."

The Ninja are only High schoolers in the Lego Ninjago Movie. Other than Lloyd who is a special case, the TV series Ninja seem to be more early 20's. Kai and Nya are running a business when we first meet them for example. Cole and Jay are pretty clearly past the age of school and are out on their own, with different relationships with their parents. Zane's actual age is unclear for obvious reasons. Lloyd's actual age is around 11-12. He was still a kid when we first meet him. He was magically physically aged up through Timey Whimey hijinks. And yes most vehicles get destroyed, although some get rebuilt occasionally.

This was the first Ninjago set I got. I actually got it to mod it into an Alien Defense Force Jet to go with my Alien Conquest stuff. I kind of fell in love with the line from it and started collecting them.

I liked this set so much that the remake was a no-brainer!

It’s such a great set. It’s one of those modern sets that I know my kid self would have loved to death.

@Binnekamp a most impressive analysis/exposition on the Ninja and their vehicle fleet. You know, I half wonder if whenever they defeat various villain factions, they recycle the materials of any leftover enemy vehicles into their own. And of course they presumably part out any of their own vehicles that get totaled or cease to be of use once a particular threat has been dealt with.

As of the Crystalized wave, Lloyd and Nya are the only Ninja not to have gotten at least one jet aircraft of their own. Wonder if Lego will ever get around to it.

@PurpleDave: I...was unaware of those. Definitely going into a 'parts list' down the road...

@brick_r:
I picked up a few just to test them out. With only two studs at the top, they probably either need to be anchored on studs with that 2x4 base, or be pinned together in pairs. But I had to cobble together a bunch of flight sticks to "fly" Santa's Sleigh with a full team of 9 reindeer, so that's one thing I'm considering using them for.

Wow, good memories of this one. I vaguely remember having trouble with the transformation on this and 9441. I think one of the wings on the jet wouldn't pop out as far as the other. Still, fun to look back on.

I got this so that I could do a set up with all the Dimensions sets, and their larger counterparts. I was even going to try making large versions of the ones that didn't have a set.
That project has unfortunately fallen by the wayside, and I now face the prospect of having to buy expensive sets like The DeLorean and Ghostbusters cars if I ever revive that project. Not to mention designing things like an upscaled worm thing for Beetlejuice, or whatever Starfire's Mech was supposed to be.