Ninjago

Creative Ninja Brick Box

A big red toybox of Ninjago that keeps giving long after the last brick is placed.

Brick Rated Score

3.7/5

Set 71787 · 2023

Pieces544

Minifigs6

Year2023

Set number71787

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The verdict

This is one of those sets where the sum is warmer than any single part, and I mean that kindly.

There is no showpiece build here, no centerpiece to photograph, just a generous spread of little dojo bits, two vehicles, six minifigures, and a training course that a kid can rearrange fifty different ways. If you want a display model, keep walking. If you want something a child aged five and up will actually play with for months, this earns its keep.

Best for: Parents building a starter Ninjago collection for a young fan

The full review

What it is

The thing that won me over was not any one model, it was watching how much this box actually holds. You get three little buildings, an armory stuffed with ninja weapons, a ninja car, a motorbike, and a training obstacle course with three interactive stations, all of it packing away inside a bright red brick box when the day is done. This was the first Ninjago set to arrive in a proper storage box, and that framing tells you exactly who it is for. It is built to be tipped out, mixed up, rebuilt wrong, and swept back in. The training gear is the charmer for me, with log steppers set at different heights over little flame elements, a spinning training dummy armed with a sai and a sword, and a dual spinning punching bag that a kid can actually whack.

The catch

I will be straight with you about where it falls down. Nothing here is going to stop you in your tracks. Every model is small, the builds are quick and gentle, and if you are an adult who loves clever engineering or a shelf-worthy centerpiece, you will finish this feeling like you snacked rather than ate. It launched at around 60 dollars for 544 pieces, which was fair rather than generous, and now that it has retired the sealed price has drifted up toward the 100 dollar mark, which changes the maths quite a bit. At full secondary pricing I would think harder. At or near the old retail, the six minifigures alone carry a lot of the value.

Who it's for

So the honest steer is this. If you are setting up a young Ninjago fan, roughly five to nine, this is a lovely first foundation, six figures and a pile of parts and vehicles that slot straight into whatever they already own. It plays beautifully alongside the bigger Ninjago City style builds as training-ground filler. If you are an adult collector or someone hunting a display model, this is not your set and never pretended to be. Buy it for the play and the storage, not the wow.

The parts story

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

Building this is a relaxed afternoon rather than a project. The seven booklets split the work into bite-sized chunks, which is genuinely clever for a household with more than one kid, since several people can build a booklet each in parallel and nobody fights over the bag. Each individual model goes together fast, and the difficulty sits right where a five to nine year old wants it, satisfying without ever getting fiddly or frustrating.

There is nothing here that will send a parts collector running, but the value is quietly practical. You get a deep supply of Ninjago weapon elements in the armory, a healthy spread of common structural bricks in useful colors, and the two vehicles break down into plenty of small reusable plates and tiles. The BrickLink part-out value sits comfortably above the original retail price, so as a source of everyday building parts plus six figures it holds up better than its plain looks suggest. And the box itself is a real, sturdy storage bin, which is a part in its own right.

Fun facts

01This was the very first Ninjago set to ship inside a reusable brick storage box, a format LEGO usually reserves for its Classic line.
02The set includes seven separate instruction booklets, one per section, so a whole family can build different parts at the same time.
03It retired not long after its 2023 release, and sealed copies have since climbed toward roughly 100 dollars against the original 59.99 RRP.