Explorer-ing… Mighty Machines – LEGO Explorer Magazine, February 2023

While it seems that the apocalypse has been cancelled for the LEGO Explorer magazine in the sense that it hasn’t been send to the pasture for good, something is fishy in Denmark in the quite literal sense. Imagine that: The next issue is scheduled for end of March! They are seriously stretching the publication cycle as a cost saving measure. This means we’ll effectively only be getting six issues this year, if at all. It must really be selling poorly or paper has gotten super expensive… Anyway, let’s move on and see what we have here.

This issue is about “mighty machines”, which in the world of a child of course simply means they are big/ bigger than others. As it is, we therefore only get a rather generic and loose selection of a few specialized vehicles, ships, machines and so on. It’s way too broad to really dig into the specifics of one of them, which is always what massively diminishes the value of these editorial pages. I’m sure that even if you don’t nerd out completely, a detailed view at a tunnel drilling machine or one of those super size mining excavators would be more than enough to fill one magazine.

The comic takes a spin on the agricultural theme introduced in City last year and looks oddly familiar, especially after having built the Farmer’s Market Van (60345) with its strip of field.

The poster depicts a bunch of super cars/ hyper cars. It’s not necessarily my favorite subject, but at least it looks reasonably tasteful and fits the “mighty” topic on some level.

The extra is the small blue tractor seen in the comic. It’s more of a lawnmower tractor rather than a real one for real field work, but serviceable. I intentionally mounted the main wheels the other way around, as tractors usually have hollow wheel hubs with the nuts visible, not spoked ones. The designer of the model and/ or the comic artist got this wrong.

All things considered, this is a rather hum-ho edition and I’m afraid if things don’t improve, they will never get out of their slump and won’t convince more people to buy the mag. It’s okay for what it is, but they really need to improve. The only consolation this time was that the thing came with two polybags as apparently they have tons of those from unsold previous issues. I got another skull, but yours may contain a different model. It’s not completely “free”, though. They ramped up the price by an extra euro for that.

Explorer-ing… Disasters – LEGO Explorer Magazine, January 2023

It seems my fears of the LEGO Explorer magazine meeting its demise were unwarranted and the publication continues, after all. By official count this is the January 2023 issue already, and in a way one can actually see that a few things have been changed and tweaked ever so slightly. It feels notably different.

This edition is about natural disasters and the rescue efforts around them, so once more the info/ editorial pages cover the subject very generically and super broadly, barely leaving any room for either of them to be fleshed out. That remains my biggest sticking point with this mag. Any of the topics on offer would be enough for its own issue.

For the comic they picked a volcano eruption as the centerpiece for the action. Given what the subject would allow it’s rather tame, though, and not very spectacular.

The poster deals with one of the most notorious man-made catastrophes, the sinking of the Titanic. Isn’t it convenient that LEGO has a big, super expensive set of the ship and they just needed to photograph it? In fairness, though, it is a fascinating subject. I vividly remember an illustration of the stern of the ship rearing up in the front of the iceberg at night with all the lights on from one of those “kids science/ history” books being my favorite and me re-reading the details (as they were known then long before the actual wreck was re-discovered and James Cameron made the movie).

The extra is a small fire patrol vehicle and that kind of is the disappointing part. It’s a marked step down from the models we got before and just feels super lame and cheap. Worse yet, unlike it’s brethren from the LEGO City magazines it doesn’t even come with a minifigure, which makes the value proposition even worse. It’s really quite ridiculous and really unbecoming of this mag.

With all that said, this is an issue you can skip without feeling bad about it. There’s so little of note here… In fact I can’t help the impression that this is the result of them not having made up their mind soon enough and then scrambled at the last minute when the publisher decided to continue instead of shutting the mag down. It’s certainly not at the level of quality we’re used to (within reason).

Pyro Raptor Buggy – LEGO Jurassic World Magazine, September 2022

The summer heatwave having dissipated and more regular temperatures now being prevalent again certainly also makes that LEGO business more enjoyable just as it facilitates writing reviews. So here we are having a look at the Jurassic World magazine, September 2022 edition.

The all too apparent differences between the various artists doing the comics’ drawings are still a bit funny to me and in a way also odd, so this month we’re back to one of those 50/50 illustrations, where some panels are reasonably detailed and look good, but a lot of the others don’t. Thematically we at least get to see a few dino species that haven’t been represented in their LEGO-fied form for a while. It’s been a moment since the Brachiosaurus made an appearance.

The same goes for the Mosasaurus and the mere depiction in the comic makes me wonder if LEGO ever have any plans of doing sets with those creatures. Aside from the potentially insane price I could totally go for that. The aquatic side of prehistoric life has never been explored in this form, anyway, and doing so could actually inject some new life into the series as a whole, even in the movies themselves. Since Dominion was such a failure, though, I’m not sure if this will ever happen. We might have to settle for more half-baked content like this.

The posters both feature a T-Rex, but are equally boring, regardless which side you display. At least there’s not too much visible poor photo editing.

As hinted at last time the extra is the towing vehicle to the trailer that came with the previous issue. Stupid little me just forgot about the whole thing and then I disassembled the cart prematurely and buried the pieces in my boxes. Therefore I can’t show you the whole combination. Sorry about that! As predicted, the buggy/ quad is standard fare like we’ve seen it a ton of times, but the designer deserves at least some praise for custom-building the steering from multiple elements instead of relying on the existing molded element. Owen has one of those prodding sticks seen in the movies, but overall he remains not just a boring character in the films, but easily also one of the dullest and most repetitive minifigures.

If it wasn’t for the buggy connecting to the last issue and presenting it here, I’d probably have skipped this one. It just doesn’t offer much that would be interesting.

Sinjin who? – LEGO Jurassic World Magazine, November 2021

The logic of the naming conventions of LEGO characters have always eluded me and while I’m willing to accept that not everyone is called Paul or Otto, Sinjin to me as a German is just a bit weird. Let’s see what the fuss is all about in the latest LEGO Jurassic World magazine.

Compared to what the theme potentially could allow, the comics in this series feel rather bland lately and this is no exception. It lacks all the dynamism I occasionally so admire in some of the panels in the Star Wars and City comics. Here’s not a single one that would come even close to that. The colors are drab, the chosen perspectives just boring like someone who never watched a good movie got to decide on them. In that lieght the ever same chase stories become even more dull.

The poster follows the same style as the last few, but I find it a bit unfortunate that they went with a green pattern. Somehow this begs for a deep, slightly darker red. this would have improved the contrast with the dark grey T-Rex and somehow I always associate it with this dinosaur species, anyway. Maybe the old Jurassic Park movies have done too good a job of ingraining it in my brain.

On to the oddly-named character and the extra we have yet another buggy/ quad like we’ve seen so many in the City mags in the last few months. Yawn-inducingly uninspired and repetitive. The character, apparently a bad guy from the Isla Nublar sub-series of the animated series is okay and funny enough wouldn’t look too bad next to the adventurer from the City magazine I reviewed just a few days ago.

Overall this is kind of a *meh* issue to me and somehow it really feels like they really didn’t make much of an effort, which sadly also in general seems the problem with LEGO Jurassic World. You know, aside from new variants of some dinosaurs barely anything really innovative. One can’t help the impression that they are frozen in place because they don’t dare exploring other venues while waiting for the next movie to come out…

Soda Stunt Chase – LEGO City Magazine, September 2021

It’s a bit of an odd month where time appears a bit misaligned since many magazines come out a week early. Perhaps Blue Ocean‘s internal holiday schedule necessitates this, but it’s really strange because it almost feels like we get two issues in the same month. This even shows in an advert in the latest LEGO City magazine promoting the Jurassic World issue as “already available”, though it only comes out next week. A clear indication that originally they had other plans. Anyway, since the mag is here already, let’s have a look.

The comic is yet again a chase scenario, this time wrapped into a movie-related story with a crook hiding on set and fake mustaches playing a major role. As usual that’s not reinventing the wheel, but serviceable for what it is supposed to be. I had a bit of a personal revelation moment as the Camper Van (31108) trailer makes an appearance and has been conveniently scaled to fit minifigure scale, when in fact it’s quite a bit larger as I was mentioning in my review.

There are a few scatter shot puzzles and info pages just as well, of course, but I did not find anything standing out that would be worth mentioning for originality or providing a challenge. the posters on the other hand are very tolerable this time with not too much extraneous garbage clogging up the picture. The main poster would be even better had they chosen a color other than white for the color splotches and tread, so it wouldn’t blend with the minifigure as much and offer a bit more contrast instead of “whitening out”.

The buggy is more or less just another run-of-the-mill design similar to what we already had two months ago. The designers really have gotten lazy and just don’t seem to give damn. If at least they had given us the Dark Azure wheel hubs from the Stunt Team (60255) set… Incidentally, the driver minifigure appears to be straight from this set, just with a different head and helmet. Okay, but nothing special, either, considering that lately LEGO have revived their fake Vita Rush soda brand and the printed torsos are a dime a dozen. I’m wondering why they didn’t even include a mustache element, given how present it is in the comic.

All things considered this is a bit of a weak issue and doesn’t really offer that much. It’s certainly okay, but I really wish they would have exploited the potential better. In fact I almost think giving us the mustachioed character from the comic might have been more fun. Or maybe even a two-pack of characters with the very stereotypically french looking gangster as well…

Fiery October – LEGO City Magazine, October 2020

The CoViD-19 pandemic is unfortunately reigniting everywhere and the world certainly needs some committed medical firefighters to combat that. Therefore it’s kind of fitting (along with the fact that there’s actual massive bush fires in some countries currently) that the current LEGO City magazine brings us one of those helpful dudes.

The minifigure is the same you will find in the Forest Fire (60247) set, which incidentally I had bought earlier this year just for the unique owl it contains. The red slopes also came in handy for my lightsaber sharpening facility MOC, of course. Sometimes things work out in mysterious ways indeed. The little buggy is virtually just another variation on the same build found in the Jurassic World magazine where I already mentioned this. They only use different wheels and a few details deviate, but overall it’s nearly identical. Naturally there’s only so many ways to skin a cat when you have such a limited number of pieces. To my eyes the color scheme looks the wrong way round. I would have preferred red mudguards and only Bright Light Yellow accents.

The comic is pretty nice this time and overall there’s tons of puzzles and activities, which is always a good thing to keep your kids occupied. They sneaked in some animal rescue stuff as well, which makes it regrettable that none of the depicted pumas and panthers is actually in the foil pack. I know, those animals are expensive, but it would be ace to one day get them this way. One of the posters, the “No time for panic” shown above, is also pretty good.

Racing Frog – Rocket Rally Car (31074)

Odd as it may sound, but sometimes there’s this lull where I just can’t seem to find something LEGO that would make for a nice diversion after having exhausted other options. That is of course something within my budget, given that many more expensive sets are out of reach for me, anyway. Therefore the Rocket Rally Car (31074) was kind of a filler in an order of three smaller sets.

Even though in this case it wasn’t on top of my list, this doesn’t mean that I wouldn’t have bought it in the long run eventually. I have this odd thing going where I basically still want as many different parts in as many different colors as possible just in case I might ever need them for a custom build. This model has a few of them and the rest of the pieces also appeared useful, so I knew regardless of the sets own merits I’d get some value out of it.

Let me cut to the most important point right away: the color choices. Say what you will, but this is perhaps not the most attractive color scheme they could have come up with. In my view it’s some sort of bastardized Mia-themed vehicle as you would find it in the Friends series (minus the orange bits). That in itself is not necessarily a bad thing when viewed from the other side, as currently there isn’t such a vehicle in that series and this presents an easy option to expand the play value, but for a Creator 3in1 model it’s perhaps not ideal.

This can be spun in a million ways, of course, but something is off. Just like replacing the Lime Green with another color like Red would have worked, using indeed Orange in place of the Dark Azure pieces would have been an option. Personally this reminds me of photo editing work where you have accidentally inverted a single color channel and therefore the complementary colors appear.

The build turned out more elaborate than the marketing photos and other materials suggested and for me that’s always a good thing, be it just to extend the enjoyment of building by another five minutes. It’s nothing too complex or challenging, but you have to pay attention and keep track of things to not maneuver yourself into a snag. Keeping those brain cells stimulated is always a good thing in my opinion.

The set builds into a reasonably robust model and offers a good selection of movable/ playable features. The doors are built from multiple plates and hinges and are actually quite large, so access to the interior through them is easy and unlike with other models there is no need to remove the roof. In fact the set offers no specific contingencies for this, so removing the top would drag along other items and damage the model. Using the doors is way to go.

The air scoop on the front can be pushed out using a simple mechanism hidden underneath the front bumper or pulled out manually. Unfortunately it never is fully flush with the rest of the hood, so it always looks kinda odd and not aerodynamically optimized as it likely would be on the real thing. I think if I were to build this again I’d simply forego the insert and cover the hole with some parts from the spares box.

The rear comes with a fully openable trunk and in its basic form this offers a ton of stowage space. Should you decide to get this set as an ancillary model for some Friends fun, you could stuff a lot of things in there. One of the alternate uses is to tilt down the jet engine at the top and “hide” it inside, which again opens up some play scenarios like a transforming super hero/ secret agent vehicle or in more ordinary terms the engine just being tucked away for safety during transport.

Interestingly, while I’m still critical of the selection of color, the Dark Azure parts such as the spoiler wings and the spoked wheel caps are rather unique and more or less exclusive for this set. I have no idea yet what I’m going to do with them, but I’m sure they’ll be handy one day. You could likely even just hang them as decorations on a wall in a Mia-themed house indeed. 🙂

In its entirety this turned out a better experience than I had anticipated. The model comes together nicely and due to its play features would be an adequate choice for kids. It’s not worth the 20 Euro MSRP, but in most places you can get it for 15 Euro or lower and that checks out, given the size of the assembled model and perceived volume of stuff. I haven’t built the secondary models, but if I were to guess the Jeep would be quite similar structurally, just with a different outward appearance. the little quad doesn’t seem worth it at all, though, and sure wouldn’t be a reason to get this set.