Skip to main content

30656 Monkey King Marketplace LEGO Review - Monkie Kid, 2023

In this, my first official set review, I've come up with a format that I think will be helpful.

I always try to write what I'd want to read, so I plan to start each review with a Too Long; Didn't Read section breaking down the main points you might want when considering getting a set for yourself. Then I'll break down the building-up process with bag-by-bag assembly notes, my overall thoughts, a score (Price for the value of the set, Process for how fun the build was, Presentation for how it looks when done, Play for how fun it is, Pieces for the usefulness of the parts, and Total as an average of the other scores), and finally a link to Lego's official instructions for the set, with photos throughout. That's the plan for now, anyways.

And so, without further ado:

30656 Monkey King Marketplace - Monkie Kid, 2023


TL;DR:

  • Original Price: $4.99 US
  • Pieces: 66
  • Minifigure(s): Monkey King in bright yellow orange robe, brown chicken
  • Sticker Sheet: No
  • Pros: a cute figure and a useful set on which to base MOC market stalls
  • Cons: can be hard to find now for cheap


 



Assembly: 

  • Interesting Steps: step 2 involves putting Monkey King and the chicken on a transparent 2x2 radar dish which is an unusual way to base a figure 
  • Interesting Techniques: the use of hinges to make it look like trays are leaning against the stall


 

  • Interesting Pieces: Monkey King's tail, designed to hold a bar, and can be placed on the leg studs facing up or down



 

  • Pain Points: it can be tricky to get the tail's loose grip to balance the load on the bar. As it says in Journey to the West (Chapter 33): "a badly-balanced carrying-pole is much harder to manage than a well-balanced one."
  • My Modifications:  an open-top 2x2 container makes up the middle of the stall, but it's placed under the top plates as though it were just a 2x2 brick; I pulled it back by 1 stud to make it look more like an open drawer or a storage box tucked beneath the stall

Some reviewers have remarked on the Technic pins, which are fairly common throughout the non-mech, non-vehicle builds of the Monkie Kid line, allowing vast dioramas to be arranged and secured together: for example, 80056 Nine-Headed Beast's temple side-build has the same two-pin-and-two-hole setup, so one could imagine setting this up as a little snack stall for tourists visiting the temple, or selling souvenirs like discarded Nine-Headed Beast feathers. I for one appreciate that the designers integrated this feature, but it would have been nice if it had been called out in the instructions somehow, giving an indication as to the purpose of what might otherwise be seen as an anachronistic standout.

I really love this little set, and wish I had a time machine so I could go back to 2023 and grab a few more (not to mention all the other Monkie Kid sets at more reasonable prices), both for the tail piece and for the cute little build. That said, the other pieces are generic enough to make it easy to make variations from what I've already got: swapping out pieces with different colors, using bar clips to hinge the top, adding a stepped display to the counter, etc. If I'm not careful, I might end up with a whole mini marketplace taking over my desk...

Score (out of 5 🧱):

  • Price: 🧱🧱🧱🧱🧱
  • Process: 🧱🧱🧱
  • Presentation: 🧱🧱🧱🧱
  • Play: 🧱🧱
  • Pieces: 🧱🧱🧱
  • Total: 🧱🧱🧱🧱 


Lego Instructions: here

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Lego Illustration

It may not come up much on a Lego blog, but I have a degree in graphic design and a lot of practice in illustration; both of those skills were called on by a franchise of the excellent Bricks & Minifigs shop that was planning to open nearby. They wanted to emphasize the history and location of the city they were going to be doing business in, and just happened to have two bathrooms with large blank walls. They commissioned me to design an illustration for each, to be printed out as giant stickers, ideally in time to be part of their grand opening. The owners wanted one to show a view of the Sierra Nevada Mountains, with Gold Rush-era details, while the other would be of modern Sacramento. To that end, I worked out the following sketches, which were approved: My contribution to their idea was stylistic: combining the mosaic backgrounds of the "Tales of the Space Age" set, with foregrounds that draw from the stylization used in the Architecture line's cityscape mode...
Post a Comment
Read more

The First Piece... LEGO MOC

Spring is a time for new beginnings, so why not start a blog about one of my passions: Legos! I plan to review sets, weigh in on books, and show a few of the MOCs I've created over the years. To start with, here's me (or a reasonable facsimile thereof) in my studio (likewise):     I've tried to pull from many resources and references to try and encapsulate my approach to building: the pencil mounted over the hearth is from a DREAMZzz set the pots of paint based on the jars in the Spider-Man in the Sanctum Workshop set the rug is from the Asha in the City of Rosas set the hearth itself is from 2023's Marvel advent calendar, while the little wreath is from 2024's Friends advent calendar the "artwork" is a scan tile from a Mario set the book is from the Boogeyman Series 27 CMF the wall-o-potions is from a Harry Potter set the globe and microfigure are from Bricklink the body, palette, and brush are from the Artist Series 4 CMF and the head is from the Steampu...
Post a Comment
Read more

Sacramento Brick Builders Meeting - Registered LEGO User Group, 2025

  In the interest of becoming more active in the Lego community, I attended my first Lego Users Group meeting this month. I'd met a few of the members at the grand opening of the nearby Bricks and Minifigs store (as described in this post ), and was encouraged to come to the monthly meeting and see for myself. It was held in the community room of a local library, and took about an hour. There were more than twenty in attendance, ranging in age from under ten to over seventy. What impressed me right off the bat was the organization and preparation: each seat at the tables had a printout of the meeting agenda, and a digital projector was playing a slideshow of photos from previous events on one wall. Following a cordial welcome (including calling out new attendees like myself), the leader went straight to business. First on the docket was the previous month's build challenge. Each meeting two words are voted on (last month's were "video games" and "space",...
Post a Comment
Read more