By Barry Kay (SAFOLs Brick Boss, CapeLUG EXCO, Batman … Ssshhhh!)
Monkie Kid™ – The Story (excerpt from LEGO.com)
Centuries ago, the beloved Chinese Monkey King used his magical staff to capture and trap the evil Demon Bull King deep inside a mountain. Flash-forward to modern-day China, when fate leads MK (aka Monkie Kid), a young noodle shop delivery boy, to find the long-lost staff. Soon, MK and his best friends find themselves entangled in adventures packed full of action, mystery, imagination, and magic.
Being a LEGO® Mech fan, I had to get this set to build as it looked so awesome.
The set comes with 12 bags of goodness, a sticker sheet with 47 stickers in 31 unique and eye-catching designs, a plastic sheet with foil printed cut outs as well as a fabric cape to dress and decorate the mech.
Apart from the great mech build, this set comes with a number of mini-builds to set a fun scene for playing with.
The Minifigures
Jia, An, Monkey King, Monkie Kid, General Ironclad & Growl with some nice new parts, such as the headphones around MK’s neck, the Bull Helmets and more…
The Mini-Builds
Bag 1: Contains the parts for a small Bull Mech. A quick and fun little build that fits Growl the Ironclad Henchman minifigure who is also in this bag.
Bag 2 & 3: We build the Monkey King and his flying Cloud. There is also a nicely detailed Noodle Shop with some interior design. There is also a side attachment with a power pole and arcade game. The An minifigure is also found in these bags.
Bag 4 has the parts for the start of the mech torso and the final mini-build. The iconic Flower Fruit Mountain that is said to be where the Monkey King imprisoned the Demon Bull King. The tree built on the top of the mountain has some nice 1×1 pink heart tiles with peaches printed on them.
The Warrior Mech Build
Bags 4 – 12 have the rest of the parts to build the mech.
It is a nice surprise to see the return of metallic gold parts and so many of them.
The build progresses in the following stages.
- Bag 4 – Torso & Monkie Kid Minifigure
- Bag 5 – Shoulders and Torso Details
- Bag 6 – Upper Legs and General Ironclad Minifigure
- Bag 7 – Lower Legs
- Bag 8 – Feet
- Bag 9 – Upper Arms and Jia Minifigure
- Bag 10 – Forearms and Hands
- Bag 11 – Head
- Bag 12 – Staff, Banners and Dressing
The mech is very well designed with a sturdy skeleton of Technic parts, gears, ratchet, and ball joints. The arms move on rotation gears at the shoulders to give them some good manoeuvrability. We have seen this technique in other sets as it works well.
The colours of red, yellow, turquoise and metaling gold are very eye catching and stand out, giving the mech a powerful look.
There is some excellent part usage to add little details all over, such as Utensil Zip Line Handles as the control levers in the torso cockpit and Weapon Hilts as metal bars at the knee joint.
Instead of printed parts which would have raised the cost of the whole set two-fold, they have included the sticker sheet with small stickers to really bring out the detail in the whole build.
We finish off with the large staff that can be set in place between the hands, held in one hand as a full staff and even shortened into a smaller staff.
The last bit of detail is the plastic foil printed Samurai dressing and fabric cape, all attached at cleverly well positioned pins and small ball joints.
Conclusion
I really enjoyed building this set and feel it is one of the sturdiest of the large LEGO® mechs to be released. The Ideas Voltron set was a fun build but only a display piece in my opinion. This build has a lot more playability and can be placed in a variety of different poses. There are a few fiddly bits that can fall off if and if not balanced correctly it will fall over due to the size. The added mini builds give some extra playable features to the whole set.
The LEGO® designers have done an excellent job in making a solid, sturdy mech that looks like the Monkey King and I definitely recommend this set if it falls within your budget.
