- Original Price: $34.99
- Pieces: 390
- Minifigure(s): Monkey King Racing Suit (mechanic), Monkie Kid Racing Suit
- Sticker Sheet: Yes
- Pros: Creatively flexible build(s), mechanic Monkey King
- Cons: A few color issues
Assembly:
Bag #1 - Monkey King, Speedboat
Bag #2 - Monkie Kid, Race car
Bag #3 - Rocket ship
Leftover Pieces
- Interesting Steps:
- Step 24 of Book 3 uses a 1x3 jumper plate to add a slight tapering effect to the dark turquoise detail of the nose piece:
- Step 69 of Book 3 shows how they make use of double click-hinges on the rocket ship to give the engine pods a more sporty (and flexible) position. A subtle detail that could have been done with Technic rods and angled connectors, but in keeping with the spirit of this set, they opted for the solution that added play functionality:
- Interesting Techniques:
- Throughout the builds, the various elements are held together with a simple but effective combination: a "Round 1 x 2 with Hollow Studs and Open Center with Bars" in pearl gold onto which are clipped two 1x1 plates with vertical-grip clips. This allows each element to be attached to the others in creative ways, holding securely but easy to separate when desired.
- The builds are appropriately modular as well, resulting in the following types of elements:
- 3 bodies
- 3 noses & 3 tails
- 3 pairs of side elements, with 4 wheels that either go on the car body or on the various side elements as engines (it should be noted that the use of the easy-release tan Technic pins make it painless to swap the wheels out as needed)
- Interesting Pieces:
- In addition to giving us 29 of the pearl gold 1x2 with bars, the set also uses two harpoons as rocket ship antennae and two Monkie Kid cloud gusts for exhaust trails. These pieces in particular are really great, and I enjoy the cartoonish-but-still-realistic-ish feel they give to the rocket (rather like using transparent green sword pieces for Tron-style light trails on Mei's Dragon Car, 80031)
- Pain Points:
- A minor issue, but it should be noted that with his tail attached Monkey King can't actually sit securely in the minifigure chair:
- My biggest issue is actually to do with the smallest parts. Monkie Kid sets are on the whole so creative and colorful, and these (Steps 45 & 61 of Book 1 and Step 19 of Book 2) feel like errors. I'm talking specifically about the part colors. The 1x2 extended half-circle tile in bright light orange feels jarring against the plain yellow 1x2 45° slope, and the engine scoop in light bluish grey doesn't match the silver plate with angled tubes. Both of these pieces come in colors that match (tile & scoop, respectively), so having them not match seems more like an afterthought than a design choice...or perhaps it's a question of budget?
- Admittedly a minor issue, the instructions call for the wheels to be put in with the spokes toward the body. To my mind this feels like putting them in backwards, but I can see how it makes them look sportier than the "normal car" spokes-out approach would be. It's an easy detail to miss if you're not looking for it.
- The instructions stop after the rocket ship is completed, with only this single page going into any explanation of the main play feature of the set: its interchangeability. It might have been neat to see more variations demonstrated (but at least they didn't rely on online-only instructions like some other sets).
- It's also worth noting that there's a distinct imbalance in the types of modules. The majority (9) have bars on one side and clips on the other, which is fine enough; the two engine pods only have clips on one side but the three bodies have bars on all four sides (the rocket ship's body even has side bars in two levels). The main problem is that there is only one single double-clip piece, which is the only way to connect two body pieces together:
- My Modifications:
- As mentioned above, because there is only one double-clip piece, this construction makes use of all but one of the modules (MK's wrench makes a surprisingly-good peach of immortality grabber). I would probably devise and build another double-clip module, perhaps the mirror of the one in the set so it could be used on the sides as well as front or back:
On the whole, this set was way more fun than I expected. It was cute seeing Monkey King's as-you-will staff turned into a crowbar, not to mention having him look like a metaphorical grease monkey is a delightful pun. The real stars of this set are the pearl gold 1x2s with bars: I've seen them used in a few sets to hold elements together (for example the Dreamzzz Dream Village uses it to link the buildings into sort of a market street) but this is the first time the possibilities of such a setup were really made clear to me. I'd be tempted to get set 80030, Monkie Kid's Staff Creations, simply because it comes with 15 of the same piece in dark turquoise (a color that MK sets are great providers of), even though it doesn't feel like it's got quite as much play value...but I've been surprised before!
I definitely recommend this set, both in itself (especially for anyone who's a fan of making spaceship whooshing sounds) and as a template for MOCs. I could see this bar-brick-and-clips modular setup being used—like in the Dream Village, only more so—to connect buildings or parts of buildings, allowing builders to stretch a handful of modules into a flexible cityscape, for example. I definitely plan to do something of that sort myself, and it makes a lot of sense: cultures often have a few window types, or towers, or what have you, that they swap around as needed, so why not use that for my own citybuilding?
The few issues I had with the set were mostly the color choices of a few easily-swappable pieces and the lack of sufficient modules with clips on more than one side (imagine if there were ones with an L-shaped arrangement of clips, allowing side pieces to become front or vice versa), but those are simple enough to fix if you have a sufficient slush pile of your own pieces to build from. Short of being perhaps a little more expensive than I'd have expected for the piece and minifigure counts, this is almost a perfect set.
Score (out of 5 🧱):
- Price: 🧱🧱🧱🧱
- Process: 🧱🧱🧱🧱🧱
- Presentation: 🧱🧱🧱🧱🧱
- Play: 🧱🧱🧱🧱🧱
- Pieces: 🧱🧱🧱🧱🧱
- Total: 🧱🧱🧱🧱🧱
Lego Instructions: here
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