Chang'e's Moon Cake Factory

This is a fun little set that Roomie bought me for the first night of Hannukah. It's from the Monkie Kid theme, which is one of LEGO's  weird little in-house IPs. It's Journey to the West related, but the main character is Son Wukong's... nephew? Son? I don't know. Either way, the theme here is super cute. Chang'e, from the Chinese folktale of Hou Yi and Chang'e, except she's got a moon cake factory where android rabbits make moon cakes. Chang'e is also a social media influencer/cooking show host. A space age Max Miller. I honestly do not understand the story of the set, and looking up the episode's plot doesn't really help. Pigsy steals Chang'e's cookbook so that he can put one of his own recipes in it because he's a big fan, and also they need to get a magical flaming ring from her? There's also a green alien looking mohawk'd cat. Since it isn't named after a character from Journey to the West, I don't know it.

The story of the set isn't really important. What is important is the silly rabbit themed space things. And I love those. This is ultimately three (or four, depending on how you see it) little sets that are all connected: Chang'e and her little streaming platform, a rabbit mecha, and the titular moon cake factory, which comes with a carrot shaped rocket. The streaming platform is cute, especially with the monitors that come with transparent stickers (though I think they'd be better if they didn't have the anti-studs). Chang'e is a fun little minifig, though her plastic skirt gets in the way. She has nice detailing, and her hair is printed with multiple colors. The moon cake factory is a neat little bit with a transparent front. The build creates a fun little conveyor belt where raw studs are stamped into printed moon cake tiles and drop down into a box. I'm using the term a lot, but it's really cute that the sticker on the moon cake machine is a little moon cake and rabbit version of the original Lego space theme logo. The carrot ship sits on a little launch pad (though it never stays secure) and the front door of it opens up for boxes of moon cakes to be placed inside, ready to be shipped back to Earth. In addition to the silly carrot rocket, the moon cake factory also has a little radar dish with a carrot antenna, and a landing pad with a dangling paper lantern (made with a pumpkin brick, pearl gold skate, and tassel) for Chang'e to park her little streaming platform on.

The best part of the set is without a doubt the rabbit mech. Piloted by two cute little bunnies, it looks like a big robot rabbit. It gives me vibes of D.Va from Overwatch. The big legs use a lot of neat pieces and stickers, and eschew having any sort of antistuds on the bottom for grip, which is almost a shame. The big cockpit dome is a neat piece, and I love that the whole thing is piloted by little rabbits in a tiny ship that comes out. It's advertised as being able to be piloted by Chang'e, but I don't really think that works all that well without some finagling. My absolute favourite part of the big rabbit is the silly pew pew arms, which have stud launchers. That alone isn't really all that great, since as neat as stud launchers are, I find using them impractical when your studs will just get shot across the room and lost. But these studs are little 1x1 round tiles in trans orange. The entire butt of the rabbit mech comes off and inside is a little microwave set up where the other tiles are contained. If I had to guess, the rabbit is shooting super heated moon cakes, which is super cute. The butt is also topped with a round white ball for the tail.

Roomie and I often pick sets based on the minifigures, since sets are the only way to get minifigures. In addition to Chang'e, this one comes with Pigsy and a Lunar Rabbit Robot, and Mo the Cat. The Rabbit Robot is super cute. It has a double sided head piece with one head a chipper pixelated happy face and the other an angry kill mode. It also comes with a little accessory build that's a laser gun with a superfluous carrot, as is to be expected of a rabbit. Pigsy is a little less exciting. He's got a space suit on this one, which is exciting, but because his head is specially molded, there's less variety, and he has the same expression as the other Pigsy from the spider queen's mech that Roomie bought last year. He's got a spacey version of his traditional rake, though, as well as a magical ring which gives us a new type of flame. There are also way more boxes of moon cakes than we could reasonably need, and that part list of 609 pieces is inflated by the 20 moon cakes (two of which are unpressed, and seven of which are superheated). There are some neat building techniques, though, like the use of a 1x2 plate with a rail to keep the door of the shuttle closed, and I love pretty much everything about the bunny mech, which is probably my favourite thing we've built so far other than maybe the Sanderson Sister's House, but I'm biased towards that because it was for my birthday.