A blurb about the set.
TL;DR:
- Original Price: $69.99
- Pieces: 659
- Minifigure(s): Silver Horn Demon, Gold Horn Demon, Monkie Kid, Chen & Wang (generic citizens)
- Sticker Sheet: Yes
- Pros: Elaborate build, neat minifigures (specifically the demons)
- Cons: Expensive after-market, some minor color issues
Assembly:
Bag #1 - Silver Horn Demon, Gold Horn Demon, their vehicles
Bag #2 - Monkie Kid, fuselage
Bag #3 - Cockpit, blasters
Bag #4 - Air intakes, fins
Bag #5 - Chen & Wang, engine, wheels
Leftover Pieces
- Interesting Steps:
- 8: Uses two light bluish grey round 1x1 plates with bar handles to secure the rear axle on the Silver Horn Demon's dragster, which is effective and stylish.
- 4: The designers of these instructions clearly had some fun, adding a bit of MKs playfulness in for the "turn upside down" symbol.
- 36: four mug pieces are placed in what will be the engine compartment. Perhaps to use their handles to simulate pipes? You'll notice that there's mugs used elsewhere, both on the back and underside—the set comes with 10—and I think it's probably best to just consider them creative greebling.
- 58: This little floating inverted build becomes the button that will fire the two spring shooters (see the video in Play Features below to watch the button in action).
- 112: As other reviewers have pointed out, it's interesting that the engine assembly is only held in place by a single Technic pin. Perhaps there were plans for other sub-builds, or an interchangeable system like with other Monkie Kid vehicle sets (the ones with double-bars and double-clips to allow swapping out of wings and such). That said, it does make engine installation much easier than in real vehicles.
- 115: It's a bit repetitive, but using Technic 1/2 pins and tiles to add rims to the wheels is a nice technique. I could see the pieces being changed out for different colors or sizes to add a bit more personalization (and use up those macaroni tiles that are so hard to find a use for).
- Interesting Techniques:
- Two 1x3x1 doors are used to give the roadster's body an appropriate angled shape, without heavy bricks or complex builds.
- A stack of clips and plates turns 5 spoilers into the vents of the engine's air intake pods. Simple but effective.
- The gearing is simple and ingenious. The top gear (with the longer axle) attaches to the cones in the middle of the exhaust assembly, while the bottom gear meshes with the teeth on the inside of the "pearl dark gray wheel hard plastic with small cleats and flanges" (the rotating spiky thing) to drive it in the opposite direction (see the video in Play Features below).
- I appreciate that two clips are provided on the underside of the vehicle: one for MK's staff, and another for the spare projectile bolt.
- Interesting Pieces:
- The pre-printed 6x6 radar dishes are nicely executed, and would have been a pain to put stickers on
- At first I thought that the black minifigure backpack with horizontal pin holes was pretty unique, but apparently it's been in 36 sets, usually to give a minifigure a jetpack or, as in the case of CMF Series 26's M-Tron Powerlifter, mecha arms. Still, a lot of potential in a single piece, especially with the two anti-studs underneath.
- I also thought the silver Technic pins were rare, but apparently they're not. The 2x2 printed tile is quite nice, however, and it would have been cool to get more than one of them in the set.
- The white frog hidden behind the driver's seat is, according to New Elementary, a signature of the set's designer. Which actually gave me the idea to do something similar myself. Once the order comes in, I'll hopefully be adding little sand green (my favorite LEGO color) nanofigures/trophies (one of my favorite pieces) to all of my MOCs.
- This perpendicular Technic connector was new to me, but apparently it's in 306 sets (142 in black specifically); most of those are vehicle sets, which I don't really go for, so it's not too surprising that I hadn't seen it before.
- This odd yellow piece dates to 1996, and was first used in a dump truck, and then a train hopper. It's interesting how it's used SNOT-wise here, to form the nose of the dragster.
- In a similar construction vein, I thought that this yellow piece was also part of some sort of dump truck or bucket lift, but on researching for this post I found that it's actually a cockpit windscreen, and has been used for that purpose in many of the various transparent colors LEGO makes. That said, it was also used in dark bluish grey for set 71819, the Dragon Stone Shrine, and I can definitely see its value as a non-standard BURP.
- Pain Points:
- As with many Monkie Kid sets, color matching is an issue. Surprisingly, however, here it isn't from different types of gold, or the clash between bright light orange (upper plate) and yellow (lower plate), but the printing on Wang's torso. The yellow overlaid on the coral-colored torso piece isn't entirely opaque, resulting in a blended color that looks more like bright light orange than yellow. Maybe she just got a bad spray-on tan?
- I've never had this before. The sticker sheet was missing the yellow on most of sticker 4 (but not the sticker that went on the other side of the vehicle): you can see it compared against the product image at left. I decided to try reaching out to LEGO through their Missing Pieces webform, but the set was so old that I guess there were no replacement sheets available. I did get this nice reply the next day, at least.
- Play Features:
- In addition to swooshing the Gold Horn Demon's jetpack around, the Silver Horn Demon's dragster can zip along freely. There's also room to stash two captives in the back and have the jetpack-wearing demon sit on the spoiler.
- As the roadster's rear tires rotate, the gear train (described above) causes one part of the exhaust assembly to rotate in one direction, and the other part to go the other way. As I said before, it's a simple use of parts (thanks to the teeth molded on the inside of the spiky cone thing), but a brilliant visual effect.
- As mentioned above, an inverted floating build serves as the button, depressing the tail ends of the projectiles and causing them to shoot forward at the same time (to clatter across the room).
• Overall: As I've mentioned before, I'm not a big fan of vehicle-only sets, but I definitely had to make an exception for this one. Once I saw the rotating exhaust I knew I had to find out how it worked. The Silver and Gold Horn Demons are also great (and way better than their helmet-only versions in the Megapolis City set—which is still a great set, just for other reasons)...it also didn't hurt that those two minifigures are about $60 each, which basically meant I was buying them and getting the rest of the set basically for free! I mean, I don't work that way, but it's certainly an interesting way to look at things.
The set was originally $70, which I think was an excellent price point for such a complex and intricate build. It's not the designer's fault (or perhaps it is, but in a good way?) that it's more than doubled in price now that it's been retired for 4 years. I had a lot of fun putting it together, and was often surprised by interesting pieces, piece uses, and other techniques. And it looks so good all put-together that I'm going to be hard pressed to take it apart for parts.
While the two hapless townsfolk are going into my minifigure parts bin immediately, and the Monkie Kid looks like quite a lot of the other versions of him, I really appreciate that the designers gave them gourds—similar to the ones in the Journey to the West that can entrap a called person and melt them down—though in the show they're called calabashes and are far less deadly. Speaking of minifigures, I much prefer when they're spread out across a build (especially one where so many bags are dedicated to adding parts to a thing, as is the case with the roadster here), as it makes each bag a little bit more enjoyable. It makes sense to have the two demons together, since their vehicles are all in one bag, but the townsfolk could have been split among some of the other bags instead of both getting lumped together in the last one.
On the whole it was a fun build with a fun vibe and gets top marks from me (with a bit of a price score downgrade because it's no longer available at the very reasonable $70 original price).
Score (out of 5 🧱):
- Price: 🧱🧱🧱
- Process: 🧱🧱🧱🧱🧱
- Presentation: 🧱🧱🧱🧱🧱
- Play: 🧱🧱🧱🧱
- Pieces: 🧱🧱🧱🧱🧱
- Total: 🧱🧱🧱🧱
Lego Instructions: here
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