Summary

One of the most memorable scenes in the Ninjago Movie involves Garmadon and his army invading Ninjago City, with Garmadon's personal vehicle being a massive walker resembling a Great White shark. It was one of those elements in the movie that I hoped (and almost knew) to be turned into an actual Lego set. It's lack of on-the-shelf availability for a reasonable price in the Netherlands made me postpone buying the set; however, the Creative Personalities (set 40291) gift-with-purchase set induced me to finally bite the bullet and buy garmadon! Garmadon! GARMADON! from the online Lego-shop. And overall I am happy I did.

The hot noodle dog is a with Nomis (the guy in the hot-dog-suit) is a fun little build, and an easy one as well. The cart is actually quite solid, but unfortunately also prone to tipping over. Good thing is, there are numerous spare hot dogs to store underneath. With Nomis and Nancy, the two best minifigures have been mentioned. The other minifigures are OK, with Garmadon and Lloyd actually being quiet common.

The Great White Mech is a fun build, that IMHO looks quite good. The building of the core is OK, with a lot of colourful bricks. This is subsequently clad with sand blue SNOT techniques. In the end, the Great White looks very good, IMHO, though - compared to other Shark Army vehicles - it is on the small side. On the other hand, when put against the likes of Ninjago City Docks, it looks more to scale. As such, in the end, I think the designers have found a happy medium in size and looks, and details of the Great White Shark mech. I also think it makes for a good play set, snapping mouth, and two shooters, and just generally walking around the whole thing.

Overall, I think this is a good though somewhat expensive set. At RRP it is on the upper range of what I would think acceptable.

Building experience

Overall, this was quite a fun build, which took me about 2 hours to complete. The age range given by Lego is 9 - 14, and I do think this is more or less appropriate. Building the legs is probably the trickiest part of the construction. There are a number of stickers that IMHO add quite a bit to the looks of the set. The most tricky, by far, are the black-and-yellow danger stripes, as they have to be placed around cylindrical shapes. If you are looking for sand blue pieces of various shapes and sizes, this might be one set to look for.

The cart is easy to construct, and a nice variation on the vending-carts that have appeared before. The construction of the shark army mech was more fun than I expected. It starts with constructing the core structure, and the mouth. This is pretty much all brick-stacking, with a minute bit of Technic thrown in (used to attach the legs later).The designer has done a nice job of going back and forth between front and back of the mech.

With bag 4 the legs are added. The construction of them is an interesting mix of Technic and regular Lego bricks. When fixing the legs to the body of the Great White, it does lean forward (though stands stable); the body is not lined up horizontally. Initially I feared that this meant that the Great White would always be posed leaning forward or backward. Thankfully that was remedied when working on the next bag, when the dorsal fin and the tail are added. The changed weight distribution means that the body of the shark mech is posed horizontally. A great job done by the designer!

The final bag finishes up the details, and in the end you are left with the biggest and arguably greatest mech of the whole Ninjago Movie line. One thing I really liked in the construction is how the designer has managed to make the fins 'studs-out' on both sides, without them becoming too thick, and keeping them in proportion to the rest of the shark. The two halves of the fins are solidly connected by a few pieces.

Minifigures

There are six minifigures included in this set: Garmadon, Frank and Hammer Head as thugs, Nancy and Nomis as Ninjago City citizens, and Lloyd as the sole Ninja.

Lloyd is fairly common, currently listed as being found in three other sets of the Ninjago Movie line. According to the same listing, this rendition of Garmadon is found in two other sets at least. One-on-one comparison suggests that they are also identical to the Lloyd and Garmadon found in Ninjago City Docks (set 70657), although there Lloyd's print seems finer (but of an identical design).

This version of Hammer Head is slightly different from the two other Hammer Head minifigures (all of them unique to their respective set). The Shark Army thug closely resembles two other renditions; this one is also found in Piranha Attack (set 70629).

Nancy and Nomis are truly unique to this set. Both have two face prints, though Nancy's braces make both prints look almost the same. I like her torso print. Nomis' frightened facial expression is awesome. He has not torso print, which is understandable as it is completely hidden by his 'hot-noodle-dog'-suit.

The build

Overall, I think the designer has done an awesome job for this set. The Hot Noodle Dog Cart is small, of sufficiently odd design yet constructed well enough to fit the Ninjago Movie theme perfectly.

The Great White Mech is a good representation of the outlandish mech from the movie. It has been scaled down enough to be fun and be more than just 'big'. Yet it is big enough to leave an impression within the Ninjago City landsacpe (the top of the dorsal fin reachers roughly the bottom of the roofs of the tallest structures in the Ninjago City Docks set). The designer also has done a very good job covering up the core structure (with all kinds of bright coloured bricks) of the mech, and making the sides studless, or studs up on both sides (with the fins).

Even the Technic-heavy legs look pretty good, with enough features to distract the eye away from the ugly holes in the sides or the blue pins. Even te trigger handles for the shooters are fairly unobtrusive, though easy to fire by accident when handling the shark. The mouth-moving mechanism is well integrated. So are the pins, that can be used to store Garmadon's katanas when he is operating the mech.

If there is one negative about the design, it is that it is hard to pose the mech in a dynamic pose.

Play vs display

IMHO this is as good a play as a display set. The Hot Noodle Dog cart helps with devising play scenarios. I would guess kids would have a lot of fun walking or swimming the shark around, and trying to bite everything around them. The mech be handled fairly easily, though it is on the heavy side. Kids might also have to try out a few ways to hold the mech, since there are few places that are obvious to hold the mech. Most of the details of the mech are fixed quite well, and unlikely to come off during play. It is also fairly easy to get the minifigs in and out of the mech.

I think this mech would also make a great display set, either as a stand alone, or as part of a display with the Piranha, Manta Ray Bomber and Jelly Sub. It looks interesting from many angles, has no 'ugly' side, and is also of fair size. Its ridiculousness just immediately draws one's attention.

The verdict

Being in the extremely lucky position to have built all sets in the Ninjago Movie range of sets, I can say that - not looking at price - I consider the Great White Mech a serious competitor for best mech in the series, the Green Ninja Mech Dragon (set 70612) and the Quake Mech (set 70632) being its only competition. And this is where the price of this set rears its ugly head: the Quake Mech offers almost 400 more pieces for an identical same cost, while the Green Ninja Mech Dragon is 30 euros (or more) cheaper. Looking at bang-for-buck, this set might rank lowest of those three, IMHO.

This set, IMHO also offers a lot of opportunity for play, as well as display. Is it a bad set? Definitely not. In many ways it is not even a badly priced set, but the others have just an awesome Price Per Part, and offer such an awesome value for money.