11017 Creative Monsters LEGO Review - Classic, 2022

Though a bit basic, it comes with a good assortment of unusual parts that make for creative opportunities.

TL;DR:

• Original Price:  $9.99
• Pieces: 140
• Minifigure(s): None
• Sticker Sheet: No
  
• Pros: Good assortment of SNOT and other non-normal pieces
• Cons: A bit on the basic side

Assembly: 

Bag #1 - Snow Chomper, Sad Honker, Mini Minotaur

Bag #2 - Flame Snake, Plant Spider

 Leftover Pieces

 

• Interesting Techniques: The most unusual aspect of these little builds is the use of a palm leaf as legs for the "Plant Spider," putting the two studs on the back of the leaf into the two tubes on the back of the 2x3 lime plate on the underside of the build.
• Interesting Pieces: the Arm & Hand with Technic Pin pieces, in light and medium nougat are good additions, especially for building something without using minifigure arms—monsters, as in this set, or perhaps differently-scaled built figures. These are also the same type of arm pieces used in the brick-built Yoshi figures from the Super Mario line, but those come in less-human colors like green and blue

This was a cute little set—both a good option for that first set of a collection, or to add basic pieces in interesting colors to an established collection—and finding it for $2 at Goodwill was particularly excellent. The five builds in the instruction manual are cute but basic; I would have liked to see other ideas provided in the book as creativity-starting inspiration, especially for new builders. That said, there are plenty of alternate builds online (I particularly like user bricklish's MOC "Fantasy RPG - barbarian & paladin" visible with others here.)

Given that there are no minifigures and no specialty pieces (apart from the aforementioned arms), this is a particularly basic assortment, and doesn't really stand out on its own.

Score (out of 5 🧱):

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

• Total: 🧱🧱🧱

Lego Instructions: here