03 July 2020

LEGO® Monkie Kid review & alt build: 80009 Pigsy’s Food Truck

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Today we welcome back super-Spacer and co-creator of Lego Space: Building the Future (Amazon USA: affiliate link), Tim Goddard (on Instagram) for the first of our examinations of sets from LEGO® Monkie Kid. If you need an overview of this exciting new Asian theme check out our article, otherwise read on and see what new parts Tim found in 80009 Pigsy’s Food Truck – and enjoy his original creation, made from parts in the set!

Monkie Kid. It’s not just Ninjago with a lockdown haircut, apparently. Let’s see, shall we…


Pigsy’s food truck is a massive lump of a 10 module-wide food wagon. The scale is well off anything in the LEGO City range but you might get away with it put next to the new scale of Speed Champion sets. You will not get away with it next to a minifigure.



The theme of the set baffles me a bit; the truck is owned by an anthropomorphised pig and has a giant stud shooting pig on the roof (advertising, I get that) but he is selling sausages. Is he some kind of boar cannibal or are they vegan sausages, or maybe beef or chicken? I haven’t done my research to find out if there is a good explanation for this.


Out of the box, the first thing that stuck me was that the instructions have been given a bit of a makeover. A yellowed background colour gives a tiny bit of sophistication, and there are nice touches like the eponymous hero moving along the bottom of the page, a little further on each spread. A kind of minifig progress bar.

Some sub-assemblies have a little explosion of stars around them when they get added to the main model or when a section is finished; you can almost hear a ‘success!’ sound when you see them. Also, sometimes when something needs to be rotated or a sticker applied, Monkie Kid pops up to tell you what to do.


For the build itself, there is not a lot to tell: it is all fairly standard stuff. Some nice fold-out panels and hidden flippy things are included. If you are a seasoned AFOL I don't think you will be surprised by any build techniques but it is fun enough and has some nice details. The best is the use of the 2x2 turntable with the underside showing, to represent a fan.

Parts in new colours in Pigsy’s Food truck

Now the bit you have been waiting for: the bits! The bad news is, apart from the minifigures there are no new moulds in this set but the good news is there are some recolours and a few relative rarities. For me however, this set is all about one part in particular.


This new mould first turned up in Medium Stone Grey (6294038 | 65617) earlier in the year in LEGO Star Wars 75273 Poe Dameron's X-wing Fighter, which New Elementary will be reviewing soon. In the summer Star Wars wave, we will have it in Bright Blue as well. Pigsy’s Food Truck has it in two colours:

  • 8x in White (6294351), also found in 43180 Belle's Castle Winter Celebration which has six
  • 4x in Light Purple/ Bright Pink (6294350)

This is a great part with lots of building potential so I thought it was worth exploring some more, but first let’s run through the other new and interesting parts.

Pink bits

Aside from the ¼ arch brick 3x3, there are a nice selection of other Light Purple elements including some new recolours, courtesy of the giant pig of death.


Set exclusives:

  • 1x six-shooter housing (6291787 | 18588)
  • 2x brick w.arch 1x1x1⅓ (6204515 | 6091)
  • 4x ¼ arch brick 3x3 w.cutout no.1 (6294350 | 65617)
  • 8x plate w.half bow, inverted 1x2x⅔ (6296041 | 24201)
  • 1x Technic brick 1x4, ⌀49 (6296042 | 3701)


Monkey Kid theme exclusives:

  • 2x plate 1x1, no.17 aka the ‘pig’s eyebrow plate’ (6296302 | 66045)
  • 1x tile 1x1, heart, no.4 – is this meant to be a peach? – (6305864 | 68428)


More of interest:

  • 1x flat tile 2x4 (6106713 | 87079), also found in the small Minecraft set 21157 BigFig Pig with Baby Zombie
  • 2x angle plate 1x2/2x4 (61222543 | 21731), again also available in set 21157
  • 2x plate 1x2 w.hor.hole ⌀4.8 (6213791|11458), found in three sets now

Other 2020 recolours and parts of interest





  • 3x plate, 2x2 in Bright Bluish Green/ Dark Turquoise (6249390 | 3022), found in seven sets
  • 1x plate, 2x2 with reduced knobs in Bright Blue/ Blue (6252060 | 33909), found in five sets
  • 1x pitchfork in Bright Red/ Red (6296052 | 95345), also in two other Monkie kid sets
  • 1x tile 1x2, no. 284 in Transparent/ Trans-Clear (6296301 | 66044), also in three other Monkie Kid sets
  • 11x conical horn ⌀ 3.2 shaft in Bright Red/ Red (6192796 | 34078) which, while it comes in seven other sets, it has only ever been as a single (plus spare) before
  • 4x cow horn in Dark Stone Grey/ Dark Bluish Gray (6298482 | 64847)
  • 4x cow horn in Bright Reddish Violet/ Magenta (6298479 | 64847)

Those last two cow horns are currently exclusive across the Monkie Kid range.

The new 2020 LEGO motorcycle



There is also a new motorbike in this set. The base part is new to 2020 but is almost ubiquitous already, as it is in 13 sets, although this is the first time we’ve noted it on New Elementary. The body cover is also new this year and currently exclusive in this colour to this set. It is also available in Bright Red/ Red and Dark Orange, in one set each.

These are a nice couple of pieces and have MOCing potential; the obvious subject would be a hover bike but there are plenty of other possibilities.

  • 2x motor cycle fairing, no.8 in Titanium Metallic (6296251 | 65521)
  • 2x motor cycle, frame, no. 2 in Black (6298539 | 65415)


¼ arch brick 3x3 w.cutout no.1, Design ID 65617

Now for the main brick event of the set: that new smaller quarter-donut piece. It adds a six-module diameter bevelled curve to the range, and sits within the rapidly expanding family of curves sharing the same cross-section curve diameter. The new LEGO Disney 43179 Mickey & Minnie Mouse Buildable Characters (which we will review soon) add to this family as well, with a bevelled right angle corner piece. There would seem to be a gap for a 2x2 four-module diameter curve too (fingers crossed).


The top left of the picture shows how the curve’s diameter also matches pieces such as this 61487, but there is no in-System way to utilise this fact.

Because the curve forms part of a perfect circle it can of course be rotated to match up with pieces set on other planes.


I am waxing lyrical about this part, so I had better show it used in action.

Tim Goddard's Alternate Build of 80009 Pigsy’s Food truck

My creation is an upgrade of the evil oxens’ motorbike to hovering speeder bike. I did not use all the parts in the set but my build does show the use of our new 3x3 friend.


Having no studs on top of the curve gives a nice crisp edge, although this may make it challenging to secure in some builds. The set itself has an exposed hollow stud where it is used over the front wheels, in order to hold it on tightly.


I have already used the grey version of this piece in my own version of the venerable old 928 Galaxy Explorer. I really must take some proper pictures of that model… but here’s a sneak preview for you.


Stickers in LEGO set 80009

And, because I always like to see a sticker sheet in reviews so I can see what potential they have elsewhere, let's finish with the sticker sheet.





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7 comments:

  1. I have a feeling the galaxy explorer is going to be awesome :)

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  2. Awesome review! Though I have a few things to point out:

    The motorcycle base is not really new to 2020, although it has a new Design ID number. The same part has been available with the design ID 18896 since 2015: https://brickset.com/sets/containing-design-18896 But you're correct that the fairing is new for this year.

    The updated instruction layout is also fairly new, but not to this particular theme. Other sets that used a similar layout in their instructions include:

    • https://brickset.com/sets/41391-1 and https://brickset.com/sets/41393-1 from LEGO Friends
    • https://brickset.com/sets/71709-1, https://brickset.com/sets/71714-1, https://brickset.com/sets/71715-1, and https://brickset.com/sets/71716-1 from LEGO Ninjago
    • https://brickset.com/sets/4002019-1 from LEGO Star Wars (last year's employee Christmas set)

    There might be even more sets that have had this feature — these are just the ones where I've seen reviews mentioning it.

    The printed heart tiles are indeed peaches, and I suspect using a tile for them rather than a more three-dimensional part was no accident! A Chinese species of peach often called "flat peaches" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saturn_Peach) feature prominently in Journey to the West. In real life, flat peaches have a donut-like shape with the stem and pit in the center, rather than a pointed shape like this printed tile. Even so, I suspect that the designers chose this part as a cheeky reference to the original story.

    Great MOCs, by the way! I love seeing and coming up with creative uses for parts like these curved bricks, and it's neat to see how conducive they are to your signature style of LEGO Space inspired creations!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I kinda wondered about the motorcycle chassis. It's not like them to just randomly change the ID number like that, though. Usually when they do, it's because the part has had a notable mold change, but I can't spot any differences in the photos. Maybe a hands-on look would reveal something.

      And yes, the X-Mas Wing is the first set I've encountered that had a progress bar as well as characters from the set having random interactions with the instructions. It was a cute, but unnecessary, addition that I had, until now, assumed was exclusive to that set. On a guess, it's probably something they came up with for sets targeted at a younger market, where kids who need the assistance of someone older may start getting impatient for the model to be finished, but not be able to gauge how much longer it will take to complete. I highly doubt they'll do something like this for any sets under the "18+" line.

      If those are indeed meant to be Saturn Peaches, they got it completely wrong. Those look more turnip-shaped due to the use of a heart tile. The stem is located between the two lobes, and tapers to a point opposite. The flat peach looks more like a pumpkin, forming a wide donut shape around a stem that's sunken into the center. A more accurate depiction would have been to use a 1x1 round tile and give it a top-down view with the stem in the center.

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  3. Pigsy technically isn't committing cannibalism unless he's _eating_ the sausages. All we can tell from the set is that he's serving them. And he wouldn't be the first anyways. The Potatoheads have been used in advertisements for both Burger King French fries and Lay's potato chips. Anyways, if you want to know for sure what he's serving, I suspect you're going to need to get the sticker sheet translated.

    BTW, there _is_ an in-system way to pair the new quarter-donut up with 61487. You've actually got two copies of the required piece in the same photo. All you have to do is stick a 18646 plate between the 61487 and the quarter-donut, and you can use the portion that hangs below the 61487 to mount the 18646, which will provide a mounting surface for the quarter-donut. There are some disadvantages here. One is that you'd need considerable space below the 61487 to pull this off. It also doesn't make a perfectly clean match due to the "toe" on the 61487. You'd also need to fill in underneath, as there's 1.5 plates gap underneath the 61487 if you orient the quarter-donut on grid. Potential uses don't immediately jump out, but maybe someone will find it handy.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Yum-yummy-yum!

      https://www.flickr.com/photos/merlin/sets/72157622993331592

      Delete
    2. That's...really messed up. How can you put together any sort of Richard Scarry fan page and not include a single image where Gold Bug appears?

      Delete
    3. Oh wowww that's amazing. Love Scarry, and now I'm scarred

      Delete