Monkie Kid

Mei's Dragon Car

A dragon head with real bite, wrapped around a build that never quite decides what it wants to be.

Brick Rated Score

3.4/5

Set 80031 · 2022

Pieces456

Minifigs4

Year2022

Set number80031

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The verdict

The dragon head between the front wheels is genuinely the star here, the jaw and nostril shaping is some of the nicest small scale animal work Monkie Kid has done, and watching it snap its plasma blast out when you tip the head back never stopped being satisfying to me.

But I sat with this build a while and kept noticing the gaps, the Technic pins left bare around the front axles, a few panels that just do not close up the way they should. It reads like a set that spent its budget on the head and ran out of ideas for the body. I would point a Monkie Kid fan toward almost anything else in the range before this one, unless that dragon face and the neon yellow color story are exactly what you are chasing.

Best for: Monkie Kid completists who want the exclusive Rumble minifigure and do not mind a few rough edges in the build

The full review

What it is

I want to start with what actually works, because it is easy to bury under the complaints. That dragon head sitting low between the front wheels is a small piece of sculpting I genuinely admire, the jaw curves just right, the nostrils have real depth, and when you tilt the head back to trigger the spring loaded plasma blast it feels like a proper toy moment, not a bolted on gimmick. The neon yellow and trans-bright green color combination is unlike anything else in Monkie Kid, and it gives the whole vehicle a punchy, almost neon-arcade look that photographs really well.

The catch

Where it loses me is everything around that head. The build leaves conspicuous gaps toward the front of the car, and several sections around the wheel arches leave Technic pins and axles sitting there exposed with nothing to hide them. It is the kind of thing that would bother me less on a budget set, but at $49.99 for 456 pieces I expect the finishing to be tighter than this. The four minifigures are appealing individually, Mei with her dragon blade, Monkie Kid, and two Shadow Monkeys, but only one of the Shadow Monkeys, Rumble, is actually exclusive to this set, so the minifigure value is not quite what the box count suggests.

Who it's for

If you collect Monkie Kid and want that exclusive Rumble figure, or you just fell for the dragon head the way I did, this is worth grabbing, especially now that it has retired and started climbing slightly above retail. Everyone else, myself included on a tighter budget, I would steer toward one of the stronger sets in the same wave first.

The parts story

What the build is actually like, and the pieces worth knowing about.

Building this one is a quick sit, you are through the 456 pieces in an evening, and the front half where the dragon head and blaster mechanism come together is genuinely the fun part, watching the jaw and Technic linkage click into place piece by piece. The back half, where the car's body panels and rear blade assembly go on, moves faster but feels less considered, which is exactly where those visible gaps show up.

The standout piece for me is the dragon head mold itself, full of sculpted detail you do not often get at this scale, paired with a spring loaded blaster function tucked underneath. The two trans-bright green blades mounted at the rear started life in NINJAGO and previously showed up on the White Horse Dragon Jet, and they carry that dramatic swept angle over nicely here. Layer in the neon yellow accent pieces introduced with this January 2022 wave and you get a color palette that makes the whole thing pop on a shelf even when the underlying build is a little uneven.

Fun facts

01The set was released in January 2022 and officially retired by the end of that year, giving it just about a one year shelf life.
02Rumble, one of the two Shadow Monkey minifigures included, is exclusive to this set and does not appear anywhere else.
03The dragon head's blaster is spring loaded and fires when you tip the head backward, launching a stud representing a burst of dragon plasma breath.
04The trans-bright green blade pieces on the rear were originally developed for NINJAGO and had previously appeared in the White Horse Dragon Jet set.