Ninjago

Hydro Bounty

A submarine crammed with ten figures and more play features than it has any right to.

Brick Rated Score

4.4/5

Set 71756 · 2021

Pieces1,159

Minifigs10

Year2021

Set number71756

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The verdict

This one won me over faster than I expected.

You get a genuinely fun 1,159-piece build, ten minifigures, and a submarine that folds, opens, shoots, and spits out a mech and two mini-subs. At its old $139.99 price it was one of the best-value Ninjago sets in years, and honestly it still earns a spot even now that it's climbed on the aftermarket. If you love a swooshable vehicle with real playability baked in, you'll be grinning.

Best for: Ninjago fans who want a big, playable vehicle and a pile of figures

The full review

What it is

There's something a little cheeky about the Hydro Bounty, and I mean that as a compliment. It's a submarine version of the ninja's classic flying ship, and the designers gave it a sail. An actual sail, underwater, for no functional reason at all. When the LEGO® set's designer Niek van Slagmaat was asked why, his answer was basically "because it looks rad," and you know what, he's right. That spirit runs through the whole thing. This is a big, confident vehicle that wants to be played with, not parked on a shelf and admired from a polite distance.

The catch

You're getting 1,159 pieces here and ten minifigures, which is a lot of value for the box. All six ninja show up in their scuba gear (Kai, Cole, Jay, Lloyd, Zane and Nya), and they're joined by the fish-faced villain Prince Kalmaar, a Maaray Guard, and two little Wu Bots. The sub itself is stuffed with things to fiddle with. The cockpit opens, the wings fold, the front pod detaches and transforms into a battle suit, and there are two mini-subs tucked away inside. The control room even seats four, with a pilot's chair, two standing workstations, and a rear-guard spot. It's the kind of set where you keep finding one more thing that moves.

Who it's for

I'll be straight with you about the rough edges. The palette is very dark-blue and teal, and there's a stretch in the middle of the build where you're placing the same sort of panels in the same sort of colour and it drags a little. The two spring-loaded shooters are the standard low-effort kind that everyone ignores after five minutes, and a sail on a submarine is adorable but silly. The bigger catch today is that it retired back in 2023, so the friendly $139.99 launch price is long gone and sealed copies now run well north of two hundred dollars. If you love Ninjago vehicles, want a genuinely playable centrepiece, and can find one at a fair price, grab it, because this is one of the strongest sets the whole Seabound wave produced. If you're purely after display value or you're squeamish about aftermarket pricing, this is an easier one to admire from a distance.

The parts story

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

The build starts with a fairly technical core, framing out the hull and the interior control room before the exterior panelling goes on, so the early going feels satisfying and structural rather than fiddly. The mid-section is where you slow down a bit, layering all that dark-blue and teal cladding, but it's broken up nicely by sub-assemblies: the two mini-subs, the little mech that lives in the bow, and the folding wing mechanism. That mech is the clever moment, the front pod pops off and reconfigures into a battle suit, and it tucks back into the nose so tidily you'd never know it was separate. By the time you finish the sail and the tail you've got a chunky, one-hand-swooshable sub that holds together well.

For parts value, this one earns its keep. The standout is the trans-light blue canopy used for the mini-sub hatches, a recolour that was exclusive to the Hydro Bounty at release and still hard to find elsewhere. Beyond that you're getting a healthy haul of dark-blue and teal curved slopes and wedge plates, plus the usual Ninjago printed control panels and the transforming pod's greebly bits. Ten minifigures in one box does a lot of heavy lifting on the value math too, and with a price-per-part around 11-12 cents at retail, the sum of the parts genuinely justified what you paid.

Fun facts

01The submarine sports a sail for absolutely no aerodynamic reason, and designer Niek van Slagmaat's stated justification was simply that it looks rad.
02The Hydro Bounty was the largest set in the 2021 Ninjago Seabound wave, tied to the show's underwater season featuring the Merlopian villains.
03The trans-light blue canopy piece used for the mini-sub hatches debuted as an exclusive recolour in this set.
04It retired in mid-2023 and sealed copies have since climbed well past double their original retail price on the secondary market.