Wheel-chair lift, working cable car, a gazillion
minifigures, lots of different rooms and shops, tons of references and easter eggs, crazy
piece usage and last but not least, a working LEGO flushing toilet. The new LEGO Ninjago City Markets has it all
and so much more! But before diving into it the box art features
the logo of the new Ninjago theme/show, Dragons Rising, with a matching illustration on the
interior flap here, in the back the usual features and functions highlights and to the
other side the measurements of the set. For your reference it’s built on top of
two 32x32 baseplates and is an antenna element taller than the tallneck. The minifigure lineup has a whooping 21 characters
included. The sushimi chef, boat vendor and street vendor,
Borg Store Employee, Dojo kid and tea vendor with a cool decoration on the torso element
featuring a dragon on the front and back, and the baker has a new hat element I wasn’t
familiar with. Crazy thing was the set came with two of these! We have the news crew with Gayle Gossip and
Vinny Folson, Chammille, Dareth with an arm cast and Racer Seven, clearly a Bionicle fan
with a Tahu mask torso, and the actual Bionicle 8534 Tahu set on her hands, with the canister
packaging as well. We also have the marshal of the Ninjago City
Police Hounddog Mcbrag, tech genius Cyrus Borg with his wheelchair and the criminal
Miss demeanor with her flamethrowers. Finally on the Ninja side of things there’s
Detective Zane and Blacksmith Kai holding a transparent orange katana, maybe a new piece
he’s forging, two of the new dragons rising characters Arin and Sora and finally Lloyd
and Nya featuring these cool new elements for the head balaclavas. There’s the top element, and the bottom
one which also holds the katanas in the back. The alternate head prints look really good. Onto the model itself, it’s really impressive
to look at especially the cable car, that is probably the second most hyped detail about
this whole thing, with the first being the flushing toilet for sure. The access to the cable car is made through
this platform on the ground floor with great access for the wheelchair with all the ramps. Loading and unloading passengers is a bit
hard though as there’s limited space to handle the thing, at least for me with my
big adult hands. At the top here there’s a crank connected
to a spool and string that needs to be turned to move the cable car up. I would have liked the gearing to be slightly
different to allow for a faster movement but it’s ok. Now as the cable car is nearing the end of
the trip there’s this platform in the way that needs to be raised like so, so that the
trip comes to an end. Unloading passengers is way easier up here
as there’s more space to handle the minifigures. Afterwards you can get down using the stairs
here, or the wheel chair lift, which is triggered by this simple yet clever mechanism. Back to the ground floor there’s a lot to
explore like the tea vendor stall, the boat vendor by the river or the street vendor over
here. I need to highlight a new piece on the street
vendor stall though, this weird window frame with a diagonal bar piece. Looks like an interesting element and there’s
a few black ones as well in this balcony up here. The bridge over the river is beautifully detailed
with an interesting choice of elements but what surprises me is the way it’s angled
perfectly to fit the LEGO system. In the corner there’s the Smithy and this
shop here is the bakery. It is however much easier to see them from
the back. Under the furnace here there’s another new
element that looks like a stove dial of sorts, at least that’s how it was used in the bakery
stove as well. I do like this a lot, that you slide out the
entire bakery shop like this for easier access. Usually in Ninjago City sets you lift the
entire floors to access the rooms, but in this case, with the mechanisms up here that
would be impossible while keeping everything working so this solution is great. Lots of things are being baked here and the
crazy thing for me is the use of the Harry Potter wand boxes as steps for the stairs
leading up to the bedroom above. Talk about nice part usage. The bedroom I mentioned also slides out in
the same fashion as the bakery. To the side there’s another bedroom, maybe
Kai’s, though to access this one we need to remove a wall rather than sliding out the
whole thing. On the opposite side of the set there’s
the last shop on the ground floor, maybe a place that sells beauty products and perfumes? To access this one we remove the entire wall. I like how the greens are growing outside
of it and inside we can find another of those dial pieces but this time around in teal. In the levels above next to the access to
the cable car lies the Borg Store selling cell phones and tech items. Through the back of the store there’s a
simple lift mechanism that leads to what I believe to be Cyrus’s office due to the
lack of chairs for people to sit. I quite like the brick built red beam structure
here, and the overpass details leading to the karaoke club like the asian gate, the
teal flower pots or the use of the garage door elements in transparent neon green for
guard rails. This time around to access the karaoke club
we do need to lift the entire floor though. There’s the karaoke corner, a counter, a
super clever build for the pool table and a jukebox on the corner here. There’s also a dartboard on the wall that’s
a sticker, and as you’ve probably guessed by now the set does feature a lot of stickers,
72 to be exact. Not surprising considering the norm for Ninjago
City sets, but a bit of a pain to place. Going around the back we get to the last floor
for the tiny sushimi place with a cool brick built octopus on top holding the fairly recent
chopstick element and a new to me pot/frying pan piece. Now, finally we get to the highlight of the
set, the toilet. Inside you have all the details you would
expect from such a room and the toilet seat's weird shape was achieved with the use of two
of these weird LEGO plates that are used in other LEGO sets to hang builds on a wall. The flushing toilet is however what you all
want to see right? Pushing this technic element here, down goes
the LEGO poop, all the way to the river. The way it works however is pure genius. The trigger that we can better see in the
back, lowers this tile making it so that the pieces go through this hole leading to this
void space in the back on the karaoke bar. From there it falls into this assembly built
under the overpass rolling down to this hole that runs inside this support over here that
leads to the river. WOW. It’s probably really weird being this excited
about a working LEGO toilet but the truth is, I am, and once you try it out, you will
be too. Removing all those layers of floors we get
to see Arin and Sora’s room. Being a Ninjago City set means it can be connected
to the previous 3 sets of this sub theme. There’s connection points on both sides
though if you do on this side at least, that will make it hard for the platform triggering
mechanism to be accessed. The river matches both the style of the previous
sets and the tedious process of putting it together unfortunately, and the iconic Ninjago
City railings with lots of stickers for signs are still here. That’s another great thing about these sets
I feel, the amount of hidden references and easter eggs that make the building experience
that much more enjoyable. There’s a reference to Mindstorms 2.0 in
this sticker here, Jay’s Titan mech on this one, The Temple of Celebrations set here,
a bionicle reference on Racer Seven’s torso, the movie posters of this set reference the
pirates theme and the Haunted house set from Monster Hunters, and there’s a lot more
that I probably missed, but my favorite has to be the missing goat sign, a little nod
to the LEGO goat element that was released once in a single LEGO set that fans have been
asking LEGO to re-do for years. Building techniques and clever piece usages
are another great highlight for Ninjago City sets in my opinion. I’ve already covered all the mechanisms,
the angled bridge and the pool table, but the windows on the karaoke bar were also super
clever, the sideways use of the fence element for windows, bright green katanas for plants,
door elements, book elements or shields for roofs and awnings but sometimes things as
simple as clips turned upside down for flower pots really surprise me. What's also surprising is the price. With more than 6000 pieces, not counting the
200+ extras, this set will only cost $370 which is completely bonkers. Similar piece count sets such as the Harry
Potter Hogwarts castle, Rivendell and UCS Razor Crest cost $100 more at minimum. Having built all 4 of these, Ninjago City
Markets offers the best value in my opinion, so if you’re in doubt about getting any
of these, Ninjago City Markets is the way to go, I personally really really like it. Just make sure you have enough space to display
it before buying it starting June 4th. Use the links below to do so if you wish to
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reviews coming up real soon.
