LEGO Nike 43021 Nike Dunk Trickshot and 43010 Nike Slam Dunk – Double Dribble [Review]

Hi friends! This is Jarrett (@wilderland.builds), here to talk about the two newest additions to the LEGO/Nike collaboration that kicked off earlier this year: Nike Dunk Trickshot and Nike Slam Dunk. I’ll preface this by saying that I’m probably not the target customer for these sets, but I am a pretty serious basketball fan and was looking forward to seeing if they could change my mind and capture my interest with these sets. Let’s jump in!

LEGO 43021 Nike Dunk Trickshot | 454 Pieces |  US $39.99 | CAN $49.99 | UK £34.99

LEGO 43010 Nike Slam Dunk | 809 Pieces | US $69.99 | CAN $89.99 | UK £59.99

Unboxing

My first observation was that the box art rules. In a world of soulless black boxes, I really appreciate seeing colorful backgrounds and dynamic designs on a LEGO box. I think the boxes look cool and also represent the color palette and size of the final builds well.

Unfortunately, I opened both boxes to find a total of 22 plastic bags and 1 small paper bag. I recognize that these types of enterprise transitions can take a while to implement, but I’d really hoped to start seeing less disposable plastic in new sets by this point.

43021: Nike Dunk Trickshot

I built 43021: Nike Dunk Trickshot first. With just 454 pieces, this was a fairly quick and uncomplicated build. While the build techniques are simple, everything comes together really nicely in the end. 

This set came with a sticker sheet featuring 8 stickers. That’s not an extreme amount by today’s standards, but I was personally hoping for more printed parts due to the nature of this licensing deal. There are two very nice printed parts later in the build, and as always I’m curious as to why some are stickers and some are printed.

My Favorite Parts

This set comes with some really cool basketball-related parts for the build, as well as a variety of great newer sloped parts and two high-quality printed pieces.

The Build

With Bag 1, we start on the Nike Dunk sneaker. There are some pretty nice sloped parts in this bag and throughout the entire build, and the way they are used to shape the shoe feels really good.

Bag 2 introduces our one minifig in this lineup, a Nike-dripped-out basketball player. The minifig comes with two head options for customization, which is a nice touch. The faces are only one-sided, which is slightly disappointing given that the hat piece covers the entire back of the head. I think the torso printing is fine, though nothing flashy, and I do think not having some sort of printing on the legs is a missed opportunity. The Nike hat/hood combo is a pretty cool piece and I think the highlight of the minifig. We also get our basketball for this set, which is an incredibly cool piece.

With Bag 2, we finish the Nike Dunk sneaker build. It’s quite small, but the shaping feels really nice. Again, there’s nothing too fancy here from a build technique perspective – but I feel like they captured the Nike Dunk shape really well at this scale. The back of the shoe has a stand for the minifig that actually connects them in a way where they cannot be removed unless it is disassembled, which is an interesting choice and something I’ll talk more about later.

Bags 3-5 focus on the basketball court, hoop, and backdrop. The color palette here is really cool. They’re not really colors that you typically see together, and not any that I associate with a basketball court, but they compliment each other well and allow the sneaker, minifig, and hoop to stand out on the finished display.

In bag 3, the court comes together in two parts using some fun SNOT techniques, and I was actually pretty impressed with the shaping. We’re also beginning to build a technic function that will allow the minifig to dunk the basketball.

Bag 4 introduces the basketball net piece, which is a first for me and a really fun piece to have. The highlight of this entire build for me was the basketball hoop and backboard. It’s fairly simple, but perfectly shaped. If you know me, you know that I absolutely love brick-built designs, and I honestly don’t know if a LEGO backboard gets any better than this.

Our final bag, #5, gives us two large printed parts that are very high quality and thankfully don’t have to be applied as stickers on circular pieces (and subsequently give me crippling levels of anxiety). We finish the backdrop and attach the shoe to the technic function.

The end result is a minifig, atop a large Nike Dunk sneaker, that can move toward the basketball hoop to ‘dunk’ the ball when a technic lever is pushed. The minifig is permanently attached to the shoe, unless it is disassembled. It’s an interesting concept, and it works well…but I’m not really sure it’s the best option here given how good these builds are on their own.

I think this set struggles from not really having an identity. Is it a display piece? Is it a playset? I think there is a group of people, sneakerheads or sports fans, that would love the Nike Dunk build on its own at this scale or a larger scale. I think there is also a group of people, including kids, that would love the basketball court and minifig dunking mechanism. I’m not sure that a minifig on top of a giant shoe really makes it work for either of those groups.

Interestingly enough, one of the final pages in the instructions shows that you can remove the shoe from the base, place the basketball directly onto a portion of the technic build, and attempt to launch the ball into the hoop as a sort of minigame. This is honestly incredibly cool, and feels like it could be its own set….but it feels like an afterthought here.

I made a small modification to this set to fix the minifig to the base and allow them to “shoot” the ball when you use the function for that purpose. 

I think something like this would’ve helped the set feel more cohesive.

Overall, I had a fun time building this set! I think the actual build is pretty cool, the sneaker looks good and the court and hoop are really nicely done. I would have liked for the shoe and court builds to have made more sense together, but it’s a fun set nonetheless.

The Good:

The build techniques are simple but purposeful and capture the shapes they’re portraying very well. The color palette is really nice and introduces some great parts in cool colors for MOC building.

The Bad:

This set feels like it can’t decide if it’s a display piece or a playset, and as a result it doesn’t really feel like either.

Final Thoughts:

If you like the way this set looks on the box or in these images, I think you’ll enjoy it. It’s a fun and relaxing build, and it does look nice in the end. If you’re looking for something fun for the kids to play with, I don’t necessarily think this is the one without making some modifications or just ditching half of the build.

43010: Nike Slam Dunk

The second set, 43010: Nike Slam Dunk, contains 809 pieces and is much taller and imposing when compared to the previous build.

My Favorite Parts

This set comes with a cool printed part for the backboard, some nice tiles and slopes, and some other fun parts that are used throughout the buildable character and base.

The Build

Once again, I opened this box to a surprising amount of plastic bags…but this time, that wasn’t the only shocker. It was the 4 sticker sheets with a combined 49 stickers for this set. I try to have an optimistic mindset about stickers (despite really not enjoying them), but that’s a tough pill to swallow. This set features some customization options and not all of the stickers have to be applied to the finished model, but the set does encourage customization and that’s just entirely too many stickers.

Bag 1 starts building the foundation for the set, which is a very small basketball court. It’s fairly simple, but there are some nice details like breaking up the tiles to represent the wooden boards on a traditional basketball court. They’re unfortunately not very visible or obvious in the final build, but it’s nice to see here.

Bag 2 introduces a miniature crowd, which is another simple but cool build. I’m sure it’s not anything brand new, but I can definitely see people using this style in large MOCs to simulate crowds. At just two 1×1 tiles per person, it’s got to be one of the more affordable ways to fill your stadium build!

Bag 3 gives us the basketball hoop, scoreboard, and banners. The backboard is pretty cool, and thankfully printed, but I have to say I prefer the brick-built backboard from the Nike Dunk Trickshot set. The rim is unfortunately very empty, and it feels like a big miss not finding a way to represent the net…which is a pretty iconic visual feature for a basketball hoop. The other additions are stickers, but contain some cool details. A little easter egg I noticed while building: The 09:37 on the game clock reads LEGO when turned upside down. That’s fun.

In Bag 4 we build a stand to support the large buildable figure. The way it connects to the base is interesting, but the actual look of the stand felt a bit uninspired. 

Bag 5 and 6 focus on the buildable figure. The box shows this figure as modular and customizable, but the instructions really kind of make you choose one of 3 different options, and then you’re left to reverse-engineer and flip back through pages if you want to make customizations.

I decided to go with the character with the lime green jersey parts, just because it was my favorite of the colors.

The actual buildable character leaves a lot to be desired. There are some unfinished portions on the build, like the 7 exposed studs in a row on each leg. The hands and head are lacking in detail, and there are a lot of joints and parts where internal colors are showing that really stick out from the finished character.

My initial thought was that the character looked this way because it was meant to be playable. It wasn’t clear to me from the box, but the character is actually fixed to the base of the build in three different areas, with both technic and studs. Their knees are locked in place, so even if you remove them from the base, they’re still not playable. You can move the arms some to change the way they’re dunking the ball, but that’s about it.

Side note: I still always appreciate seeing a pink brick inside of a buildable figure’s head.

The final scale is a little confusing. There are a lot of different things going on, and the result is that none of it really feels connected. I imagine it’s supposed to simulate a close-up view of the dunk with the arena in the background, but the proximity of everything (the banners, the crowd, the court, and the player) just really doesn’t give that perception.

The Good:

This set features some cool micro/midi builds, like the crowd and the basketball court.

The Bad:

This set came with 49 stickers, which is unreasonable. Worse still, the majority of them are mostly transparent, which means they show air bubbles, smears, dust particles, and are generally just tougher to apply. This set looks like it should be playable or posable, but it’s really not. If it’s not going to have play functions, I think the character and the build itself could have used more detail and better build techniques to make it a better display piece.

Final Thoughts:

I recognize that I’m not the intended audience for this set, but I still would have liked to see some more play functions or poses whether it’s for play or display. If it’s intended to be purely for display, there are some unfinished areas that could be much more polished.

Additional Thoughts:

All in all, these were both fun sets to build. I don’t know that they necessarily captured my interest in the theme (that basketball-head minifig, though….), but I think people that are interested in these sets from a licensing perspective will enjoy them. I can safely recommend the Nike Dunk Trickshot set to anyone who might be curious about the theme. As for the Nike Slam Dunk set, between stickers, lack of polish, and an unposeable figure, this one whiffs. 

I look forward to seeing what the response is and what modifications or alt-builds the community might come up with. The framework is there for a playable and pose-able buildable figure (see the below photos with the removal of the fixtures and some very careful balancing), and I’m going to continue to make modifications and have fun with it. Basketball mech, anyone?

LEGO 43021 Nike Dunk Trickshot contains 454 Pieces and will be available on September 1 for US $39.99 | CAN $49.99 | UK £34.99.

LEGO 43010 Nike Slam Dunk contains  809 Pieces an will be available on September 1 for US $69.99 | CAN $89.99 | UK £59.99.

The LEGO Group provided The Brothers Brick with an early copy of these sets for review. TBB with products for review guarantees neither coverage nor positive reviews.

The post LEGO Nike 43021 Nike Dunk Trickshot and 43010 Nike Slam Dunk – Double Dribble [Review] appeared first on The Brothers Brick.