Review: 80018 Monkie Kid's Cloud Bike
Posted by Mr_Cross,
Numerically the first and smallest set in 2021’s Monkie Kid line-up is 80018 Monkie Kid's Cloud Bike. This third wave is being referred to as ‘Season 2’ and it is obviously related to the TV series, which has yet to receive a Worldwide release for ‘Season 1’ (much to the vexation of my son and I)!
At time of writing I have very little information regarding the new characters in the set, other than what1t. One is a Spider Demon known as Spindrax and the other is a young girl named Rui. Monkie Kid has been given a little update for this season too.
LEGO is all about creativity and imagination, so what we don’t know, perhaps we can make up from what we can see. Here goes...
Sci-Fi bikes, Kung-Fu Bikers! Spider-Bikers! Spider-bots! Innocent bystanders! Whoa! Make that into a movie! Akira meets Mad Max meets Venom meets The Matrix! Whoa! Make that into a movie too! Either one would be a ride as wild as the bikes in this set.
Yes, this is a small set, but from a first glance, as a kid, I’d have wanted this set. So very much.
Inside the box
Two numbered bags, each containing a single inner bag.
An instruction book, and for those of you who’re like me, there’s also a reassuringly small sticker sheet.
Minifigures
In the first bag we have Rui and Spindrax.
Rui is simply a civilian who Monkie Kid must save (according to the description on the LEGO product page). She is a great little character, using a torso that we have only been offered in one other set, last year’s 60262 Passenger Airplane. I think the head is new too with a dual expression.
Spindrax appears to me to be a female spider demon, all of her pieces are new and feature a design that utilises the spider logo motif (that is used elsewhere too) in very effective ways. The lime and purple are classic complimentary colours and work surprisingly well for these spider-baddies.
I also find myself liking this usage of the universal super-dude helmet, I like it in most of the versions it's been released for what it is worth. She also comes with a spikey hairdo - she looks a bit too fresh like this to me, unless demons don’t suffer from helmet hair?!
In bag two we have Monkey Kid alone. He has swapped his headphones for a hood, I was hoping for those headphones in more new colours, red would be nice (*cough* Hell Boy custom figs *cough*). The Kid is sporting a funky new jacket with grinning monkey print too.
The Build
Bag one
The nit-pick you’ll all have already noticed is that spiders have eight legs, so strictly speaking (if we’re being petty minded hair-splitters here) these are insects, not arachnids!
Really though, this is a great little representation of a spider, the new pieces that create the legs are very effective. Any new piece like this always interests me and I can’t wait to try them out in my own builds, for fingers perhaps?
The spider-droid is a fairly standard build, an array of legs attached around the (erroneously named IMO) ‘parabolic ring’. By its very nature of having eight sides, if we want more than just legs attached to our pseudo-thorax (spiders actually have only two sections to their body - the abdomen and a cephalothorax which includes its head), we have to either build on top (or bottom) or sacrifice bar attachment points for heads and abdomens. I think they’ve made the right choice here for a side build.
The Spider-bike is a great looking speed machine, again presented in the wonderfully eye-catching combination of lime green and purple. It has a couple of stud shooters, I know kids enjoy these, well my two do, but as an adult and a parent, I’m just not that much of a fan of them (I understand that I am not alone).
The seating position of Spindrax is actually akin to a recumbent bike.
I don’t actually mind this, legs of minifigures rarely look quite right on any of the bikes, bicycles or trikes they’ve ridden over the past three and a half decades.
Bag two
It’s a straight forward but enjoyable build. Familiar techniques are used to great effect to create the bike’s pleasing aerodynamic lines.
The red, yellow and teal are now emblematic of Monkie Kid's vehicles, and it is a colour scheme that is bold and works really well, it’s classically heroic, possibly even heraldic?
No place for a pillion rider on this heroic steed though, no, Monkie Kid is going solo on this badass crotch rocket. This bike too employs a more recumbent riding position.
I very much like the simple transformation feature which turns the road bike into a hover bike and so better earning the name ‘cloud bike’ in my opinion. The new(ish) cloud piece being used once more for exhaust is still a nice touch. Both my son and I swooshed this around a bit!
Stickers provide the only asymmetry in this model, but I’m not entirely convinced it needed the decoration.
Disc shooters at the sides launch white 2x2 round tiles as we've seen in quite a few sets now. With all these projectile launchers in this set, I have the feeling that I'm going to be inevitably digging around under the sofa again trying to find lost pieces!
Background and other thoughts
My engagement with this theme is four-fold.
First, as a boy I remember watching and loving the classic cult TV series ‘Monkey’ aka ‘Monkey Magic’ - which was actually the name of the catchy theme tune. This was the very early eighties, there were still only three TV channels in the UK and I can clearly remember building Space LEGO sets while watching Monkey leap around performing mixed martial arts on a range of baddies, and then zipping off on his pet pink cloud. It was wonderful fun, and I only have fond memories of it. So, for me, the Monkie Kid theme scratches a specific itch… if only for a pull-back pink cloud!
However, I’m aware ‘Monkey’ might not have been the best representation of the source story ‘Journey to the West’.
Second, I’ve very much enjoyed the Monkie Kid sets my son and I have managed to acquire, were it not for the LEGO.com exclusivity I am certain I would have picked up far more of these sets in favour of other more easily obtained sets. They have all been excellent so far, with exciting looking vehicles, great original characters, a wonderful colour palette, and it’s all intriguingly different.
Third, I like motorbikes (I don’t own one, my wife would freak out), I especially like sci-fi motorbikes that become hover bikes (again, I don’t own one, I would love to though and yeah, she'd definitely freak out in a big way!).
Fourth and finally but probably most importantly, my son loves the theme too.
I was struck by how much more impressive Monkie Kid’s bike looks. A butch looking hog compared with Spindrax’s more sports-bike styled ride - but then he’s the hero and I guess we’d expect him to have the biggest and best looking stuff.
Disclaimer: I must apologise about the representation of the purple pieces in my review, for reasons I think have to do with non-reproducible colours my camera struggled, and I think it may also have thrown off other colours you may see. I’ve tried to correct most of it but some mis-representation does remain. Please assume that all colours seen are the standard available variants.
Conclusion
The set has an RRP of £17.99 / $24.99 with 203 parts and that gives us a PPP of 8.8p / 12.3c.
Despite looking very nice, and my enthusiasm for it, there’s nothing really exceptional here, no ‘one’ thing ignites my enthusiasm in particular, but there’s nothing to complain about either. All the builds in the set are solid and well put together with a few nice touches here and there. The character selection seems pretty good too.
That seems decidedly unenthusiastic for what is a really great little set. I think this is one of those ‘greater than the sum of its parts’ occasions and honestly there really is a lot in this for a set for its size. There is fun and lots of play value to be had here, this and the 80021 Lion Guardian set (that I will also be reviewing) provided a great opportunity for imaginative play and occupied my kids for a couple of hours.
I want to recommend it, there are things I really, really like - it’s another interesting addition to an absolutely stellar theme and as I indicated, it hits on a few points of interest, but there’s something stopping me doing that outright.
Perhaps it’s the price, which seems okay to be fair.
If I compare 80018 Monkie Kid’s Cloud Bike to a doubled-up microfighter set of the same price for example, I see greater value here, it’s just that there’s always a good chance a microfighter set will hit a big discount somewhere or other.
Thanks to LEGO for providing the set for review. All opinions expressed are my own.
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16 comments on this article
No set I am interested in, but I appreciate the fact that the hairpiece on Rui is becoming more common and hence potentially cheaper to source.
crotch rocket? an interesting and unheard of (at least for me) term for a bike..... I like the spider bike but the kids bike is just way to chunky. I think they should of gotten rid of the disk shooters, but as a play feature they're pretty good. I may pick this set up as I dont actually own any MK sets, the only problem is is that I buy all most exclusively ninjago, and that's if I can afford it in the first place. ninjago just has better value, but this one is pretty decent for an MK set to be honest. oh well. ninjagos summer wave looks pretty good I have to say, so I will put this on the ' will buy if I have the money' list.
It’s been odd to see the CMF series 10 Trendsetter torso piece (used here for the civilian) show up nearly a decade later as a regular issue piece. Are there any other instances of this happening?
I would have much rathered an updated design in the same spirit as the CMF torso as the styling (ironically) starts to feel a bit dated.
Good review! I loved the perspectives you brought to it as both a fan of the theme and a parent.
The Monkie Kid TV series has certainly been taking its sweet time to air outside of Asia, but if you're interested in watching season one, it has aired in English in countries like Malaysia and Singapore, and can be found online. My favored source for them so far is the fan-run "Monkie Kid Preservation Project" on YouTube, which has all of the various dubs in high quality. The English playlist for season one is here: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLzjg3Bz5mzBSOTFBRqgWGKX7p5CKb3Ul0
The first few episodes of season 2, a four-episode Lunar New Year special, have also aired in China but not in other countries. Even so, they'd provide little context for this set, as Spindrax does not yet appear in them (though another, bigfig-style spider villain does, so here's hoping they appear in one of the summer sets).
The odd name of the "parabolic ring" piece comes from its origins in the Exploriens theme, in which angled pieces attached by clips to the outer ring to form a parabolic antenna of sorts.
Anyway, this is a fun-looking set. Two little bikes to zoom around may not be the most original subject matter for a set, but that doesn't mean it's not effective. I like the chunky aesthetic of MK's bike here, and its unconventional sideways-firing launchers. And the spider bike is sleek and cool looking (I especially like the way the headlights and launchers combine to resemble spidery-looking eyes). The spider-drone is similar to the ones in other sets but it's nice to get in a set this size as a source for those new leg pieces. Even Rui the helpless civilian looks nice—I hadn't realized that her torso was still so uncommon, which is a plus.
There’s a show?
The return of those skinny Technic wheels from the 90s, and I still have too many of them. Eight more for the bike? Ugh.
@AHYL88 said:
"Good review and it's nice there's a lower entry cost for those interested the Monkie Kid theme; however, the last paragraph is definitely the most telling issue with the theme in general.
Other themes like Star Wars and Ninjago are much more widely available and so are guaranteed to have discounts in stores and supermarkets, whether in the future or relatively quickly as we saw of late at Argos, Amazon and such; the Monkie Kid theme however is only available directly from Lego themselves, so discounts (without VIP points) are absolutely nonexistent. Which is surprising as I'd have thought these would be more widely available; maybe it was deliberate to stop it clashing against Ninjago?
There's a lot of cool and quirky, off-the-wall sets in the Monkie Kid theme, like Pigsy's Food Truck and Spider Queen’s Arachnoid Base; it's just a shame that they won't get the attention as much and are overall relatively expensive (despite the fine prices) next to the often discounted and widely available Ninjago sets."
This is exactly why I will probably never own a Monkie Kid set- I quite like the Bull Mech from wave one- but its £80 and isnt going to get reduced, while things like Lloyds Titan Mech I got for £35 between a sale and a lower rrp to begin with- ends up being too much of a price difference
Great to see a reviewer who knows bikes and spiders. The kid's bike looks like a hugely enlarged version of his delivery bike. These will go well with last year's Horse Dragon Bike.
@Djhorn said:
"It’s been odd to see the CMF series 10 Trendsetter torso piece (used here for the civilian) show up nearly a decade later as a regular issue piece. Are there any other instances of this happening?"
Not quite the same situation, but I was surprised to find the torso from the Series 1 Spaceman in the Build-a-Minifig selection at the Detroit LEGO store last month. That's from 2010, so those parts are either 11-year-old stock or they made a subsequent production run.
The bikes remind me of Akira a bit
They both remind me of Kaneda's motorcycle from Akira a little. If the purple one was in red with a lower-slung seat and a few other mods...
Sideways disc launcher on a bike? For me that means a GTA - Vice City mod :) Delivering pizza by throwing them at the customers on the sidewalk as frisbees was insane but fun!
The pizza's fly out of both sides of the bike and are meant to cause the spider to release Rui in favour of some spicy pepperoni. Shame Spindrax only has two stud launchers and not four as there is space.
@Djhorn said:
"It’s been odd to see the CMF series 10 Trendsetter torso piece (used here for the civilian) show up nearly a decade later as a regular issue piece. Are there any other instances of this happening?
I would have much rathered an updated design in the same spirit as the CMF torso as the styling (ironically) starts to feel a bit dated. "
Well, the most obvious example of a CMF piece making its way into regular issue sets is probably Santa Claus, who got an updated figure design in Series 8 that was subsequently reused for multiple sets including Advent Calendars, the Winter Village line, and other seasonal sets (replacing the classic version that used a plain unprinted torso, wizard beard, and pirate bandanna).
Why does Rui have that clear neck bracket piece on?
@cyboticzombie said:
"Why does Rui have that clear neck bracket piece on?"
The spider-drones are designed to grip onto the back of a civilian to "mind-control" them. You can see that in the last photo in the review, though this review seems to have accidentally attached the spider legs, head, and tail at a 45° offset—they should be attached so that the head is vertical when attached to the fig's back and the legs attach symmetrically on either side.