LEGO Fortnite 77073 Battle Bus – Is this a “one bus” problem? [Review]

With a selection of nine minifigures, LEGO Fortnite 77073 Battle Bus wants to pack the Battle Royale with plenty of fighters, from Brite Bomber to Meowscles. But is this blue beast more than just a collection of all the Fortnite figs from the theme? You’ll have to read on to find out! With 954 pieces and available right now for pre-order with shipment on October 1st, LEGO Fortnite 77073 Battle Bus retails for US $99.99 | CAN $129.99 | UK £89.99. You may also be able to find it from 3rd party retailers on Amazon and eBay.

The unboxing

Sporting a large LEGO Fortnite logo, the front of the box shows the titular bus floating in above the arena. It’s ready to drop off the nine named characters listed on the bottom-left of the box. A couple of well-placed yellow triangles add a cartoonish feel to the image, implying some kind of “action.”

Flipping the cardboard container around, we can see how the roof of the bus lifts off to reveal the nine seats inside. There’s not much else provided in the way of play features, though. While not listed anywhere on the box, it’s important to note from the LEGO website that this set is intended for builders 10-years-old and older.

The box is another of the clamshell design, held together with tape on all sides. I remain a fan of the design, making these boxes ones I’m more likely to keep for storage over punch-tab versions.

Within this crucible is a thick instruction booklet, sticker sheet, and nine bags – eight of them numbered paper bags with a ninth containing large parts. The paper bags are really growing on me, especially as I find fewer and fewer smaller plastic bags inside them.

Instead of showing the bag contents with each step, here’s a gallery of the eight opaque bags if you’d like to look at the parts that come in the set.

The build

We begin much as one would expect with a singular vehicle set. Bag 1 constructs a base for this bus, with four Technic pins jutting out for the eventual tires. Nothing remarkable at this stage yet.

Bag 2 brings some more minor details, adding mudguards, black rails, and some details like headlights to the front of the vehicle. Again, nothing terribly remarkable at this stage.

A pop of green bricks in bag 3 means that we’re adding all nine seats to the motorcoach. More black rails also pop onto the sides of the build.

Bag 4 brings on the windscreens, even more black railing, and some rear lights. The engine is completed, and it’s clear that we have spots for three doors coming in a future step.

And speaking of, those doors are added with a big bag 5. Twenty-one blue windows ring this people-mover, and a sticker on its front now defines this vehicle as the “Battle Bus.”

For bag 6, we complete the roof of the bus-proper, doming it with several 2×2 curved slopes and some grills in dark gray. An octet of clips rise up from the structure, promising connections to some of the bracing arms in a future step.

Beginning with bag 7, the bus takes a turn from reality into the more fanciful nature of this design. Four robotic “arms” connect to the aforementioned clips, acting to “hold” the bus to the balloon rig keeping it aloft. The design of these arms might be my favorite part of the build, looking appropriately mechanical while still keeping it simple. This is aided by a quartet of dark gray stickers that I see loads of potential use for outside of the Battle Bus.

Finally, bag 8 completes the Battle Bus with the iconic azure and white balloon. I particularly like the clipped trans-blue flame pieces used to fill the balloon with hot air. It ends up being quite the accurate recreation of the set piece from the video game.

The minifigures

With such the smattering of minifigures in this set, we’ve certainly got a lot to cover in this section. We’ll handle the herd in chunks, starting with five that have a less-complex composition. From left-to-right, we have Meowscles, Brite Bomber, Raven, Battalion Brawler (in a Jonesy-style), and Cube Assassin. All five sport front-and back torso printing. They also all have front leg printing, however, Raven does get dual-molded legs in black and dark gray. Meowscles of course comes with a dark orange cat tail part and a custom molded head. Raven gets a custom-molded hat as well. Only Brite Bomber and Battalion Brawler have a second face on the back of their heads, with Brite getting some awesome lavender shades. Cube Assassin notably is missing the purple crystals on its shoulder, though that could be hard to achieve in minifig form.

Next up are the pair of figs that have a hat as well as a second hair piece: Cuddle Team Leader and Drift. Each sports a custom-molded hat, front-and-back printing on their torsos, and a second hair piece for when their masks are off. Drift’s tan quaff is particularly impressive here and a new hair part for me. Only CTL’s minifig head gets a second face on the back.

Our last two minifigures are Trespasser Elite and Adventure Peely. The trespasser doesn’t get any custom-molded parts, but does rock a custom-printed black helmet (I believe originally from Superheroes sets) and some sick shoulder armor from the Ninjago line. This feels a bit disappointing when compared to the other custom molds, especially as the Trespasser doesn’t transition to a minifigure all that smoothly. Peely of course has a custom-molded head that covers the entirety of his blank sand blue torso. The banana-man’s legs are dual-molded olive green and yellow. I very much hope that we see this banana head again, either as different iterations of Peely or as a similar banana mascot in a City line. The printing on both Trespasser’s and Cube Assassin’s trans-pink heads are amazing, and have plenty of potential outside of minifig use.

Finally, all of these figs come with their own item from the game. In total, this makes for four pickaxes, a Slap Juice, a pair of Grapplers, and a pair of Slurp Juices. While I have yet to play LEGO Fortnite, a quick google tells me that the in-game purpose of the items is fairly easy to discern: picks for mining, Grapplers for grappling, and juices for health regeneration.

The finished model

All assembled, this is quite the formidable bus of characters. While fairly standard, the vehicle design is solid and a great recreation of the source material. Each minifigure has a spot to sit on the bus, and it’s fairly easy to get all nine inside. While this does expand the scale of the bus a bit, it’s at the expense of a play feature, and completely reasonable. Epic Games insisted on a Battle Bus that was completely full as a set, and LEGO definitely delivers on that here.

Conclusions and recommendations

This review seems shorter than normal for a set of this size. Normally, I’d be rattling off play features and swooning over interesting design choices. But instead, this set is exactly what it looks like: a bus with nine minifigures, and nothing more. Now the bus design is solid. I wouldn’t say it’s revolutionary, but it does exactly what it set out to do. If recolored to yellow and stripped of the fantasy parts, this is definitely something that would be at home in a LEGO city scene. But here, it feels like justification for a $100 price tag on what really boils down to the LEGO Fortnite CMF series. They’re each quite well done (save the Trespasser), though maybe not a draw for me as I’m not a minifig collector. And at least they’re not in blind boxes where you’re stuck getting doubles. It was certainly a bold choice putting all the theme’s minifigures from the wave into only one set. While the Battle Bus doesn’t crash, it also doesn’t really go anywhere either.

Clocking in at 954 pieces, LEGO Fortnite 77073 Battle Bus retails for US $99.99 | CAN $129.99 | UK £89.99. It’s available right now for pre-order with shipment on October 1st. It may also be available from 3rd party retailers on Amazon and eBay.