As time goes on, I find the Ninjago line to be more and more perplexing. Somewhere in the fog of memory there's an image of the very first wave, with its more-or-less even balance of vehicles, dragons and buildings. And while these are all still present, the scales have tipped severely in the direction of buildings.

I was keen to get my grubby paws on this set then, Not only does it focus on small builds of charming traditional east Asian architecture but it's a brick box! Encouraging creativity and all that. Such a nice combo. Everyone's a winner.

Except your wallet.

I'll be frank, fifty-five of His Majesty's English Pounds is way too much, and that taints everything from here on. I was able to get it at a good £20 discount and still only barely feel I got my money's worth. The price-per-piece is high, higher than most other Ninjago sets these days, and nearly double what you'd get from a similar-sized Classic tub.

It doesn't feel that Lego really committed to the creative rebuild concept here. Inside the box are numbered bags, and small numbered instructions for each of the individual builds. It feels more like building any other Ninjago or branded set - build by rote, not by imagination. Which is fine when you've got a normal Ninjago mech or dragon or whatever, but this feels like a wasted opportunity.

As for what's inside the tub, it's mixed results. The vehicles, both Kai's car and Nya's bike, are absolute snores. You can get a better Kai-car than this for under a tenner, so even including this is a bit of a waste. Nya's bike is even worse, about as low-effort as it's possible to be. Their respective minifigs are just as dull, and easily picked up in other sets.

It's in the buildings that the set finally comes alive. You get a little tea pavilion, a small smithy and a larger two-story building for Wu to stand in and make quiet disapproving grunts as he watches people doing all that training. All three buildings are done in a similar style - white walls, brown wooden pillars, gold fences, dark green roofs and a few cheerful red highlights.

They look good. For relatively simple builds there's a lot of charm here. Certainly a more economical way to put together a home base for your ninja crew than forking out the £85+ you'd need for any other more substantial buildings (though I suspect they'd be better value for money). Still, a nice bit of shelter for Wu and crew to sit and relax between... whatever else they do. I have to be honest the lore of Ninjago lost my attention about 12 years ago.

It's also in the buildings that there's the most potential for taking them apart and rebuilding into new models, and to their credit Lego did include some pictures of ways the existing models could be rebuilt and adapted, but it doesn't go any further than you'd have on the back of every box during the 80s and 90s. I can't help but feel they could have taken this a lot further.

You also get to build some training equipment, including a spinny-log thingy, dummy and some poles to hop across. It's not bad exactly, but neither is it particularly interesting. It's here that the two unique minifigs come into play - apprentice ninja, wearing particularly boring outfits. The wooden katana they get to spar with end up becoming more interesting and unique than the spangly gold swords that have become so ubiquitous that they are literally used as decoration on Ninjago vehicles. Remember when a gold sword was big news? Ah, them's were the days.

As there's a Bone Hunter guy also included to give a proper foe for them all to fight, there's also a full set of bone weapons and accessories - old hat to anyone who has any other sets with these guys in, but interesting and exciting for a newbie like me.

Well.

I might be reading too much into this, but I kind of get the feeling that Lego were testing the waters with this set, trying out whether there was a market for more open-ended creative brick boxes that are tied to existing themes. If that was the case, it's probably already been judged a failure, as this big red tub has spectacularly failed to spark much real excitement. It's a real shame - if the price was more inviting, if the set was more geared towards creativity than fixed builds then perhaps it might have taken off. As is though, I imagine that this will be the first and last themed Creative ___ Brick Box we'll see.