LEGO The Heavenly Realms (80039)

Name: LEGO The Heavenly Realms
Brand: LEGO
SKU: 80039

The biggest Monkie Kid set ever, a celestial cloud palace stuffed with figures.

Brick Rated Score

4.2/5

Set 80039 · 2022

Pieces2,438

Minifigs8

Year2022

Set number80039

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The verdict

If you love Monkie Kid or Journey to the West, I think you'll fall for this one.

You get a genuinely fun 2,438-piece build, a gorgeous cloud palace that displays beautifully, and eight figures with almost all of them exclusive here. Just know it is retired now, so you will pay above the old price, and a couple of the play features are more idea than execution. Reach for it as the crown jewel of the theme, skip it if you only want it for parts.

Best for: Monkie Kid fans and Journey to the West lovers who want the theme's showpiece display set

The full review

What it is

This is the LEGO® set that closed out Monkie Kid's big 2022 summer wave, and it went out swinging. The Heavenly Realms is the largest set the theme has ever made, and it recreates the celestial palace in the clouds from the Monkey King legend. You are building a cloud palace with an ornate entrance gate, a garden where a peach tree grows sacred fruit, and a huge decorative pot that turns out to be a furnace. It stands over 37cm tall, and when you open it up it stretches past 50cm wide. As a shelf centerpiece it truly does the job, and it has enough moving parts that kids can still play with it rather than just admire it.

The catch

Here is the honest side. This was a 189.99 dollar set at retail, and since it retired in December 2023 it has been climbing, so you are likely looking at well north of 200 dollars to find one boxed today. That is a lot, and a couple of the play features do not quite land. The famous gag where you push the central walkway in to part the clouds only works on a flat, shiny surface. Try it on carpet and the temple stairs just fall apart. There is also the crucible problem: the furnace is central to the Monkey King story, but the Monkey King figure will not actually fit inside it, which feels like a missed trick. Reviewers grumbled that the flight posts for the big Erlang battle cannot be positioned close enough together, and the spiky bit on top of the crucible loves to ping off while you are placing other pieces.

Who it's for

If you are into Monkie Kid, or you have a soft spot for Journey to the West, this is the one to own. The build never gets boring across its few hours, the figure lineup is fantastic, and it looks the part on display. Families with kids who watch the show will get real mileage out of it too. If you are mainly a parts buyer, the value story is thin (more on that below), and if the aftermarket price makes you wince, there are cheaper sets in the theme that scratch a similar itch. But as the flagship of Monkie Kid, it is a lovely thing to have on the shelf, and I would happily give it space on mine.

The parts story

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

The build breaks into three chunks and paces itself nicely across roughly a few hours. You start with the garden courtyard and its sacred peach tree, move on to the fancy pot that hides the furnace (it has a door so you can shut the Monkey King in as punishment for pinching a peach), and finish with the palace and its twin staircases leading up to red doors that really open. There is proper technique packed in here for a licensed action set. The SNOT work is the highlight for me, especially a clever section built entirely upside down on the wall of the Peach Garden. It is the kind of building that keeps your hands busy and your brain mildly entertained the whole way through, without ever tipping into repetitive wall-after-wall tedium.

On the pieces front, temper your expectations if you are a parts hunter. For a 2,438-piece set there are only three brand-new molds, and all three are minifigure hair elements: a swept-back long hair-and-crown piece that shows up in both black and white, both unique to this set. Beyond that you are looking at recolors and useful bulk rather than a treasure chest of new elements. Where this set genuinely earns its keep is the figures. Eight of them, seven exclusive, including three distinct Monkey Kings (garden, crucible and palace versions), Monkie Kid, Heaven Fairy, Taishang Laojun, Nezha, Erlang, and the brick-built Celestial dog, plus transparent stands to pose the midair Erlang fight. That figure haul is the real value story here, not the parts inventory.

Fun facts

01It's the largest LEGO Monkie Kid set ever made, capping off the theme's 2022 summer wave as its flagship.
02The whole thing is based on the Monkey King's antics in heaven from Journey to the West, right down to the furnace he was locked in as punishment for stealing the immortal peaches.
03Despite having 2,438 pieces, the set introduced only three new molds, and all of them are minifigure hair-and-crown pieces.
04Seven of its eight figures are exclusive to this set, including three separate versions of the Monkey King, one for each scene it depicts.