Review: King 86999 - Monkie Kid City of Lanterns Building Block Set

 

Hey there, alt Lego fans, welcome back!   Are you wondering if your favourite Lego set has a cheaper clone version?  This King brand reproduction of the Lego Monkie Kid City of Lanterns set might be the one you are looking for.  

This and other replica Lego sets can be found at Youmko.com.  

If you are looking for the latest chinese designed building block sets that are not Lego copies, look no further than Barweer.com (who have kindly provided this set for my review.)  All sets include free shipping worldwide and are tax free.

More on Barweer.com and the special discount they are providing later in this post.

Here's the artist depiction of the City of Lanterns, also known as Lantern City ....

... And here is the King set (number 86999) that I finished building.  This colourful 2187 piece set packs in a lot of play value for the price.  It's a multi-level set with lots of shops and eateries for this asian themed city.  Even if you don't play with it, it looks great as a display set, fitting right in with the Ninjago City or Ninjago City Docks sets (replica sets that are also available on Youmko.com).

The focus of my review is to look at the quality of the Lego clone set, so I won't go into the Monkie Kid story or characters.  Let's see if this clone set meets your expectations.

First let's check out the seven mini figures that come with the set.  Pictured from left to right: Monkie Kid, Huang, Pigsy, Mei, Train Driver, Han, and Tang.

These are the mini figures that come with only one facial expression and they look pretty decent, except that I find that Monkie Kid's hairpiece is a bit oversize for his head.  Huang (the girl with the lantern) has a black rubber hairpiece.  No fitment issues with the arms or legs.  Colours are decently reproduced.

Pictured above are the mini figures with the dual faces.  Han (the girl with the red jacket) also has a rubber hairpiece.  The torsos of all the minifigures have some sort of back printing, whereas the legs are pretty much devoid of any prints except for Monkie Kid's pants.

Not sure if these primitive looking robots qualify as mini figures. There are so many better looking robots in the Lego lineup, so not sure why they chose these crappy ones for the set and Monkie Kid theme.

Pigsy minifigure comes with his cooking accessories and the flying contraption.

Monkie Kid mini figure comes with his staff and stickered map thingy.

The foundation of the Lantern City is this raised base and tall girder construction.  The brick clutch is excellent and the quality of the brick pieces are top notch.  One of the eye catching features of the Lantern City is the turquoise coloured elevated track of the skytrain, that goes all the way around the city.  There's also an elevated track by itself on the upper level but I'm not sure what that's used for.  Maybe it serves as a canopy?  Feel free to let me know.

For the younger builders, they might have some trouble with the technic pins. Some of them them are quite tight like the two back pins that I didn't push all the way in.

All of the remaining city shops and restaurants are attached to the base unit via technic pits or sit on the platform.

Contrasting the turquoise tracks is the pink,red and white Pigsy train, that rolls really well. It features two end cabs and one middle cab.  

While the train itself is rather small, I can confirm that minifigures do fit inside each of the cabs.

And off they go!  So, in case you are wondering, I normally don't normally apply stickers to my sets, but in this case, I made an exception.  Without the colourful stickers the City would look kind of blah.  I was judicious in which ones I used though, so there are some that I didn't apply.  

Here are the three sticker sheets that came with the set. All the stickers are printed on the white background. When I look at pictures of the real Lego Monkie Kid set, it seems to come with some transparent stickers, so this is a difference you might want to be aware of.  If it bothers you, I guess you could order the proper stickers from Lego.  I think the stickers for the dragon and the train platform look better on the Lego version than this King copy.  As you can see, all of the other stickers are quite bright though.

Not everything is a sticker. There are several printed parts in the set, such as the black and white eyes used for the pig, monkie and dragon faces.

So let's move on to each of the modular builds of the city.  There are 8 mini sets in total that attach to the base module.

I would consider the robot repair station, train station stairs and train tunnel to be one modular unit of the Lantern city.  I didn't put the stickers into the robot repair station. The train tracks attach to the roof of the robot repair and the modular unit plugs into the main base via technic pins. Everything attached well and no clutch issues.

I think the train platform needs to be expanded over the robot service station for better play value.  I might try to customize my set later.

Next up, the hot pot restaurant is the centerpiece of the set and is central to the city.  

As you can see, I've applied all the stickers to the restaurant front facade.

The hotpot restaurant is on the second floor, two tables for cooking with 4 pairs of chopsticks.  Downstairs, there is a small market and kitchen.  There's supposed to be stuff in the containers, but I took them out so as not to lose them during my picture taking.

The bubble tea shop is situated next to the hot pot restaurant, and looks as good as the Lego version.  I switched up some of the stickers for the shop sign.

The Lotus Hotel has its namesake flower on the roof.  The main floor has an entrance door and potted plants on either side.  The second floor has a lone guest suite that has a bed in it.

If you are hungry for seafood, there's a giant shrimp restaurant with great lookout views, right next to the hotel.

Want to buy something from the Lego store?  Not in this version of the City of Lanterns.  This city has a generic brick store with no Lego wording on the bricks or on the store. I might have a Lepin sticker somewhere though, I can put in it's place.

The colourful stickers really enhance the Panda Express store.

Finally here's the karaoke booth for the music lovers.

I really love how colourful this set was, and I actually liked the stickers, well most anyways.  My brain is already buzzing on how to incorporate some of my Sembo branded Japanese shops into the City of Lanterns.  There's definitely room for expansion.  

For my rating, I give it a solid 4.7 stars out of 5.  As I mentioned earlier, the mini figures all look pretty good (except for those robots).  Brick quality of this King branded set was excellent and no problems with clutch other than some tight technic pins.  I took some points off for the stickers especially because they didn't use the clear backed stickers.  As a display and play piece, this looks great.

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