Nike is known for its strong connection to several major sports, but their most prominent partnership is with basketball. Nike sneakers or trainers, as we call them in the UK, have been shaped to improve players’ performance. Although they are now more closely associated with the skater community, Dunk’s journey began on the basketball court. Which is why all three of the LEGO® X Nike Collection sets have focused on the Dunk shoes and basketball. This set is inspired by a basketball player leaping towards the basket to sink a slam dunk and offers the ability to customise the set with additional stickers and extra elements. With the Nike X LEGO Collection adding two new sets next month, here’s a closer look at the Nike Slam Dunk set.
Product Details
Set Name: Nike Slam Dunk | Set Number: 43010 | Pieces: 809 | Theme: Nike
Number of Bags: Bags x 7 | Instructions: Paper booklet + Builder App | Stickers: Sheet x 4 | Characters: N/A
RRP: £59.99/69.99€/$69.99/109.99AUD/89.99CAD
Availability: LEGO Stores & LEGO Online from September 1st
Unlike the other two LEGO Nike-themed sets, this one doesn’t make the Dunk sneakers the main focus of the set. Instead, it takes a slice of a basketball court and features a basketball player in the midst of leaping towards a basket. This gives it a dynamic appearance. It shares similar traits with the other Nike X LEGO sets, mostly in terms of the unique colour palette used. It features flashes of pastel shades that mix well with the use of darker coloured elements, especially on the player.
The build is focused around a large basketball net. This tall pole, mounted on a small section of courts, serves as the connection point for almost every other element of the build. As well as featuring the basketball net, it’s used to display a scoreboard, crowd and the leaping basketball player. Because of this, the set is built in a lot of small sections. I did find the build started to get quite tedious once it got to adding the player. Those little sections started to feel like random masses of bricks, but once they are all brought together, they do look quite cool.
If you’re a fan of stickers, you’re going to love this set as it features four sheets of them. The reason for so many stickers is the ability to customise the set. Once you’ve completed the court and basketball net, you are offered the choice of build variants. These give the player different styles such as the Dunks they are wearing, hairstyle and the kit they are wearing. The different builds will leave you with some leftover elements. You can always ‘sticker up’ those leftover pieces and switch them out to give the player a different look, but you may need the instructions to do so, especially to change the player’s head section.
The large use of stickers isn’t just focused on the player; a few of them are used to add detail to the basketball net. Many of those stickers are foil-based, giving them a shiny finish. Although these look great, they are really thin compared to standard stickers, making them tricky to apply. So I’d recommend taking extra care when adding these stickers to elements, as lifting them once stuck down can easily damage them. Once applied, the foil stickers offer some fun Easter Eggs, especially those found around the scoreboard. The collage basketball-style banners highlight the inception of both the LEGO and Nike brands. You’ll also notice the set number hidden within the match foul data and a familiar collection of numbers used for the time remaining.
As with all of the Nike sets, they may have limited appeal; I’d say that’s more so the case with this particular set. Its unique style may not capture the attention of many, but it does make an interesting display piece. It’s just a little tedious to build. It has a lot of little fiddly sections to build, and although the stickers offer an impressive level of customisation, they are tricky to apply. I will say that I like the fact that the link-up with Nike is offering more LEGO sets. The Adidas partnership became too mired in random pieces of clothing with little relevance to the LEGO brand. If this sort of set appeals to you, it launches tomorrow.
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This set was provided to BricksFanz by the LEGO Group for review purposes. The thoughts within this review are those of BricksFanz and do not reflect those of the LEGO Group or Nike. Providing a set for free does not guarantee a favourable opinion of the set.
