Review: 60359 Dunk Stunt Ramp Challenge
Posted by benbacardi,
LEGO introduced the relatively new City Stuntz range three years ago, with four stunt challenges and six individual motorcycles. Last year, they added five more arenas and three bikes, and have followed up with four more challenges and a couple of bikes. The range shows some impressive creativity both in the motorcycle and rider designs, and the stunt challenges themselves.
LEGO have provided a number of this year's sets for us to take a look at. First up is 60359 Dunk Stunt Ramp Challenge, the smallest stunt set of this year, at 144 pieces.
Summary
60359 Dunk Stunt Ramp Challenge, 144 pieces.
£17.99 / $29.99 / €19.99 | 12.5p / 20.8c / 13.9c per piece.
Buy at LEGO.com »
A great entry into the range, with good play features.
- Bold minifigure and bike design
- Great play potential
- Fairly decent price
- Rather tricky challenge!
The set was provided for review by LEGO. All opinions expressed are those of the author.
Minifigure and Bike
Just one minifigure is included in the set, and we have to use our imagination when it comes to naming them! They're dressed in a striking black and orange suit with green highlights, unique to this set. Lizard-like toes are painted on the feet, and they're wearing a slightly smirking, confident expression, with great printed detail in the cheek and chin marks.
The head is only printed on one side, but the hair is fantastic and really suits the expression. The rear of the torso is printed in a similar manner to the front.
A unique helmet is also provided (safety first!), which obviously necessitates removing the hairpiece. Not having appeared before, the bright green helmet has detailed face printing instead of a visor, continuing the lizard-like theme of the suit.
This accordingly matches the rider's motorcycle, a new mould which looks fantastic, styling the bike like some kind of dinosaur, perhaps a velociraptor. Some of the Stuntz vehicles are rather bland, but others show some great creativity on the part of the designers! Coupled with the orange wheels, the whole assembly is rather impactful.
The Stunt Course
We start by building the ramp - it uses the standard piece introduced precisely for the Stuntz range, in purple, with the same orange highlights as the rider and motorcycle. A pair of tyres are cleverly attached beneath to provide some grip on smooth floors and help avoid the ramp moving as the bike hits it.
This particular Stuntz course can be easily changed between two different arrangements, as we'll see later. To change the angle at which the bike leaves the ramp, there's a small assembly attached to the top of the ramp that can be positioned either as above (more height, less forward distance, for the rider) or opened up as below (less height, more forward distance). In practice, it seemed to make very little difference.
Next, we build the rest of the stunt apparatus. Two flaming towers hold aloft a ring, equally alight. The ramp is connected a set distance from the ring, but this could easily be adjusted to wherever seems to work best for you.
The ring itself has four orange flaps that extend into the centre, held loosely in place by the transparent bright orange flame pieces. They're attached to the ring with non-friction pins, and as such any pressure on the ends of the tiles will pop the flames off and allow them to swing downwards.
This is one of the two arrangements for the stunt. With the ramp set to provide more height for the jump, the aim is to send the rider into the air, over the flames, and to fall through the ring, pushing the tiles down and popping off the flames. I found this very difficult to achieve!
For the second stunt, the ring is turned sideways and the four levers are held in place with large green stars instead, which also pop off when the rider pushes through. This was a significantly easier set up to successfully complete, and I love the look of the new colour stars against the orange and purple apparatus.
Conclusion
Despite the theme entering its third year, this was my first experience of the line, and I was quite impressed! The flywheel-powered bike is a lot of fun, and it kept both my children (aged four and six) entertained for some considerable time (once they stopped fighting over whose turn it was).
One of the cheapest in the range, there is still a lot of play value to be gotten from the set. I particularly enjoyed that the stunt course was not simply a passive hoop to jump through—the addition of the stars, flames, and tiles add more excitement to play. I did find it challenging, both in letting the motorcycle go with enough speed yet also enough accuracy to hit the ramp head on, and also in achieving the right angle to drop through the ring in its horizontal orientation. No doubt I would have improved with practice!
The unique minifigure is nicely detailed, and the bike looks excellent. I appreciate that there are a range of individual bikes available for sale, so I could easily pick another one up for my children to have one each. A great entry into the range.
60359 Dunk Stunt Ramp Challenge is available at LEGO.com for £17.99 / 19.99€.
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35 comments on this article
Am I the only one who read this as Drunk Stunt Ramp Challenge? :D
My eyes! They hurt!
The bike looks really neat, but that USA price is painful compared to UK/Europe (which surprisingly goes unmentioned).
@RUL said:
"Am I the only one who read this as Drunk Stunt Ramp Challenge? :D"
No! XD
You make a salient point near the end of the review - Why is this product range so darn expensive? One would think that being a non-licensed range, it wouldn't be so pricey.
This is a fun series and has some unique minifigures for sure. And this set looks good. But $30 MSRP and only one minifigure?
@fulcrumbop said:
"You make a salient point near the end of the review - Why is this product range so darn expensive? One would think that being a non-licensed range, it wouldn't be so pricey."
I think a significant part of it is the bike (since it has the motion ability so its not just plastic) and the ramps (large pieces).
@RUL said:
"Am I the only one who read this as Drunk Stunt Ramp Challenge? :D"
Nope. That was what I read when I first saw it, too.
Is the helmet not the same one as in 71025-11? It looks the same but just a recolor.
@Toa_of_Pi said:
"The bike looks really neat, but that USA price is painful compared to UK/Europe (which surprisingly goes unmentioned)."
It’s almost always like this and it almost always goes unmentioned iirc.
Another great little set which I'll get when it hits the standard £10 on Amazon!
Is the color of the stars new, or is it just the glow - in - the - dark color?
The helmet and especially the raptor looking bike element are pretty neat to have.
I like how creative this bike looks compared to some other offerings in the theme. I only have 60297 Demolition Stunt Bike, but if I have budget to get this one, both sets seem like they'd pair decently.
@Trigger_ said:
" @Toa_of_Pi said:
"The bike looks really neat, but that USA price is painful compared to UK/Europe (which surprisingly goes unmentioned)."
It’s almost always like this and it almost always goes unmentioned iirc."
I can't guarantee it was with a stuntz set, but I know I have seen regional pricing differences mentioned in Brickset reviews a bunch of times.
Loving the dinobike.
Love the bike, even when it won't beat the bathtub bike. Otherwise a pretty good play set, doesn't look great but kids will love it. And surprisingly decent price....for us Europeans.
I've picked up a few of the bikes for my daughter when they are marked down. Otherwise, the entire line in the USA is crazy OVERPRICED!! We just take our own bricks and make our own ramps and things to jump over or crash into.
@Ridgeheart said:
"So the challenge is to name this dude, who wears Nexo Knight Aaron's colour-scheme and a Karen-haircut?
Okay. Welcome to the fold, Kaaron."
I'd suggest Caar-on as this is the CITY vehicles line, but unfortunately for my terrible five-second joke, man's got a motorcycle.
Good price in Europe, terrible price in US, as with many City sets , especially those €20 stuntz sets, last year was even worse where they were $35.
But overall pricing by far is the worst on those :
60360: Spinning Stunt Challenge
60361: Ultimate Stunt Riders Challenge
60339: Double Loop Stunt Arena
@KotZ said:
"Is the helmet not the same one as in 71025-11? It looks the same but just a recolor."
He means first in that colour. 71025-11 came the same year as Ant-Man in 76124 and firefly came before both of them, being their first appearance in 76117 if I'm correct. No it is not the same helmet in 71025-11 but in green, it is the same piece though that has been used many times before the CMF series used it, but what a helmet that is!
@RUL said: "Am I the only one who read this as Drunk Stunt Ramp Challenge?"
I think we all read it like that.
@RUL said:
"Am I the only one who read this as Drunk Stunt Ramp Challenge? :D"
Since it's mostly aimed at children, they couldn't name it like that, so they left out the "R". It would be even more of a challenge then!
@HandPositions said:
"Is the color of the stars new, or is it just the glow - in - the - dark color?"
They're Spring Yellowish Green.
Loving the rider and their bike; I could easily see them as a minor villain in a motorcycle-themed anime. And I don't mind the price all that much; besides the ramp, there are also the flames, the big ring piece, and the new mold for the bike. (Plus, I think the flywheel must be a fairly costly element to produce, considering that even the stand-alone bikes cost eight dollars.)
@Zordboy: I misread it in a differently. I didn't even see the "Dunk" at first, so read it as simply "Stunt Ramp Challenge." When I did notice the "Dunk,"I was wondering where it came from until I saw that the ring had two configurations.
This is the correct price for the US. City sets on average have been $0.20/piece since around 2017. Don't worry though, Wal-Mart will have these on sale for 40% off in six months.
BTW, if you haven't gotten one of these bikes yet, they are wicked fun. Speed Champions needs to get their own flywheel element. I modified my Lamborghini Urus ST-X to be able to fit one of the bikes and it is a blast to zoom around.
Always pleasantly surprised just how well the flywheel bikes in these work.
Getting them to actually work the stunts in the set is difficult, but boy do they zoom effectively.
@chrisaw said:
"Always pleasantly surprised just how well the flywheel bikes in these work.
Getting them to actually work the stunts in the set is difficult, but boy do they zoom effectively. "
I actually managed to get the Bathtub to run through both loops from 60339. That was fun!
I only want the Dino bike.But these are quite expensive City sets
To be honest I bought it and havent even build it. So many good pieces AND raptorcycle?
SOLD!
The only downisise is that raptor cover feels rather flimsy.
Set 60299 is priced the same as 60359 but has two stuntbikes, might be handy to avoid fighting between kids whose turn it is
Curious to know if anyone has experience of completing the loops in 60338 and 60339, as far too expensive for me to buy just to find out that it is too difficult.
@Ridgeheart said:
" @Torrent_Studios said:
"I like how creative this bike looks compared to some other offerings in the theme. I only have 60297 Demolition Stunt Bike, but if I have budget to get this one, both sets seem like they'd pair decently."
Have you seen 60333? For the sake of the minifigs and bikes alone, this is a pretty cool theme. It's just that the cool ramp-pieces seem to inflate the prices of the sets, but for figs and bikes, the impulse-sets are fine, just fine."
Ah, the infamous bathtub bike. I contemplated getting it, but never did (they were never even stocked in the stores I went to lol)
I agree that the theme is cool, but there are a whole bunch of large/specialised elements, for example the bike farings and the ramps, which unfortunately contribute to the unusually high prices.
@Legoist61 said:
"Set 60299 is priced the same as 60359 but has two stuntbikes, might be handy to avoid fighting between kids whose turn it is "
LEGO did retire 60299 , so while it's probably still around elsewhere, it's certainly a much much better value set with 2 bikes compared to 60360 : Spinning Stunt Challenge , the bikes are even almost the same.
Much better value than other Stuntz sets, but still seems $5-10 overpriced at retail. I’ll keep this one on my radar and watch for a good discount.