Review of 80023 Monkie Kid’s Team Dronecopter
“Flying stove.”
First of all, a big thank you to LEGO for sending us this awesome set for review. This drone + helicopter with four rotors is quite heavy. It is a vehicle owned by Sandy that brought the gang to the Celestial Realm in search of the ingredients for the cure to the Spider Queen’s venom (as portrayed in the Season 2 mini-movie) This set is priced at USD149.99 with a parts count of 1462 pieces alongside 8 Minifigures, 1 cat and 1 big fig Sandy. Let’s see what’s inside this set.
The box art is quite nice with usual Monkie Kid banner and portrays the Monkie Kid gang battling the Spider Queen near a dock. Here you can see the Red Son is fighting Monkie Kid too meaning that they still haven’t teamed up to fight the Spider Queen
The back of the box show us the play features of the set and how the containers are attached to the mothership along with the interiors of the containers.
Sticker sheet. The stickers are well designed but can I ask LEGO to print that arcade machine instead of giving us stickers?
The top view of the whole set. It is a huge set which dwarfed Sandy as a big fig.
The minifigures
Mr Tang. He is supposed to be a re-imagination of Tang San Zhang (唐三藏) in the original story of ‘Journey to the West’. Here in this animated series, he is someone who likes to eat Pigsy’s noodle and read books. He wears a pair of glasses and he has a sleepy look as his alternate facial expression. The front of the torso is well printed with the Buddhist monk robe as the blueprint extending to the leg with a string of Buddhist beads at the right side of the leg. Let’s go deeper into the book that accompanies him.
This is the legendary book of ‘Journey to the West’ 西游记. I love it so much as it is a printed book. When it opens up, you can see a 1×2 printed tile showing the Spider Queen with a webbed up Tang San Zhang in preparation to eat him in order to live forever. Shelob? Frodo? Okay that’s a totally different story. Haha.
We have another printed 1×2 tile in this set whereby you can see Pigsy promoting his bowl of ramen with the words 美味至上 which translates into delicious in English. I suppose it is a restaurant flyer/brochure as the instructions asked us to put in on the desk inside Mr. Tang’s room.
Mei. This is armoured version of her who is ready to fight the bad guys with her jade dragon sword. Here we can either pose her with her hair or helmet. I really love her white and green colour scheme with a little bit of gold. The dragon print on her torso is superb and the dragon scale print extends onto the legs. The pearl gold pauldron is also a great addition to the Minifigure. She has the exact same facial expressions like the one in the previous set 80021 Monkie Kid’s Lion Guardian.
Monkie Kid. He is the exact same Minifigure but in this set he has different facial expressions featuring a sleepy face and angry face.
Fei. She is a random civilian who only wants to enjoy her hotdog while witnessing the battle. She has a traumatised look face, and a face that seems like offering the hotdog to the rescuer as a thank you gift.
Sandy. This sky blue coloured hulk is actually representing Sha Wu Jing 沙悟净 in Journey to the West. He is one of the three disciples of the Buddhist pilgrim Tang San Zhang who protects him along the Journey to the West. Here he is big and holding a weapon quite similar to the one he holds in normal Journey to the West representations with a crescent blade on one end and a shovel on teh other end. He mostly uses it to carry the baggages in the moves. The big beard and the big beads is also quite movie accurate.
Mo. The colour tells you that this is Sandy’s cat in the cartoon. The cat appears in 80020 and 80023 too. The jet powered cat carrier is very nicely built for this grumpy looking cat.
Red Son. He is representing the character in the story with the name of 红孩儿. Here he is quite a nice Minifigure as he has a fiery hair piece with printing on it. As he likes to play with fire, it is not surprising that he has scars on his face. He comes with his sunglasses and a big smiley face as his alternate facial expression. His torso does look like Ironman’s reactor but with lots of pipes. He is equipped with a fire back pack which can emit scorching hot projections to burn the enemy.
Red son in action with his hoverboard.
Huntsman. A common Minifigure throughout the series. However he has a different weapon in this set.
Syntax. He is turned evil by the Spider Queen’s venom to help her extract the Monkey King’s power after she captured him. The scientist’s robe is very detailed with a remote control in his right pocket. The VR headpiece is quite cool but the eyes are scary to look at. He also has a masked face similar to the Spider Queen.
The Spider Queen. She is a queen but she is a quite common Minifigure in this series. As common as she is, she comes with different weapons in each set.
Suit up my spider minions!
The Build
The containers. There are three containers in the set, two for the mother ship and one for Spider Queen. In this picture, the highlighted part can give a clue on how they will be opened. The special part in building the wall of these containers is 6337306, a new part which has not been listed yet in bricklink. I like the indentations of the panels.
This is how they look after you open them up. Mei’s room and Mr Tang’s bed room. Let’s look into it.
There is a study room in Ground floor and going up the stairs you can reach the double decker bed.
The bed is built studs down to compensate with the upward flip of the compartment of the room. It is a refreshing technique and there are no studs/antistuds seed for the most part. Mr Tang’s study room comprises of a desk with a rack of books on top of a study table, a chair, an electric guitar and a Monkie Kid’s mech poster (sticker).
A clearer view of the room whereby it is quite cozy sitting there reading Journey to the West while enjoying Pigsy’s delicious ramen.
A clearer look of the double decker beds. The blankets are stickers with Monkie Kid’s golden hoop pattern
Going on to Mei’s compartment we can see there is a console with a keypad and a dragon head on it, I suppose it is the main operation center of the room.
Mei’s throne chair. I love the new 6285587 Minifigure, Utensil Posing Stand, Bar with Hollow Stud as straws on the purple cone as the cup.
The most interesting build in this set. The arcade machine! Dragon Bike is the name of this game and you can control the bike on the screen via the joystick and the red button in front of you. It is quite weird that the poster is pixelated but the screen has quite a good resolution. The only downside of this build is that all of them are stickers.
The bad guys have one container too! This acts as the Spider Queen’s operating base and there is a turret under the big radar on top of the container. I love the purple colour scheme with the trans yellow vials here. Zoom into the screen on the left you can see the spider radar identifying three ‘objects’ in the vicinity which I suppose is Sandy, Mei and Monkie Kid.
The turret build is quite nice using the barrel as the tip of the gun. The spring shooters on both sides of the turret is quite hidden while it is sitting in the box. The vials under the spring shooters are actually spider venoms injected to the bullet before they are shot. How evil!
The spring shooter’s bullet will stick out of these two holes and they can be fired by pressing the green technic parts downward.
There are two mini spider drones in this set and the design is quite nice and cute instead of menacing.
The Dronecopter. This is the main build of the set and it is very stable supported by four steering wheel stands. To me, it is weird looking but you will slowly picking up the love for it. If not, we can always repurpose it!. Haha. Oh and it is actually a big gun which you can hold it up and shoot some bullets via 2 spring shooters inside.
The control cabin for Sandy. I love how the designers use the 6253856 Minifigure, Utensil Paint Roller Brush Handle as the joystick on both side of the screen. Something special is that the blue bordered screen is actually a crosshair for the ‘gun’ while holding it up to shoot.
Here you can see the steering wheel acts as the stand of the whole ship. The black part is where you hold the gun and your index finger is to be used to pull the yellow trigger to shoot. The mechanism is very impressive.
The top part and front part of the ship can be detached like this. The two turrets at both sides of the upper compartment are used as water pipes to spray out the antidote to save the citizens from the Spider Queen’s venom. The right compartment detaches to become a mini jet ski.
Notice the black gear under the center console? That is the part that will trigger the spring shooters.
The seat of the water jet ski. The design is very nice with two water turbines at the back of the vehicle.
6245514 Windscreen 8 x 4 x 2 with 2 Studs and Bar Handle Trans Clear. This colour variant is very rare and this is only the second set it has appeared in. The first one is the 70616 Ice Tank from Ninjago.
As I mentioned earlier, Sandy does look small compared to the ship.
My spouse commented that it looks like a desktop burner/ hotpot cooker….
Verdict
I give this set a 4.5/5.0 score . I find the design of the ship is quite weird overall for my tastes. However, the rooms in the container boxes are very nicely done. This set is priced at USD149.99 with a parts count of 1462 pieces alongside with 8 Minifigures, 1 cat and 1 big fig Sandy. The minifigures are quite exclusive with different facial expressions, so the minifigures selection does add some point to the set.
They are already available in the stores starting 1st day of March 2021!
Hope you enjoy this review from me, Mr. Beast. Thank you!
The set used for this review was sent to us by The LEGO Group for the purpose of an honest review. Provision of sets do not in any way influence or guarantee a positive review.
