Monkie Kid

Sandy's Power Loader Mech

A chunky orange mech piloted by the gentlest giant on Monkie Kid's team.

Brick Rated Score

3.7/5

Set 80025 · 2021

Pieces520

Minifigs4

Year2021

Set number80025

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The verdict

This is the smallest of the three summer 2021 Monkie Kid sets, and honestly it might be the most likeable of the bunch.

The mech is sturdy, nicely poseable, and the orange color scheme suits Sandy perfectly. I'll be straight with you though: at the old $54.99 price it asked a lot for 520 pieces and a mostly recycled cast, so most people who own it caught it on sale. If you love the theme, the DJ-booth cat is worth the price of admission alone.

Best for: Monkie Kid fans who love a poseable mech and can find it below retail

The full review

What it is

Sandy is the quiet, kind-hearted giant of Monkie Kid's team, a former soldier who would rather keep the peace than start a fight, and this mech captures that beautifully. It stands about twenty centimeters tall, all warm orange and tan, and the first thing that got me was how solid it feels in the hand. Nothing sags, nothing flops. The left arm holds a rotating clamp gripping Sandy's crescent staff, the right arm has a fist that punches forward on a rubber-band return, and there are little flip-out jet boosters on the back for good measure. It is exactly the kind of chunky, poseable robot you would want piloted by this particular character.

The catch

Here is where I have to be honest with you. At the original $54.99 this was not a lot of set for the money. 520 pieces is on the smaller side for that price, and a big chunk of the value sits in the Sandy big figure, who is completely unchanged from the three earlier sets he appeared in. So if you already owned those, you were paying full price for a mech and not much new otherwise. The play features are fun but simple, and the punching mechanism in particular is about as basic as they come. The villain content is thin too. Syntax gets a small companion mech with a spider-poison launcher, a saw, and a spike, but it is clearly the sidekick to the main build, not a proper rival.

Who it's for

So who should track this one down? If you are into Monkie Kid and you love a good mech, this is one of the more charming ones the theme produced, and the rooftop DJ booth where Mo the cat sits between two speakers is the sort of daft, joyful detail that makes the whole set. Kids will get a lot of swooshing and punching play out of it. If you are a collector chasing clever engineering or a deep villain roster, though, you will probably want to skip it or wait until it turns up cheap. It has been retired since the end of 2022, so the days of grabbing it on a shelf discount are behind us, and secondary prices have climbed well above the old retail. Buy it because you adore the character, not as an investment.

The parts story

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

The build itself is a pleasant afternoon rather than a marathon. You spend the first stretch assembling the torso and the internal frame that gives the mech its stability, and it is genuinely well engineered underneath all that armor, which is why the finished robot holds a pose instead of drooping. From there it is mostly cladding the frame in orange and tan panels and adding the articulated limbs. It is a friendly build, aimed squarely at the 8-plus age range, so experienced builders will breeze through it, but there is a satisfying rhythm to watching the shape come together.

The real stars here are the figures rather than any exotic new molds. Sandy arrives as a big figure with matching orange fur, and his cat Mo is printed to look like a tiny mirror of him, right down to the orange Mohican, which is a lovely touch. Syntax and Huntsman round out the human cast, with Huntsman carrying a grappling hook and a chainsaw blaster. In terms of straight part-count value the set was never a bargain, and there are no rare printed panels or headline recolors to hunt for. What you are really paying for is the character lineup and a well-built mech, so judge it on that rather than on the parts pile.

Fun facts

01Sandy is LEGO's take on Sha Wujing, the sand monk from the classic novel Journey to the West, reimagined here as a gentle former soldier.
02This is the only one of the three summer 2021 Monkie Kid mech sets that does not include Monkie Kid himself, handing the spotlight to a teammate instead.
03The set retired at the end of 2022 after launching at $54.99, and clean secondhand copies now routinely sell for well above that on the aftermarket.
04Mo the cat perches in a rooftop DJ booth flanked by two speakers, one of the more playful details LEGO has tucked onto a mech.