Review: 79018 The Lonely Mountain

[kaelthas]

'Come now, don't be shy, step into the light!' 

By looking at this line, I think it is clear that I have Smaug the stupendous in this amazing set. He appeared in the movie The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug in 2013. I bought it in Hong Kong while I was traveling with my wife for honeymoon. Lets get started.

Overview

Name: The Lonely Mountain.
Theme: The Hobbit
Year: 2014
Pieces: 866 pieces
Minifigures: 5 and a dragon
Price: £99.99 / $129.99 / 129.99€

  Quote

Bilbo Baggins™ has been sent to look for the Arkenstone™ inside The Lonely Mountain. Find the secret door into the lair of Smaug™ and enter with the Dwarves. Smaug is an enormous fire-breathing dragon, unlike anything you’ve ever seen before, so move fast! Dig deep for gold with the tools in the mining area, and use the slide to move the nuggets. Hoist the bucket with the sliding chain pulley to transport the gold to the forge. Seek out the throne in which the most prized gem of all – the Arkenstone – is placed… but watch out for the staircase trap! Bilbo Baggins and the Dwarves decide to drive the fearsome dragon out of the Mountain, and devise a plan to do so. Activate the rotating forge’s giant catapult to fire melted gold at Smaug while you try to defeat the fearsome dragon! Includes 5 minifigures with assorted weapons and accessories: Bilbo Baggins, Balin the Dwarf, Dwalin the Dwarf, Fili the Dwarf and Kili the Dwarf, plus a Smaug figure.

• Also includes mining area with 2 layers for hidden treasure
• Smaug™ the dragon features translucent fire breath, scales, giant posable wings, sharp claws, spiky tail and posable joints
• Weapons include Sting sword, 3 short swords, 2-handed sword, green ruby double-bladed axe, double-bladed axe, single-bladed axe and a mace
• Accessories include a hammer, shovel, pick axe, 2 cups, helmet and armor
• Locate the secret entrance with Bilbo Baggins™ and the Dwarves
• Transport treasures found in the lair on the slide
• Pretend to melt down gold in the forge
• Raise and lower the bucket with the chain pulley
• Seek out the precious Arkenstone™ embedded in the throne
• Rotate the forge catapult to shoot melted golden nuggets at Smaug™
• Escape from the fire-breathing dragon
• The Lonely Mountain measures over 8” (21cm) high, 16” (42cm) wide and 4” (12cm) deep
• Mining area measures over 1” (4cm) high, 3” (8cm) wide and 3” (8cm) deep
• Dragon measures over 7” (24cm) high, 18” (47,5cm) long and 17” (42,5cm) wide

Introduction

Durin's day is ending and they still can't find the keyhole of the secret door. But Bilbo isn't giving up hope after the sun went down. Knocking and gnawing at the grey stone wall while the dwarves leave the mountain, he finally found the key hole when the moon light shines onto the door. The 'last light' meant the moon light! He yells at the company and Thorin picked up the key left to him by his father Thrain, opens up the secret door and found this treasure in it, 79018.

 The Box

As usual the box art is amazing. The dark green background is very nicely matched with this sand green LEGO set. At the front of the box you can see the battle between the dwarves and Smaug is going on and quite a lot of gold is used in this set. At the back, the dwarves are busy preparing while Smaug sneaks around to find them. Lots of play features in this set and the minifgures are very nice showing at the side of the box.

The Instruction

This book is thick, with hard binding at the side. There is love and hate to this kind of booklet. The love is there is only one book to keep and the hate of course is that it is hard to stay in place when you are building unless you really fold it at the page turner which is quite damaging to the bindings. In the list, you can only find six dwarves in the whole series unlike the thirteen ones at the previous sets. Maybe the other dwarves were less seen in the movie.

The Minifigures

In this set, you get five exclusive minifigures and one exclusive Dragon, The Smaug. Before this set was launched, we all thought that LEGO would be lazy enough to use the old castle dragon as Smaug but it turns out that this new mold of dragon is very awesome! In this picture, the head sculpture of Smaug captured all the details very accurately. 'My teeth are sword' and the burning eyes are nicely carved out. These four dwarves and Bilbo gets new armors and new weapons. Dwalin is holding a pearl gold axe with trans green axe, Kili with a 'Morgul Blade', Fili gets back his old double sword and Balin has his dark red club. I suppose the Lonely Mountain really housed loads of treasure for them. 

All of them has alternate face except Dwalin as he is bald. All the dwarves are angry, Bilbo is truly scared of meeting Smaug.

Under the beard. Both of them have nicely printed torso under their bulky beard. The belts are amazingly designed and you can see wrinkles and battle damaged faces of Balin and Dwalin. The arms are also using very nice metalic color to assimilate the armor they are wearing.

The comparison between casual wear dwarves and working attired dwarves. Same as Bilbo with three different outfit. The designs are totally different and all of them are from different sets. By looking at them you can appreciate the financial condition of them before and after claiming Erebor. Again, Santa is here and he is very different from Balin. 

The Dragon, Smaug!

'Take your cover!'

Now you can see the full picture of this ferocious beast. The wings are made of silicone (I think) to make the flaps fold. It has two legs with the claws at the wings as his hands just like the movie. I think this is the largest dragon LEGO has ever produced. He stood up to 24 cm tall, 47.5 cm long and 42.5 cm wide. You can see when the wings are closed, he still can stand properly and the claws can be bent to make him more stable on the floor. The body part printing is so detailed that you can see what Girion did back in the years with his black arrow. 

The wings are attached to his body with a three holed ball joint. This makes him very widely pose-able. You can turn the wings 180 degree each side. He cannot be ride as there are no seat given at the back of the spiky body. However please be careful as the center black spike on a jumper is quite loose and you might lost it. The tail is also exclusive to him and its quite long if you look at it sideway.

Lets have some dental check up for this yellow teeth fella. There are a few degree of mouth opening for him and if you look at the picture you can imagine Benedict Cumberbatch's voice talking. All of them represents different expressions I think. First degree- talking, Second degree- yelling, and when the fire attached, you know what he means. haha. Look into the throat, you can see a stud hole for fire attachment which is much nicer compare to old dragons.

For comparison, you can see Smaug is much more larger in size compare to the dragon from the castle set 70403. Old dragon has two hands, with a pair of stiff and smaller wings. Tail design is different too and I think Smaug is much more superior than this old dragon of LEGO.

Lets look at the mouth. Fire from chin is so much old school but it had its place back then. 

This is an old picture taken before real Smaug was introduced. Quite decent at that time for a dragon.

The Build

The gold 'mountain'. This is a three layered build which you can store treasures inside. At the bottom layer, you get a pearl black long sword and a trans green goblet which is very nice, and second layer with three different colored gems. The lid with gold cup makes the third layer. I liked all these gold pieces stacking around each other.

There are plenty of nice small builds in this set as in the picture. 

Thorin's chair was decorated with stickers and a trans clear printed round tile representing the Arkenstone. As comparison, Theoden looks much poorer with a small throne. haha.

The second build is the chain pulley pulling a bucket. It was attached loosely to the railway so that it can slide along it. Lots of technic pieces in this build and I like the chain. The brown knob is to turn the wheel and raise or release the bucket of gold. 

This build is a furnace filled with dome shaped gold and a long pole to be attached into the pin hole. Its a quite large furnace designed to launch piles of molten gold to attack the dragon. As you can see, the furnace can be turned 360 degree to aim.

Firstly you load the bucket with gold.

Then you raise the bucket.

Pour it into the furnace.

Then launch the gold! To my pocket please. haha

After a few hours of building, this is the full build of The Lonely Mountain. The use of sand green pieces are very nice matched with some grey and brown. This dwarvish mine is very nicely designed and its large enough for Smaug to play around and smacking the pillars. Quite some annoying stickers to be applied but with Smaug and Arkenstone I don't complain much.

One more play feature at the front of the build. Stay tuned, the back is also interesting!

The black round knob is to push the ladder under the throne. The secret door with a key hole, and a pile of gems with the Arkenstone on top of it. If you notice, on top of the Arkenstone there is a BURP piece to make the bulk of the stone at the front. 

"Stand by the grey stone when the thrush knocks, and the setting sun with the last light of Durin's Day will shine upon the key-hole" 

I am FIRE.

Conclusion
The Smaug made up the whole value to this set. I bought this because of the dragon and others are a bonus to the set. Smaug is very pose able but need great skill to take good shot of him. Most of the angle makes him look ugly. The build is adequate to the size of the dragon and of course you can buy a few more sets to enlarge it. The minifigures are all exclusive to the set and makes this set much more worthy to get.

Review Summary
Playability: 9/10 - The mechanisms are great to be play with like the actions in the movie while they are fighting the dragon!
Design / Building Experience: 9/10 - The GOLD pieces and the sand green pillars are so nicely used in the set instead of all grey like in the movie.
Minifigures:  9/10 - Great minifigures! All the printings and the details exceeds all expectations.
Price / Value for money: 9/10 -  I think the value of the money spent for this set goes to the Serpent from the North. 
Overall: 9/10 - I bought it in 2014, and after three years, I still bring out Smaug and play with him. 

 

Run Bilbo!

'Don't be shy...'

Hope you enjoy the review. Please leave your comments towards this set. Thank you.

Edited May 14, 2017 by kaelthas

[Vorkosigan]

Amazingly detailed review with great pictures, thanks! I think this set was underrated on release, as I enjoy the build as well as the greatest LEGO dragon ever. I regret not buying a second copy when they were on clearance. 

[MAB]

On 13/05/2017 at 3:11 PM, kaelthas said:

 

This book is thick, with hard binding at the side. There is love and hate to this kind of booklet. The love is there is only one book to keep and the hate of course is that it is hard to stay in place when you are building unless you really fold it at the page turner which is quite damaging to the bindings. In the list, you can only find six dwarves in the whole series unlike the thirteen ones at the previous sets. Maybe the other dwarves were less seen in the movie.

1

The reason for this is simple. The list of figures is from the then current line of sets, so only included figures in the last four sets.

 

[kaelthas]

On 5/14/2017 at 10:05 AM, Vorkosigan said:

Amazingly detailed review with great pictures, thanks! I think this set was underrated on release, as I enjoy the build as well as the greatest LEGO dragon ever. I regret not buying a second copy when they were on clearance. 

Me too regretting.. The build was fun and it should be expanded for Erebor! 

On 5/15/2017 at 4:06 PM, MAB said:

The reason for this is simple. The list of figures is from the then current line of sets, so only included figures in the last four sets.

 

May I know which four sets?

[VaderFan2187]

41 minutes ago, kaelthas said:

May I know which four sets?

Battle of Five Armies, Attack on Lake Town, Witch King Battle and this set.

Thank you for this thorough review and congrats on your progress towards Review Academy Teacher.

[kaelthas]

4 minutes ago, VaderFan2187 said:

Battle of Five Armies, Attack on Lake Town, Witch King Battle and this set.

Thank you for this thorough review and congrats on your progress towards Review Academy Teacher.

Too bad only four, right? Should make more sets and get all the dwarves in armors.. 

Thanks my friend.

[kaelthas]

I'm truly surprised that this set is so pricey now!

[sahidko]

4 minutes ago, kaelthas said:

I'm truly surprised that this set is so pricey now!

LOTR/Hobbit + Smaug tax. :)

[Mandalorianknight]

I know! I had this as a kid, and I've lost most of the stuff by now, unfortunately including Smaug. I think all I have left is Dwalin's torso and Kili's head (Which I've been using for the Punisher for years).
I'm kicking myself now as to how dumb I was to take this apart as a kid, and how I somehow managed to lose Smaug. I can see myself just taking apart the rest of the set/figures and giving them away/selling them, but I feel like I'd remember giving up Smaug.

[Shroffy123]

7 hours ago, sahidko said:

LOTR/Hobbit + Smaug tax. :)

100% right. This is only set that Smaug came in. Making price high 

[MAB]

16 hours ago, kaelthas said:

I'm truly surprised that this set is so pricey now!

Why surprised? Popular story, loads of new Lego fans since this was released and limited supply. I've still got a couple sealed from when they were 50% off. I opened most and sold off Smaug for £50 (what I paid for the set).  I should have waited!

[sahidko]

It was also biggest set of the Hobbit line, Helm's Deep for LOTR (if i exclude the DTC Tower of Orthanc) has appreciated as much during the years.

[MAB]

Even the small LOTR and Hobbit sets have done very well. I bought Wizard Battle at £5 and Witch King at £6 from Amazon. They have been selling for Approx £50 each. Even compared to the RRPs that is still a big rise compared to other sets of the same time. 

[sahidko]

Sure, completely agree with you. And i know that because i bought sealed version of each LOTR set/polybag just this year and it definitely wasn't cheap. :D Just wanted to say that i don't find the current prices of original LOTR/Hobbit sets surprising at all and even less so for the big main set such as this for Hobbit.

Edited October 1, 2022 by sahidko