Intro

I didn't watch the Monkie Kid series yet, but read about it here and there. Since the first wave came out, that included the awesome #80012 Monkey King Warrior Mech, I watch each new wave of sets very carefully for gems like this one — The Bone Demon.

The set tries to recreate the fight against Lady Bone Demon and her bone mech, it comes with 3 manuals, each representing a stage of the conflict. In the series the mech evolves each time Monkie Kid tries to kill it with his powers. Lady Bone Demon steals/absorbs these powers and infuses them into her mech, thus it becomes stronger, bigger and a lot more menacing.

Build and Playability

The first stage is Monkie Kid and Mei entering the tomb of Lady Bone Demon by passing some sort of entrance that is decorated with ribcages and bones to the sides. It is also guarded by two six-legged spiders, each carrying a cauldron with more bones in it. The twin spiders are well articulated, each leg is hinged on a ball joint and their abdomen glows in the dark. The archway holds a big head-like structure at the top, either at the front or the back.

If Mei and Monkie Kid get past these first minor obstacles, they reach the tomb itself. It's a massive construct with glowing bones to the left and right. In the center there's a big vessel, more like a sarcophagus if you will. It holds the spirit of Lady Bone Demon. You get two big vinyl pieces hanging down from above, another six-legged little spidey and two bone spirits that protect the tomb. Little spidey is not as cool as the first two but still offers plenty of ways to position it on top or around the scenery. At this stage MK increases the size of his staff and Mei suits up and uses her gun instead of her sword.

Once Lady Bone Demon is released from her “prison”, she will summon the mighty bone scorpion, one of the bigger sub-assemblies in this set. It's very sturdy, yet four of its legs/arms can be articulated. It's a bit a shame that the tail can't reach the ground in front of it to sting our heroes but the tip of the tail does have some sort of articulation, which is fine. You will soon understand why it was necessary to make it this stable. The two arms with their big claws are fully articulated and can grab a minifig with ease. Transparent blue chains are used to great effect, you could chain somebody or attach it to anything in order to reenact a scene where the scorpion breaks the chains or rip something apart.

In order to defeat the scorpion, MK uses the power of his staff and transforms it into a small mech (similar to the $10 Marvel mechs), including a huge version of the staff itself. The mech is very detailed and has lots of points of articulation. I especially like the hands, that are formed like big shields. Its legs however sometimes collapse under the weight of the staff. At the mech's back is a technic pin that can hold the staff and if you think the staff is two heavy or too long, just remove 2-3 segments of it! Fortunately, it also comes with a glider, big enough to hold the mech in place and to allow it to fly. The glider includes two small wings, which can be attached to Mei's back, allowing her to fly as well. Powered up this way, the scorpion is soon to be history.

This is when Lady Bone Demon uses all of her power to summon The Bone Demon™ — a huge monster that combines all defeated minions into a single monstrous entity.

That means, you actually have to combine the scorpion, the tomb, the spider twins, little spidey and the head from the archway into a Voltron/Megazord-like mech, which always feels great if you ask me.

The scorpion transforms into the base of the mech, the claws will become arms and are attached to the tomb that forms the torso. Little spidey is used for decoration between base and torso and the twin spiders are made into badass shoulder pads. Lady Bone Demon can pilot the mech by standing pretty much inside the head, it kind of wraps around her gently.

The final form of the model is really cool looking and all the glow in the dark pieces are just a bonus, really, but a welcome one. LEGO should include glow in the dark in more sets, it seems that any stiff part can be made in that color, so why not use it in more occasions?

Two big swords are included, you can place one of them in each hand via a technic pin connection. You can rotate the upper body 360° around the hips and the arms are very poseable and stay in place.

Minifigs

The minifigs are great as well. MK in his standard outfit, jacked zipped up, printed legs, nice hair piece. He also wears his headphones again, I wish he still had his teal hoody but nevermind. Mei comes in her battle suit v2, including the helm. Also including is her hair piece, which I appreciate a lot. LEGO should always include the hair piece for any minifig. Next is Lady Bone Demon, she comes with a calm and a very scary looking face expression and a hair piece out of rubber. As legs she uses either a 2x2 dress piece or a smoky... ghost-like piece. Her two henchmen aka bone spirits carry the new hood piece in black and two spiked spear weapons as well as the ghost piece for legs, their arms and heads are also glowing. Just in case you were wondering — yes, there are two complete minifig skeletons in this set (these do not glow, btw), so you end up actually getting 7 minifigs in total.

Parts

Nothing too special, really. It holds the current record for the most glow in the dark pieces in one set, I guess that's a thing. There are also a lot of white and purple parts as well as bones in any shape or form, so if you are into that, there you go.

Overall

This set is really cool, and you get a ton of great stuff for your money. Not only does it look great on display, especially next to Monkey King Warrior Mech, but also the play value is insane. Playing through three stages of a fight, ending in an epic transformation feature and seeing the result is just very satisfying.

The build process is great except applying all the stickers (I don't think there is a single printed element in this set, except for the minfigs, of course). I think it took me around two hours to build.

I'd highly recommend this set to everyone loving mechs that are a combination of several smaller builds and to kids of any age that get so much play time out of the huge number of potential scenarios. I recommend combining it with other sets from the theme, they are all very consistent in color schemes and overall style, as you would expect.

This mech is a real beauty!

First, you start of building the small bull-themed mech, which is decent but lacks leg movement a bit. You can however modify it a bit to give the upper legs more space to articulate. The little mech is your main antagonist in this set and comes with two more or less generic bad guys and their weaponry.

Next up is Pigsy's nudle shop, a wonderful, yet small kitchen with a similar sized apartment on top. The shop includes everything you need: oven, sources, a menu, a pan and even a fire extinguisher. The apartment seems to be Monkey Kid's sleeping space. There's a cute Monkey King poster on the wall and there is room for additions, if you have spare parts. Two random people are added to the scene, maybe they are MK's parents? Who knows. On the roof there is a big sign, similar to that containers on the big ship (80013), and some plants. One figure can stand on the roof.

The other part of that building is a small arcade, which you can modify again, since the small lever doesn't do much... The utility pole looks great and holds a sign for Pigsy's shop.

Overall a great city scene, which could be expanded by adding the Panda shop from 80011.

Monkey King on his cloud is the next sub assembly, I love this figure and the cloud looks like it is flying him through the sky. The tip of flower fruit mountain, which holds the powerful staff, is included as well. The printed heart-shaped tiles look wonderful, I bet the Monkey King eats one of those every once in a while.

Last but not least there is Monkey King's Warrior Mech. A huge red and gold colored, ape like mechanical beast. Seriously, it is big, not as big as Voltron but bigger than Lloyd's Titan Mech. It features the most gold drum lacquered pieces in a single set, ever. And it shows! The color combination used here is just beautiful, the gold pieces shine as bright as they do on the images. Unfortunately it is not as flexible as you'd wish. Let's talk about the bad things first: No knees - as you would expect. Ball joints were used though, but only to achieve a certain angle. They are hold in place by two mixel ball joints at the back. The torso can't be rotated and the arms' up and down movement is quite limited.

Apart from that, the mechs arms and hands have a good range of motion. You can rotate the arms and hands 360 degrees, you have 4 fingers on each hand and small golden armor pieces form the pauldrons.

The head can be rotated and angled up and down, which is very well done and much-needed! You can also give the mech some emotions by rotating the 1x1 printed tiles used for its eyes. The red "antennas" can be moved around and angled in every direction, they are on small ball joints. There is of course a very cool cockpit inside its chest, that is integrated perfectly. The big staff can be used with both hands, or scaled down to fit into one hand. The rudimentary backside is covered with a soft, lightweight cape. Flags with Chinese signs are mounted on the back. Small details are added everywhere, so are stickers to complement the mechanical look.

All the beauty comes with a cost: You shouldn't play with it too much. It is big and heavy and parts will fall off. Also the golden colored pieces will lose their color once they hit other pieces too hard. So the big mech is more or less a display piece. You will admire it, though, while it stands majestically on your shelf.

You can play with the smaller stuff, especially the building is great for playing out scenes around the nudle shop that is attacked by the bull mech. Also, MK's journey to meet the real Monkey King and to get the staff offers great play value.

Verdict: I recommend this set to everyone who likes building mechs and displays them. Everybody collecting gold drum lacquered pieces, this is for you! The side builds are great for kids and can be modified easily to increase the fun.

Possible improvements: Add in more bad guys (at least one) and exchange one of the random civilians with Mei or Pigsy.

This dragon is probably the coolest looking beast that LEGO has ever released, thus far. It is an asian styled dragon, thus it has no big wings like the european styled dragon.

Although it does no have the same range of articulation as its smaller brother (30428), it still offers a lot of poses and ways to animate it. Especially the black horns, that go from its neck till the end of its tail, and the small wings attached to his shoulders enable you to give the dragon some form of expression like anger or calmness.

There is just one let down and that is the head-neck region. The neck goes up a bunch of clicks but only one click down. You can actually improve the model and exchange the golden 2x2 tile with two 1x1 studs from spare parts so it moves two clicks down, enough to reach the ground with its nose.

You can rotate the head and move it from left to right, it can not look up or down. The mouth can be opened but I would have liked to see the lower jaw being attached a bit closer to the skull so it doesn't look too goofy if you open it up very widely. The tongue and whiskers look just awesome and can be used for even more expressions.

The torso is shock absorbed by some rubber pieces, keeping the dragon's sleek silhouette intact during flying. You could take those rubber pieces out if you want to achieve a certain pose where the torso needs to bend to one way or another. The rest of the model is very sturdy, nothing falls off, resulting in a very high swoosh factor. Don't forget to bring up the thrusters during flying! ;)

There are three main play features built into this set:

• You can throw Garmadon and his minion away by swinging the dragon's tail back and fourth, the mechanic works very well but the tail tends to lean to either side while standing still, so you better lower his back as much as possible so that the tail stays in position.
• Fight between the minifigs, Garmadon vs. Master Wu and Lloyd.
• Flying mode, see above.

Besides these, you can also grab minifigs with his head or claws and fire the dragon's stud shooters (meh). Talking of minifigs, they are all very good and each of them comes with their own signature weapon. It's sad that we don't get Lloyds hair piece, though. Also, I don't get the ultimate ultimate weapon.. its too heavy for minifigs and they can barely hold it straight.

The build was a lot of fun, although there are no new building techniques used, it is great to see the dragon come to life. The color scheme is fantastic, gold and black goes so well with sand green which is the most dominant color in this set. The whole model consists of 11 parts:

• 2 torso parts
• 4 legs
• 3 tail parts
• 1 neck
• 1 head

Everything is connected by simple ball joints or rotation joint balls (vert./horiz.) for more solid connections.

Overall I am very pleased by how this set turned out, It is worth its price but I would love to see someone to come up with a way to move the head around more freely, let me know if you found a good solution for that.

The set does not come with a stand, I built one on my own to be able to display it in flying mode.

This polybag is cute, it features Monkie Kid in his delivery outfit, which does look quite messy. At this time, he did not yet acquire the powerful staff, that is probably why he looks so worried. This, or maybe he has to hurry up to get the delivery done. His second face on the other hand looks like he moans about yet another delivery Pigsy is asking him to do.

MK is driving a red motorcycle with yellow grills to the side, perfectly in line with his usual color scheme. He also carries a box from Pigsy's noodle shop with him.

Kids will love to drive the motorcycle, adults will get this set for the minifig and/or as a nice addition to a bunch of Monkie Kid sets like the Panda Store from 80011, the Noddle Shop from 80012, Pigsy's Food Truck (80009) or his Noodle Tank (80026).

While I don't think the A-model - a mini Titanium Mech - looks particularly ugly, I think it lacks poseability and tends to fall apart while posing it.

The B-model on the other hand is really cool in both looks and overall stability. It's the Titanium Dragon from #30547 but bigger and more modern looking. Nearly all parts are used in both builds. And as always you as a buyer are welcomed to make changes or additions to it, so it fits to your needs or other small polybag dragons you might have. Looking at you #30428!