I recently bought this, along with the
LEGO Toy Story 7592 Construct-a-Buzz for my son's 8th birthday. Of the two, this is the quicker and easier to complete - we built him at quite a leisurely pace within an hour. Kids might need a bit of help working out how to fit Zurg's cape on for him as it's not absolutely clear, but the rest of the project is very straightforward - the pictorial instructions have no words, and are very clear. I simply supervised and pointed out what goes where in the pictures, and my son did all the putting together.
Design-wise, Zurg looks a bit odd I think. He's a pillar with two arms and a head - he suffers from the problems as Daleks do when stairs need to be tackled, I fear. This visual design makes him look quite unlike a Lego toy, I think - there's not much of that 'low res' chunky charm that I expected, and some of the construction seemed to be simply for the sake of it rather than out of necessity. But it's a very rewarding project for someone who is new to Lego - easy to make, and the results are pleasing. The only difficult part for a child might be pushing a couple of bits into place, as they require a certain amount of strength.
Zurg has a big laser that he holds in one hand, which has 3 balls that can be fired (very weakly, but well enough). I expect these will get lost fairly quickly.
I'd recommend getting Buzz too, if you can afford it; my previous experience with Lego was that it was quite over-priced for what you end up with, but I was pleasantly surprised by these two. They'll be played with for a long time once they're made.