This is my least favourite NRG ninja minifigure. I don't really like that shade of blue.

Does anyone else think that the spinners would have been better if TLG had incorporated some kind of zip-cord mechanism to make them spin? Or even copied say Beyblade to a degree? I mean, spinning these is a little tougher than a regular top; so any help would have been, well, helpful...:)

Oh heck yeah! The NRG minifigures were awesome at the time (before they immediately walked back "true potential" in the story because they narratively made that claim way too early... and kept making more and more random "energized" minifig variants for spinners / gimmick sets...). Zane isn't my favorite of the bunch, but this and NRG Jay both have metallic blue on them, which is really striking. Heck, not to get too far into embarrassing weeds, but waaaaay back when I wrote a self-insert fanfic at the time (thankfully never published online), I made metallic blue the accent color for the ninja team (of IRL friends, because what else do you do in a self-insert fanfic?)

The transparent spinners were so cool at the time, much like with 2256 the other day. I still have my collection of spinners, back when I sought to get most of them for their pretty colors and minifigures, but I fell off of the theme when "Season 2" was half filler and I realized I wasn't actually the target demographic. I wouldn't fully dip back into collecting Spinjitzu sets until the Legacy ones, which I did get most of... then promptly stopped regularly buying Ninjago again.

@GSR_MataNui said:
"Man Ninjago has been eating good in Random __ of the Day lately.

Zane was the Elemental Master of Ice and White Ninja

NRG forms are glowing-floaty forms the Ninja obtained when they unlocked their True Potential and Elemental Powers. "

Let’s not forget that unlocking their true potential involved confronting a difficult truth about themselves. In Zane’s case, that meant learning that he was, in fact, an artificial life form, and that his “father” created him to be a protector and disabled Zane’s early memories at the moment of his own death.

@SearchlightRG said:
" @GSR_MataNui said:
"Man Ninjago has been eating good in Random __ of the Day lately.

Zane was the Elemental Master of Ice and White Ninja

NRG forms are glowing-floaty forms the Ninja obtained when they unlocked their True Potential and Elemental Powers. "

Let’s not forget that unlocking their true potential involved confronting a difficult truth about themselves. In Zane’s case, that meant learning that he was, in fact, an artificial life form, and that his “father” created him to be a protector and disabled Zane’s early memories at the moment of his own death."

Did they ever explain how Zane had those powers... or the capacity to have a spiritual awakening in the first place... despite being a machine? Did they ever outright say he has a human-enough soul for spiritual / chi (not the Chima kind) / hereditary elemental mastery to be passed down to him?

I'm reminded of RWBY where they had a robot character of their own, Penny, and they eventually explained that she had a soul both artificially sustained but also partly bestowed from her creator giving some of his life force to her, and then *she* eventually got soul-linked winter-related powers... and heck, even despite the explanation, how her soul works and how the magic system works when read together raise further questions they didn't address (or probably even think of).

Did they ever touch on that in Ninjago? Again, I fell off before the end of Season 3.

My favorite autistic robot (this isn't derogatory, NickonAquaMagna said its fine)

@MCLegoboy said:
"Zane's the best Ninja, all other opinions are invalid."

The only Ninjago media I've ever consumed is TLNM (so I know very little about their characterization), but I sort of both agree and disagree. I consider him to be at the top, but side-by-side with Nya. I like Zane because he's a white robot with ice powers (guess who my favorite characters in Bionicle and Her Factory were!), and I like Nya because she breaks up the boy's club.

Maybe every alternate day is just Ninjago now. See you the day after tomorrow for some sort of dragon or snake-themed robot!

A lot of Ninjago sets recently

My first NRG ninja and my first spinner. The story arc used to set up this form in the show made Zane my favourite character.

That said, I wish the figure was something brighter like aqua instead of its curent color. It looks a bit too washed out for a 'glowing ice' effect.

I meant “fully possible” in my last comment.

Ugh. I wanted this one so much! I never was able to find it and that was before the days of ordering sets online. This one was always gone.

You spin me round and round

NRG Zane was nice. He's one of the first figs I had with that fancy metallic blue printing.

@brick_r said:
"Does anyone else think that the spinners would have been better if TLG had incorporated some kind of zip-cord mechanism to make them spin? Or even copied say Beyblade to a degree? I mean, spinning these is a little tougher than a regular top; so any help would have been, well, helpful...:) "

They did do that for some of the more recent spinners (the 2022 "Spinjitzu Ninja Training" sets were probably the most Beyblade-like in execution).