As BrickNerd’s resident cursed build expert, I was given the sacred duty of… having fun with LEGO One Piece 75638 Battle at Arlong Park. What’s so cursed about it? LONG ARM LUFFY!

Look at all the fun things this minifigure can do!

But let’s take a quick peek at the set before we get into the full fig funkiness.

Battle at Arlong Park

Luffy loves his friends, and Battle at Arlong Park comes with the third and fourth member to join the Straw Hat Pirates: Nami & Usopp.

Of course they need some bad guys to fight, right? Here we have some Fish-Men, Arlong, and Chu. Arlong leads the Arlong Pirates, the main antagonists in the first season of One Piece. Chu is an officer in Arlong’s crew.

I wonder what figbarg the afol community will come up with using these fishy fellas… and look, a printed nose!

Along with the minifigs, the set comes with some side builds, a funky snail microphone, and some terrain. (Yeah, One Piece is kinda weird…)

There are some neat play features, which I’ll admit are more fun than I was expecting. Stud shooters are a gimmick most AFOLs don’t care for, but the Shooting Gallery is pretty awesome.

The focus of the set is a fancy pagoda! I love the color scheme. But it hides one of the most epic play features ever…

You can take off part of the top, which has two slots for Luffy’s arms. With some extra human assistance, he can knock down the whole structure, splitting it in two.

Those Wacky, Stretchy Arms

Oddly enough, Luffy’s arms aren’t quite in system. The radius is a bit thicker than a standard bar size, so you can’t attach a clip or a minifigure hand to the arm. They’re somewhere between 21 and 22 studs across, which I frankly don’t understand. You can freely move them left and right, so either side can look longer or shorter.

Luffy is actually the third minifigure with funky long arms, joining Ms. Marvel and Elastigirl! (Missed opportunity for Mr. Fantastic, LEGO!) If you want, you can sorta tie them in a crappy knot. Easier for storage, I suppose.

Technically, there is one more LEGO character with long arms, but he is a brick-built so he isn’t exactly a minifigure. Mega Minion Tom from Despicable Me 4 has funky arms, but he uses a 21-foot pneumatic tube for his arms, with some goofy hands.

The minifigure torso is a little different than your standard one you know and love. It’s got two halves that are fused together, sandwiching the rubber arm element in the middle so it can be pulled through back and forth.

Stretching Possibilities

The Minion got me thinking… What if I used a pneumatic tube to give a normal minifigure their own wacky arm? Just like the last time I messed with minifigures in demented ways, I’ll use Benny as an unwilling guinea pig. (Poor guy can’t catch a break.) I pulled out his arm and shoved in some tubing, and now he has a long arm!

But why stop there? I wanted to see if I could make the arms go all the way through like the other figs, but that would mean I’d have to modify a torso or drill a hole through the internal support columns… or would I!?

As it turns out, LEGO keychain minifigures have their own wacky elements that I can use to their fullest! After heating up the metal keychain and pulling it out, you get a minifig that looks normal from the outside. Inside, however, is a different story…

For keychain minifigures, the hips go all the way through and connect to the head so the leg assemply doesn’t come off. However, because the torso is hollow, we can wedge another pneumatic tube in the middle!

This means that Benny can finally have all the long limbs (and neck) that he has always wanted! Lovely, isn’t he? Spaghettification Benny!

On a final, unrelated note, Technic figures were the original LEGO Stretch Armstrongs. The arms are infinitely chainable! (New sigfig, who dis?)

So yeah, Battle at Arlong Park is neat and all… but now I’ve created a Benny with arms that don’t stop, legs that never end, and a neck that reaches into the void. Luffy might be the rubber man, but Benny is the new cosmic noodle.

LEGO One Piece 75638 Battle at Arlong Park is available now for varying prices in the US, EU, CA, UK, and AU.

DISCLAIMER: This set were provided to BrickNerd by LEGO. Any opinions expressed in this article are those of the author.

What LEGO character would you want to make with long arms? Let us know in the comments below.

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