Temple of Airjitzu (70751) - Our Next Project!

This is always the most exciting part of starting a new build - the UNVEILING!

Next up, we return to our Ninjago sets, continuing on with the Temple of Airjitzu. This set is now retired and we were lucky enough to pick it up right before retirement at our local Lego store. It wasn't even on our radar as something we wanted to build but it caught our eye as we browsed around. It was the second last set in the store and was even on sale as it was close to retiring. Definitely a good buy!

From the box itself, you can tell that it continues with the high amounts of detail that we've come to love and expect from Ninjago series sets. There are a plethora of mini-figures (12 I believe) which is really spectacularly for a relatively small set like this one.

It didn't take long for our expectations to be met. We started off building one of the smaller buildings (the one on the right side of the temple) and immediately got a sense of the detail and the overarching Japanese theme of the set.

The building is clearly a marketplace. On one side of the shop are baskets of baked goods - a variety of baguettes in a large bread crate, a basket full of either cookies or mini-pies and another basket filled with bars of some type (maybe chocolate bars?).

 On the opposite wall is a crate of apples - both green and red - and a barrel of fish with a large sink where you can rinse off your fruit or clean your fish before heading home.

In true Asian fashion, the market also has live chickens that you can buy and take home for supper. YUM!

This all fits into a fairly compact area. The 2 anchoring studs right by the chickens leads me to believe that this building connects up to something else. What, exactly, remains to be revealed ...

 

Statue of Liberty (21042) - Final Thoughts

This set was a pretty big departure from the sets we normally tackle. We've never been much interested in doing any sort of architectural sets. However, it was a good experience to try it out and see what we've been missing (or not missing haha).

Overall, we were fairly impressed with how well the Statue of Liberty was captured - not easy to do considering how small scale the model is compared to the actual statue. One area that we would have liked more detail on was the face. In the model, it is simply a flat tile piece and I think so much more could have been done with that as the face is pretty central to any humanoid model.

The use of the mini-figure hairpiece for the torch was ingenious and a great way to avoid having to make a new piece while still capturing the flickering flame effect.

All-in-all, it was not a bad build. The base was pretty straight forward while the body of the statue proved to be more of a challenge and required some diligence to detail.

That being said, I don't think we will do another architecture series set. From what I've seen, the facades tend to be quite smooth and not really accentuating too much intricate detail (unlike something like Ninjago City for instance). However, if you are a fan of various famous landmarks and buildings, the architecture series could be your cup of tea.

We finish off this post with views of the set from all 4 angles.

Statue of Liberty (21042) - The Lady is Done!

We polished off the last bit of the statue and got her all ready for display! Given how small the scale is on this model, the final rendition is actually surprisingly detailed. The last "side" of the body went quite smoothly, maybe because mom had gotten used to the mounting of the pieces or maybe it just happened to be the easiest of the sides.

Here is the lady with the iconic tablet and torch (which is actually a blonde-gold hairpiece from a minifigure haha).