(Written by Chi-bacca)
Today we are going to be looking at one of the most interesting LEGO Legends of Chima sets that has been released this summer; the #70008 LEGO Legends of Chima Gorzan’s Gorilla Striker. We will check out all the details, interesting building techniques, the minifigures, and whether the set is worth the price. So let’s begin with the minifigures! 🙂
First we have Gorzan with very nice printing both on the front and back of his torso, as well as on his legs. His head is also printed on both sides with different expressions – a standard for the Chima line. Gorzan comes with a CHI-harness in dark-brown, which is exclusive to this set. His weapon is an awesome sledgehammer with a new hammer-head piece.
Grumlo looks very much like Gorzan, but in gray. He also got a CHI-harness and a sledgehammer. His has different torso-printing, including a banana in his belt!!! That’s worth the full price of the set right there! 🙄
G’loona is a nice little minifigure with short legs, as she is a child. She has very nice printing with a lei. She has no CHI-harness – probably because she is not old enough yet to use the CHI, but she does have giant metal fists (new for this summer-wave of Chima sets) which make her kind of intimidating. The fists have the same kind of grip as the wolverine claws.
Rizzo the Raven is the same as in other LEGO Legends of Chima sets, so I won’t go into detail about him. One thing to note though is that you get enough spare pieces in this set to make an exact replica of Rizzo’s gun and give him twice the firepower. 😈
As far as the set itself, let’s start with the Raven perch. This is an extremely cool build full of details, especially considering it isn’t the main focus of the set. The top section spins around and has two lightsaber-blades (useful for Star Wars fans such as myself) that are used here as laser-guns.
The “flying bird function” works reasonably well, and as a plus, you can also use the Gorilla Striker’s rotating arms to get the raven flying! There is room underneath the perch for a minifigure, or for storing those cherry-bombs (as I call them). And a standard LEGO catapult is also included to fire the cherry-bombs. One other thing to note is the very rare dark-red tree-branch pieces attached to the perch!
And now the section that you’ve all been waiting for; the Gorilla mech! It was really fun to build it and I can say from firsthand experience that it is quite sturdy. It survived being crammed into its box that we had to squish a bit to fit into our luggage, a 2 hour flight, and British airport luggage people! The Gorilla mech of course looks like a gorilla with Gorzan’s trademark colors. (See this post for William’s coverage on zoomorphism: LEGO Legends of Chima Polybags)
There is quite a lot of SNOT (Studs-Not-On-Top) techniques used, which is pretty standard for LEGO mechs, but always interesting to build. There are also some very unexpected use of LEGO elements; such as the car engines as nostrils and car bonnets located on the arms and legs. As far as the functions of the Gorilla mech, the banana-cannon is the more powerful one and is powered by (surprise) bananas!!! Gru’s minions will love that! 😉
The back of the Gorilla mech has multiple “activators”, one of which moves both of the arms at the same time. The other four fire the flick-missiles. “Flick missiles?” you say. “Where are they?” Now, that is a good question. Just below the nose is a hatch that hides the missiles, and this is also where the mech’s CHI-core is located. The top two are fired individually whereas the bottom four are shot in twos.
The Gorilla mech also has a clip at the back, which comes quite handy to store Gorzan’s sledgehammer when he is riding the mech. Another detail is the blue hoses that are connected to the back of the mech’s hands and round to the shoulders – they do fall of quite easy. Check out this video-review of the set by the BrickShow for more details.
In conclusion I would say that I’m very pleased with the LEGO Legends of Chima Gorzan’s Gorilla Striker. The minifigures are very nice, the Raven perch is a surprisingly well done little side-build, and the mech is epic with lots of play-features. The only thing I didn’t like is the hoses falling off easily. Also that the back of the mech is quite plain. However adding more details to the back would have either made the set more expensive or we would have gotten less play-features. So yes, it is worth the price! To check out the LEGO Legends of Chima Gorilla Striker and other currently available LEGO Legends of Chima sets, you can visit the Online LEGO Shop.
So what do you think? How do you like the LEGO Legends of Chima Gorilla Striker? In your opinion is the set as good as I made out? Did I miss something? Feel free to share your thoughts in the comment section below! Also, I’m a TFOL (Teen-Fan-of-LEGO) and this is my first article here at theBrickBlogger and my first blog-post ever. I hope you liked it and your feedback is welcome. Thanks for reading! 😀
You can also check out the LEGO Legends of Chima section for more news, reviews, videos and discussions, or select from the following posts:
