Yo how's it going! It's your local neighborhood shark chick located within the headspace of a somewhat more local Vulpix chick, but I decided I wanna do little toy reviews! So I'm gonna do 'em! One of our several shared hobbies is buying and messing with toys, mainly Legos and Transformers. Jinx Tinx isn't going to strictly be these two things but they're probably gonna be what turns up the most often. SO right now I'll hit up something we recently got: Cole's Earth Dragon of the EVO variety!
Admittedly, we've only just barely gotten into Ninjago in particular when it comes to our Lego palette, our one set before this one being the Jungle Dragon. We don't know much about the story or lore or whatever, we just picked this up because there's a freaky bone scorpion guy and the bullish brute of a dragon looks kinda adorable.
To our understanding, the whole point of the EVO line is that you get to play with your toy sooner because you'll more or less have a "complete" set halfway through the building process, and the remainder of said building process is just spent EVOlving the set ya already got.
...As better demonstrated by the back of the box. Which is alarmingly minimal compared to usual Lego boxes. It's probably to best get the point across but still. It's a neat idea for a play feature, actually! We probably would've been really into that as a kid, constantly tearing this thing down back to its base form just so we can upgrade it again in whatever made-up scenario we got in our head.
The front of the box is a bit more photogenic, if a little bit basic looking in terms of Lego boxes. You got the dragon itself and Cole fighting against a strange skeleton scorpion (Skeleorpion?) on a predictably earthy background. Japanese-style temple off in the background for good measure. Seems like standard stuff for the Ninjago setting. That said the graphic design itself is pretty slick, with the stark white bold border making the presentation pop.
What plops out of the box are four baggies of parts, the usual instruction booklet, and a sheet of four stickers. Bag 4 is notably lacking in pieces but it's got some pretty big ones, and it's pretty much entirely just the extra-fancy bits of the earth dragon, not even having to take a wild guess there.
Confession, we meant to take pictures of what the piles of pieces looked like for each baggie, but we forgor. But out of bag one is Cole With Stray Piece of Lint Next To His Eye. The leg printing is a little cleaner than this picture is making it look, all we could really say is that the arms are looking a little bare compared to everything else. Apparently, arm printing is pretty rare but for a prominent character figure like this, it feels like it stands out.
Something that took us a bit by surprise was how there's a bit of a story going on in the instruction booklet itself. It isn't super evident off of these two stills, but... still! Something about this style really calls Bionicle to mind in a way that's hard to pin down. The sight of photo-accurate lego pieces rendered in a comic book-ey art style? Maybe? Or are we just showing our age for no good reason?
And sure enough, by bag 2, we have a complete Earth Dragon. I swear it's finished in this photo, it's just hilariously front-heavy. You'll get a better view of it in a sec, but its hind legs are comically tiny.
The build process itself is mostly nothing special so far, but assumedly the real meat of the idea is coming in the second half here. That said, there's a lot of those tiny spiny pieces that are a real pain on the fingers to stick into their little pinholes, and the less of those the better, tbh.
But either way, it's a solid dragon, even when it is incomplete! When it comes to dragon designs, it at least stands out a bit with how bulldog-ish it is in proportions and gruff it is. And as painful as they are, the bony spines are a neat touch too.
Then the story in the booklet continues, with Cole n' Earthy apparently searching for some strange bone sword before a ghoulish skull creature, AKA "Bone Scorpio" jumps out with it and attacks them. This is a bit of a one-sided fight, isn't it? Like yeah, Scorpio's got supernatural powers of course, but Cole has a friggin dragon on his side.
But because of the kasa hat, I gotta cast Explode at his face to get a better view of his head printing. The goofy underbite add-on is a funny little addition to a minifig, and the printing is once again solid. Plus hey! Neat sword!
At which point the EVO gimmick is now going to kick in. Despite the dragon being "complete", we now must build them more body parts!
And everyone knows when you gotta upgrade your dragon, you must cleave it in half! Like, we know they make certain internal parts bold bright colors so that they stand out when you're building the thing, but the fact that they made the dragon's innards red and marrow white doesn't help how this looks a little bit gruesome by Lego standards.
One dragon tummy, coming up!
Honestly though, I think I like it better without the added midsection. Now its proportions are wonkier than they already were and it just emphasizes how oddly lob-sided its body is. Those hind legs do NOT get upgraded to be longer, by the way.
And now it's got a tail to throw in too. A fine tail indeed. Not much to say there, other than it's complete! Again!
This evidently gives it fire breath though? Dunno what a midsection and tail have to do with that. Extra lung capacity? I guess? And shouldn't it, I dunno, cause tremors or something instead? Like sure sometimes in elemental circles fire and earth get melded together but fire and earth are separate elements in Ninjago! Oh well. It's nitpicking.
Miffed about Cole's pet lizard setting his ass on fire, Scoprio is forced to buy a new ass.
And what a funky ass it is! It's a cool, bony simplification of a scorpion, and looks the part of an at least slightly more formidable bad guy for our heroes to take on. But now that we're at his namesake, I'll just say the name "Bone Scoprio" is weirdly close to "Skull Scorpio", at which point I feel like I'm being gaslit with the illusion of Bionicle's presence.
Horrified at the sight of this rambunctious revenant sitting down, Cole and Earthy look in total awe. I know, right? Where can I get a chair with legs like that?
Will say though, Scorpio's complete form does at least up this set's articulation game a bit, thanks mostly for having so many legs. Cause otherwise you just have regular minifig articulation, and the Earth Dragon's bizarre body distribution problems mean it has trouble being in any pose that isn't All Fours On The Ground.
All that's left is bag 4! Which gives Cole a new buildable weapon in a nifty big ol' hammer. I can't help but always be impressed when they pull off the look of something at such a tiny scale. Like yeah that's a hefty hammer right there!
It's just lame that the handle isn't long enough for him to be able to hold it two-handed. I guess not that you could do much with it being two-handed other than hold it sideways, but the option would be nice!
Meanwhile, we slapped some little winglets onto your dragon's arms. How's it feel to be technically a wyvern now? Underwhelming, given these wings look a bit nonfuctional? Yeah, a little bit.
And now, a saddle! I guess I was a little surprised at just how much this dragon saddle piece was just like. A piece. Mostly. But hey, now Cole can have a fair fight of chair vs chair.
The best addition is probably these humongous horns going on, really completes the big guy's bullish look and adds a lot of neat definition to its face! Nice!!
And the little cherry on top is this cool banner, which may or may not give superpowers or something. Again, don't know a dang thing about the lore. There's just an old dude we vaguely recognize here now, though I'm guessing it's meant to read as a flashback?
And with that, Cole wins for having the cooler chair. How necessary were the wings, tail, and horns when all Earthy did was set him on fire again?!?
And apparently, if you REALLY wanted an assortment of bony battlearms, this set is the go-to, cause it comes with loads of different weapons to stick on. Basically anyone, I guess. Guessing these ghoul guys are a bit more amassable in other sets? Maybe you can hand them to those guys? Or give them to an army of Battle Droids, cause why not.
Overall, this set is decently solid. The dragon is cool and compact, which is fun, the main problem is it's very much relying on a child-like imagination to fill in the gaps. Like, I can't really get the dang thing to strike a cool pose. Or. Sit down. Or anything, really. It's designed to stand mostly at its default position and open and close its mouth. It's got some personality and flare to it, but I guess you'll just have to be okay with it just standing there and looking nice.
Honestly what stole the show a bit for me was the little comic panels in the instructions. Like, it feels like more sets than just these EVO ones aught to have this. It wouldn't work out for EVERY set, but surely there'd be a number of sets for these story-based themes where you could somehow make the building process its own story rather than just being brick jrps being bashed together.
Either way, it's decently solid, if a little clunky! The unique build process might justify us checking out more EVO sets in the future, cause it turned out to be decently fun to follow along with, even if the little comic insertions have the narrative complexity of a box of Lucky Charms.
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