Nexo Knights

Aaron's X-bow

A wildly shaped flyer from Nexo Knights' final wave, and honestly more fun than I expected.

Brick Rated Score

3.7/5

Set 72005 · 2018

Pieces569

Minifigs4

Year2018

Set number72005

Check price on Amazon

Affiliate link. We may earn a commission at no extra cost to you.As an Amazon Associate we earn from qualifying purchases.

The verdict

I came to this one a little skeptical, because Nexo Knights was never my personal corner of the LEGO world, and I walked away won over by how much play is packed into 569 pieces.

The X-bow is a strange crossbow-shaped flyer that opens up to drop Robin's little bike, and the whole thing just works in the hand. It is not a display piece and the trans-neon color palette is very much a matter of taste. If you or a young builder loved the show, this is a genuinely satisfying grab, especially now that it is retired.

Best for: Nexo Knights fans and 8-to-12-year-olds who want a flyer with real play functions

The full review

What it is

The thing that got me about Aaron's X-bow is how unapologetically it commits to being a toy. This is the airborne crossbow that Aaron flies in the show, and LEGO built it as a chunky twin-hulled flyer with rotating blades up front, a cockpit in the middle, and a rear bay that pops open to drop a smaller vehicle mid-flight. I picked it up half expecting a forgettable midsize box from a theme on its way out, and instead I spent a good while just swooshing it around the kitchen table like a kid. The 569 pieces come together quickly and cleanly, and there is a real sense of a finished machine at the end rather than a pile of greebles.

The catch

I will be straight with you about the caveats, because they matter. Nexo Knights lived and died on a very specific look, all trans-neon green, bright gold, and printed circuit-board detailing, and that palette is genuinely divisive. If you like restrained, realistic models this will feel loud and plasticky. The X-bow's silhouette is also just odd. It photographs strangely and it does not settle into a satisfying display pose, so this is a set that wants to be played with, not parked on a shelf. And it landed right as LEGO was closing the theme out in 2018, which gives the whole wave a faint end-of-the-road quality even though the set itself is perfectly good.

Who it's for

So here is who I would point toward it. If you or a young builder in your life was into the Nexo Knights cartoon, this is one of the more complete sets from the run, with a strong figure lineup and functions that actually do something. Kids around 8 to 12 will get real mileage out of the dropship gimmick. If you are a display-focused adult builder chasing clean lines and realism, this is not your set and I would not pretend otherwise. But for play value at its price, and as a retired piece of a theme people are starting to feel nostalgic about, it holds up better than its reputation suggests.

The parts story

What the build is actually like, and the pieces worth knowing about.

Building the X-bow is a brisk, confident experience rather than a technical challenge. It splits into a few clear sub-builds, the twin hulls of the flyer, the drop bay mechanism, Robin's little Knight Raider bike, and the tiny Critter Flyer, so it never feels like a slog and it is very approachable for a younger builder working solo. The engineering behind the opening rear bay is the highlight, a simple hinged release that lets the bike shoot out, and it is the kind of function that gets used over and over.

The standout elements here are really the figures and the printed pieces. You get Aaron Fox and Robin Underwood in their gold armor, both with sharply printed torsos, plus VanByter No. 307, a villain figure exclusive to this set that army-builders and completists chase specifically. There is also a small brick-built CyberByter. Nexo Knights was always generous with printed shield tiles and scannable NEXO Power shields, and this set carries several of those app-era printed parts. The trans-neon-green pieces are the divisive ones, but they are also useful recolors if you build sci-fi, and at roughly nine cents a piece the value was strong.

Fun facts

01VanByter No. 307 is exclusive to this set, which is a big part of why 72005 gets picked up by minifigure collectors on the secondary market.
02Aaron's X-bow was part of the TerrorBytes wave in early 2018, the final season of Nexo Knights before LEGO retired the whole theme that year.
03The set shipped during the NEXO Powers app era, when the printed shields could be scanned in the companion mobile game to open up in-game abilities.
04Originally 49.99 dollars, the set now commonly trades around 70 dollars used, a lift driven mostly by the exclusive figure and the theme's retirement.