T-Rex on the Run – LEGO Jurassic World Magazine, June 2022

With the latest Jurassic World Dominion not far away from finally being released the dinos are once more in the limelight and it makes it ever more interesting what the LEGO Jurassic World might have in store for us. For now we’re still in this inbetween, phase, though, so the June issue does not contain anything specifically referencing the movie.

As you might be able to guess from looking at the photos this is definitely not one of my favorite comics as it feels all too empty and bland. Yupp, it’s that old gag of these materials being prepared months in advance and handed over to different artists and every three issues the same people contribute to the mag and you can recognize their style for good or for bad. In this particular instance I also simply miss a bit of variety. The T-Rex and only a handful of other characters being visible in so many panels just is boring. Weird as it may sound, but a randomly thrown in colorful parrot or for that matter any other animal casually appearing would indeed be an improvement and enliven the scenery.

The poster(s) is/ are okay, but nothing you haven’t seen before. as so often, it’s just pieced together existing stuff from marketing photos or renders. It’s even a bit frustrating when you consider how they show items that do not even exist or never were available in a Jurassic World set. That T-bone steak piece upsets me every time. If at least they included it as an extra one of those days…!

The extra this time is really nice. By that I mean the well-balanced, serene scenery, not so much the value of the parts. In fairness, though, even they have some value, being that they come in useful “natural” colors. The Tan clips on the nest are less widely used than the standard grey versions and always nice to have and so are the two bar elements poking through the eggshells. They could easily have played it cheap and just used the Light Bluish Grey version. Because they didn’t, it actually looks very tasteful and consistent. The only thing that could have made it better would be that instead of yet another Delta they could have included a different mini dinosaur.

While certainly not the most exciting issue, this one makes up the shortcomings of the print content with a lovable little build. However, it becomes clear that the magazine needs to move on and catch up with reality. You can only milk the same topic so much. An injection of fresh content related to Dominion is definitely needed and from what it looks like, we may get just that in the next edition at least a tiny bit…

A Day at the Lab – LEGO Jurassic World Magazine, March 2021

While there’s still not much going on in the outside world due to the pandemic, at least the flow of LEGO magazines seems to have stabilized after it got a little stutter-y last year and so my little excursions to the local newsstand are sometimes the highlight of the week. I was definitely looking forward to the Jurassic World magazine for March, so let’s see what we have here.

The comic revolves around turning a Brontosaurus into a hungry predator due to a wrongly injected serum, which is kind of a weird concept to me, but I guess for the kids this will work, no matter what. The puzzles/ questionnaires and other activities as usual are super simple, so not much to talk about there.

The posters are excellent this time around and that goes for both the front depicted here and the reverse. Their reduced style that actually emphasizes the protagonists instead of drowning them out with too much fluff surrounding them is exactly what I think a good poster should be and it helps that this time there’s also no awkwardly translated text. Definitely worth a look and you really could hang up both.

As a small bonus/ free extra this issue comes with a sample pack of the new LEGO Jurassic World collectible trading cards and an additional limited edition “rare” card with metallic print. If you know the respective Ninjago and Star Wars counterparts you know the drill. I’m not really into collecting this stuff and my news agent has tons of these packs catching dust on the shelves, but the situation may be different elsewhere and apparently it makes Blue Ocean enough cash to justify doing it for this series as well, regardless.

As so often the highlight for me is the buildable extra. Having bought Dr. Wu’s Lab (75939) already I don’t necessarily need his minifigure again, but it’s still nice to get a bit more variety with the figures instead of the trillionth Owen. Things get more interesting with the mosquito enclosure in the amber by ways of a Trans Orange brick, which is also included in the lab set already, but you can never have enough of them. That also goes for the Tan egg, which is still a lot rarer than the White version.

The really exciting thing for me, however are the computer screen and the keyboard tile. Not for the reason that they are included at all, but rather that they represent the new late 2020/ early 2021 versions of these items which so far have only been seen in a bunch of LEGO City sets. Granted, nothing earth-shattering, but still extremely useful if like me you don’t really use stickers. It’s always good to have printed substitutes for such situations. Finally, the dino this time is Delta so even without ever having bought the T. rex vs Dino-Mech Battle (75938) you should now have a complete gang of the Velociraptors – that is except for the really exclusive grey version of Blue.

This issue is a pretty good one for multiple reasons and you can definitely buy it without much reservation even if you don’t share one of my nerdy obsessions. The posters are really nice, the play set works and the comic is okay. The only real problem you may face is your kids bugging you about buying more card packs if they develop a taste based on the free sample…