Ninjago

Ninja Ultra Combo Mech

Four ninja vehicles that snap into one giant mech, and honestly that trick still delights.

Brick Rated Score

4.0/5

Set 71765 · 2022

Pieces1,105

Minifigs7

Year2022

Set number71765

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The verdict

This one hooked me the moment I clicked all four vehicles together and the mech just stood there, tall and heavy and grinning.

You get five separate builds, seven minifigs, and a transformation gimmick that actually holds up to rough play, which is rare. The individual vehicles are hit and miss (poor Jay's jet is the runt), but the combined robot is the reason you buy this, and it earns its keep. If you love Ninjago or big posable mechs, you'll get a lot of happy hours out of it.

Best for: Ninjago fans and anyone who loves a combining robot with real play value

The full review

What it is

Some LEGO® sets sell you one thing and then quietly overdeliver, and this is one of them. On the box it's a giant ninja mech, but open it up and you actually get five builds: four separate ninja vehicles, one for Kai, Cole, Zane and Jay, plus an enemy snake crawler for them to fight. Each vehicle stands on its own as a playable model, and then the real party trick kicks in. The four ninja rides click together into the Ninja Ultra Combo Mech, a chunky, heavy robot that towers over everything else on the shelf. If you grew up loving combining-robot cartoons, that first assembly is pure joy, and yes, more than one reviewer took one look and said the word Voltron out loud.

The catch

I'll be straight with you about the caveats, because they're real. The individual vehicles are uneven. Kai's car and Cole's driller are good fun, but Jay's jet scrapes the bottom, with Technic parts poking out awkwardly on the nose and a cockpit that leaves poor Jay looking like he's sitting on the flyer rather than in it. The mech itself is stable through the torso and arms, but the legs and feet run a little weak, so getting it to hold a dramatic action pose takes patience. The neck and head come out slightly undersized against that big body, and the stickers in this copy weren't die-cut quite straight, which always stings on a set this size. At the $89.99 launch price none of that is a dealbreaker, but it's worth knowing the vehicles are the supporting cast and the mech is the star.

Who it's for

So who lands well here. If you or a young builder in your life are into Ninjago, or you just love the whole combining-mech idea, this set delivers exactly what it promises and then some. The transformation holds up to actual play, the minifig lineup is strong, and the finished robot has real presence. If you're chasing a display-perfect model with flawless proportions and elegant standalone vehicles, you'll notice the rough edges more than most. But for hands-on fun per dollar, especially back at retail, this was one of the better Ninjago core sets of its year, and it's aged into a set collectors now hunt down. It won me over, weak knees and all.

The parts story

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

Building this is really five small projects stacked into one afternoon, and it takes a comfortable two and a half hours if you don't keep stopping to zoom the vehicles around, which you will. You start with the individual ninja rides, each in that character's color, so there's a nice rhythm of finishing a whole model, playing with it, then moving on. The enemy crawler breaks up the pace as a quick villain build. The best part comes at the end when you learn how the four vehicles fold and clip into the mech's arms, legs and torso. It's clever engineering that a kid can actually redo without instructions once they've seen it, and the connections are firm enough to survive being knocked over, which matters a lot with a play set.

On pieces, this is more about smart use of common parts than a bag of exotic new molds, though the value stacks up nicely. You're getting 1,105 parts for a $89.99 launch price, which put it among the more generous Ninjago core sets of 2022. The four ninja colors (red, black, white and blue) give you a genuinely useful spread of plates, slopes and Technic connectors for anyone who builds their own mechs. Cole's build carries chunky drills and big wheels that are handy elsewhere, and the whole set leans on ball-joint and Technic pin connections that make it a decent parts donor. Seven minifigs is a lot for the money, with the four core ninja, the cheerful Wu Bot, and snake baddies Cobra Mechanic and Boa Destructor rounding out the box.

Fun facts

01Nearly every reviewer who saw the combined robot immediately compared it to Voltron, the classic combining-mech anime, which tells you exactly what vibe the designers were going for.
02The set gives you five distinct builds in one box: four ninja vehicles plus an enemy snake crawler, and the four ninja rides transform and clip together into the single Ninja Ultra Combo Mech.
03It launched January 2022 at $89.99 for 1,105 pieces and retired at the end of 2023, and sealed copies have since climbed to roughly $150-160 on the secondary market.
04The seven-minifig lineup packs in all four core ninja (Kai, Jay, Zane and Cole) alongside the friendly Wu Bot and two snake villains, Cobra Mechanic and Boa Destructor.