Monkie Kid

Monkie Kid's Cloud Airship

A small airship punching way above its weight on figures and rare gold.

Brick Rated Score

4.2/5

Set 80046 · 2023

Pieces547

Minifigs4

Year2023

Set number80046

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The verdict

This is one of those mid-size Monkie Kid sets that quietly gives you far more than the box price suggests.

The Golden-Winged Eagle got me completely, that head and torso printing is gorgeous, and the airship itself has actual play space inside the balloon instead of hollow filler. It is a quick build and the yellow color scheme won't be for everyone, but for the figures and parts alone it earns its keep. If you love the theme or you hunt exclusive minifigs, grab it while you still can.

Best for: Monkie Kid fans and minifig collectors chasing exclusive characters

The full review

What it is

The Cloud Airship is a 547-piece set from the Season 4 wave of Monkie Kid, and it is the kind of set that sneaks up on you. You expect a simple kids' vehicle and instead you get a chunky airship with a cockpit, an underslung shooter, wings you can angle, an actual working winch and a little detachable flyer that carries two more shooters. The thing that got me, though, was the Golden-Winged Eagle. Before you even open the balloon build, this figure justifies the whole box. The head printing in light aqua with dark turquoise markings, the gold chain torso, the robe-and-claws leg print, it is one of the more beautiful villain figures LEGO put out that year and it is not the kind of thing you expect tucked into a fifty-dollar set.

The catch

I'll be straight with you about the caveats. This is a fast build. If you sit down with it after dinner you'll likely be done before you want to be, and it leans far more toward play than toward a satisfying engineering session. The other honest issue is the color. The airship hull is bright yellow, and yellow, all of it, everywhere. Some builders love the cheerful cartoon energy of it and some find it garish on a shelf. There is no middle ground I've seen in the comments. And if you came looking for a display centerpiece with presence, this isn't quite that. It photographs as a toy, because that is genuinely what it is built to be.

Who it's for

So who actually walks away happy here. If you follow Monkie Kid, or you have a kid who does, this is close to a no-brainer, because the play features are thoughtful and the figures are the best kind of exclusive. Minifig collectors should look hard too, since diving-jacket Monkie Kid and Power-Up Sandy don't appear anywhere else, and that Eagle is a trophy. The people I'd steer away are the ones who want a slow, technique-heavy build or a clean adult-display model. This set knows exactly what it is, and it does that job with real charm. At its original 49.99 it was fair value, and now that it has retired the figures alone will keep it wanted.

The parts story

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

Building the Cloud Airship is a breezy, satisfying couple of hours rather than a marathon, and that is by design. The balloon section is the clever bit, because instead of wrapping curved panels around dead air, LEGO gave the interior real play space so the whole thing feels purposeful. New Elementary flagged a few genuinely nice techniques inside that you won't have met in previous blimp-style sets, so even though it is quick, it is not mindless. The two side builds, a crossbow for the villain and a small mountain pond holding the ancestral weapon, add a bit of scene-setting without padding the parts count.

For a set this size the parts bin is unusually generous to collectors. There are two fresh recolors here: four Aircraft Fuselage Curved Aft sections in yellow, a mold that had only ever appeared in white and bright light orange, and eight yellow 2x8 curved slopes. The standout rarity is the Minifig Neckwear Wings (Angel) in Pearl Gold, which before this had appeared only in the much pricier 80045 Monkey King Ultra Mech. Add the beautifully printed Golden-Winged Eagle components and you have a part-count value that reviewers pegged around eight to nine cents per piece, which is solid for a licensed theme.

Fun facts

01The set retired in December 2024 after about eighteen months on shelves, and its post-retirement demand is driven largely by the two exclusive figures rather than the model itself.
02The Pearl Gold angel wings included here were, at launch, previously found in only one other set, the far larger 80045 Monkey King Ultra Mech.
03Kitten Mo, the little cat figure, ships alongside the four minifigures, giving you a full five characters in a mid-size box.
04The yellow Aircraft Fuselage Curved Aft piece debuted this recolor here; the mold itself had only ever existed in white (a Friends plane) and bright light orange (a City plane).