Just when you thought you’d seen every one of the LEGO Legends of Chima Summer 2014 sets that LEGO had lined up, the LEGO Chima 2014 summer exclusives begin rolling in! And in this first case I mean “rolling in” quite literally, as it’s a wheeled vehicle that I’ll be giving the spotlight to! Though the Crocodile Tribe is one of the first Chima Tribes to have a multitude of sets released, they got the short end of the stick in 2014. However, the Crocs are ready to strike back this summer with the LEGO Chima Cragger’s Fire Striker 70135 set!

When I first saw the LEGO Legends of Chima Crocodile Tribe, I knew instantly that they were going to be depicted as evil–and I wasn’t surprised when they were. Any time you have poor anthropomorphized crocodiles in anything, it seems that they’re always portrayed as evil. It really isn’t fair.

But thankfully, Crocodile Tribe Cragger has seen the error of his ways and joined the side of the angels (and lions and eagles!), and this summer he’ll be returning to stores in an all-new set with his latest ride–LEGO 70135 Cragger’s Fire Striker!

In plain old car mode, 70135 LEGO Cragger’s Fire Striker is pretty boring. But when you activate “Fire CHI Power Mode”, the vehicle springs to life and features an open mouth and a bunch of firing missiles! The feature is kind of silly, but so is the whole LEGO Legends of Chima theme, so I’m okay with that.

Of course, as usual with Legends of Chima LEGO sets, the big prize in this set isn’t the LEGO Cragger’s Fire Striker vehicle–it’s the new LEGO Chima minifigures! Along with the Fire Cragger minifigure (in cool fire armor), we’re getting two exclusive, all-new LEGO Legends of Chima minifigures: a LEGO Stealthor minifigure from the Saber-tooth Tiger Tribe, and a LEGO Vornon minifigure from the Vulture Tribe!

The LEGO Vulture Tribe Vornon minifigure is one of only a handful of Vulture Tribe figures LEGO is producing in 2014, so I’m particularly excited for Vornon. However, Stealthor’s slick grey color scheme definitely has captured my attention as well, and the combination of these two exclusive LEGO Chima minifigs is enough for LEGO to secure my purchase of a set that I would otherwise be not entirely crazy about!

The 70135 LEGO Legends of Chima Cragger’s Fire Striker set is scheduled to be released in August 2014 as part of the Summer 2014 LEGO Chima sets wave. The set is expected to be a store exclusive to either Toys R Us or Walmart, but we won’t know for certain where it’s going to show up for a while yet. I’ll post an update when the specific release details about LEGO 70135 are known, and you can ‘Like’ Bricks and Bloks on Facebook to have more LEGO news, photos and updates sent right to your Facebook Newsfeed!

What do you think of this LEGO 2014 summer exclusive Chima set, LEGO fans? Is Cragger’s Fire Striker hot enough to get you to buy a new vehicle for Cragger?