Still one of my favorite LEGO magazines, Jurassic World could come out more frequently if it were up to me. Now that the November issue is here, it seems like forever since the September one was published.
The basic ingredients are all there as you would expect. The comic feels oddly dark in the sense that there is really a lot of black in the shadows. On the other hand I could totally go for some of the cute Velociraptor poses as a poster one day. otherwise the comic is unremarkable and kind of clunky. The story feels forced and unnatural.
At least one of the posters is okay, though there appears to be an issue with the image quality. There are visible pixels from insufficient resolution. Either that’s a flub when the low-res placeholder wasn’t substituted correctly before print or they really didn’t have a better version. Kids and regular readers won’t notice, but as a graphics designer this stood out to me.
The really important part is of course the model included in the mag. As you know from the last issue, this was right from the outset supposed to complement last issues quad, so here we are and indeed get a small trailer with a cage on it to chauffeur around the little dinos.
I have to say the construction is adequate, but not great, to be honest. I was pleasantly surprised that the floor is made up of a 4 x 4 tile modified in Light Bluish Grey, but that is pretty much it. The rest kind of works, but overall feels flimsy. The black fence elements really jiggle around quite a bit and are only held in place by the tiles on top. The ladder elements used for the lid and door also come of easily when you open them.
Worst of all, though, is the fact that the cage is extremely difficult to access. Placing Charlie inside is quite an exercise if you have thick fingers, requiring you to open both grates, and then he will still tip over because there’s no stud to plug him on. On the bright side you indeed get yet another new version of the baby dino previously only available in the T. rex vs Dino-Mech Battle (75983) set. Perhaps the gang will be complete one day?
While I was looking forward to this issue, I’m still somehow disappointed. The trailer is once again a case of that “If only there were ten more pieces…” thing that always riles me up. In the truest sense of the meaning the cart would only need to be one or two studs longer and perhaps one stud wider plus have something to fixate the little critter and the play value would be much higher. I would imagine fiddling around with this stuff in its current form would eventually even frustrate kids.
The mag is still good value compared to other LEGO magazines, just a bit mediocre this time around. It’s value hinges a lot on having bought the previous magazine, being interested in the little dino or how much you get out of the parts – or any combination of those criteria. For the occasional reader it’s simply not the most interesting proposition.
Mylenium's Brick Corner 