Saturday, January 16th, 2021 at 9:21pm by Andrew, BZPower News Manager
Today we're continuing our look back through the years at Ninjago, turning our focus to 2011 and 2012. We have some prototype sets, sculpts of new-at-the-time elements, some of the best selling Ninjago sets, and more. Read on to check it all out!
2011
We're starting off with one of the top ten products in 2011: 2260 Ice Dragon Attack. While it may just seem like some stock photos, if you look closely they're actually some of the unedited pictures taken for the box art and other promotions. I'm not sure I've ever seen this sort of look behind the scenes like this.
2507 Fire Temple was another of the top ten sets in 2011 and we get the same sort of behind-the-scenes look at the product photography. It's not quite as exciting as the dragon, but still cool.
The was no information detailing if 2505 Garmadon's Dark Fortress was another best-seller or not, but we're sharing this raw set photo here anyway.
Next up, we have two sets of prototype pieces - the very first dragon head and the Skulkin head sculpts. I love the brick-built skull that gives an idea of what they were going for, although they did get a little less creepy by the time they were done.
Finally I guess LEGO wanted to remind us of the Nintendo DS game LEGO Battles - Ninjago, which was a thing ten years ago.
2012
We're starting off 2012 with some prototypes and what would become the final set 9444 Cole's Tread Assault, which went through some very varied color schemes.
It's interesting seeing the product photos for 9445 Fangpyre Truck Ambush and the use of transparent bricks to manipulate the set's suspension. We also get to see some prototypes of Zane's little ice-ski vehicle.
The 9449 Ultra Sonic Raider was a top ten product in 2012 as well as a, 'historic topseller,' although LEGO doesn't really clarify as to what that means.
Not only was 9450 Epic Dragon Battle one of the biggest sets in 2012, according to LEGO it is one of the top 5 products ever and a historic topseller. Make sure you take a good look at the prototype iterations of the Great Devourer!
Here we have two of the first sketches of what would become the five snake tribes in Rise of the Snakes.
LEGO shared some great artwork from this era of Ninjago; the first is titled, "Inner Peace," and the second is, "Opposition."
Finally, we have some prototypes of the snake minifigures - it's neat to see the progression of designs as they honed in on the final product.
That wraps up our second installment of Ninjago history, and there's still a lot more to go! We'll churn these out as quickly as we can, with at least one per day hopefully. So keep checking back right here on BZPower!
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