Beaming Chamber – LEGO Jurassic World Magazine, February 2023

It’s a good thing that the LEGO Jurassic World magazine is now on one and a half month cycle, so there’s at least some stability there, given how much the publishing schedule of the other magazines has been thinned out or stretched to a point where every issue that still gets released feels like a surprise because you simply lose sight of the release dates in those long weeks.

The first thing of note in the February/ March 2023 issue is the new style of coloring. It’s not big news that each of the inking artists has their own style and that’s fair and square and logical with how the magazine is produced, but I feel this particular look is one step too far. It makes things look a bit too dark and the silky sheen with the inner glows/ inner drop shadows bleeding into certain areas feels weird. It’s plausible in that both comics play out at night and you’d have this odd “moonlight effect” to some degree, but if feels a bit too extreme here. It’s all too soft and there are e.g. barely any hard shadows in the panels. They need to take it back a notch next time.

The posters both aren’t very good, only recycling and repeating the ever same ideas and motives. It’s not even executed well from a technical standpoint with the orange wall looking murky and lacking any crunch. The bricks breaking out are a completely different color and don’t cast shadows, either. Some very unsophisticated Photoshop hack job!

Saving the day once again is the extra. It’s not very complex, but makes up for it with volume. It isn’t every day that you get two half-cylinders in a magazine “polybag” (they’re obviously paper now) and some 1 x 1 x 5 bricks. It’s supposed to be some sort of hatching/ growth chamber, but could just as well be a transporter from Star Trek or some sort of deep freeze hibernation thing. A slightly larger base plate and perhaps a few extra pieces could have elevated this to a level where it would almost compete with commercial sets.

On the whole this is a somewhat hum-ho issue and only the extra is adding some real value. Unfortunately we’re still in this slump with Jurassic World with no new sets on the horizon independent from the movies and so it’s all a bit too much rinse-repeat with the ever same content.

Another Blue Night – LEGO Jurassic World Magazine, January 2023

Look what I did there! Hot on the heels of my review of Vincent van Gogh – The Starry Night (21333) I recycled the title for this month’s LEGO Jurassic World magazine. Let’s see what the January 2023 issue has on offer.

The relationship between the articles and my cheap word play becomes immediately apparent once you turn your attention to the pages of the first comic. It indeed plays out at nighttime and has a lot of blue in it. It has it’s roots in movie production where using blue filters is actually a very typical technique to do day-for-night shoots. I once a long time ago got in hot water with a gentlemen who mistook what we call American Night here in Germany (for the aforementioned reason of it originating in Hollywood) to be an insult to US people. Go, figure! Anyway, I digress. The comic is about some Velociraptors making an escape with the accidental help of a Ceratosaurus.

There’s a second, short three-page comic showing a Dilophosaurus stampede. This is a bit like they are adapting the pattern from the Star Wars magazines, only without the second comic being required to advertise the extra, which is covered in the big one. We’ll have to see if this just a one-off or will become a permanent change.

For the poster I opted to show the back side, since it has a nice graphical design illustrating a few of the main types of LEGO dinosaurs. It’s far from complete and exhaustive, but looks nice enough. The front side is more standard fare with some dinosaurs and a water-based chase scene being depicted.

The extra is a little dino trap and as mentioned, it can also be seen in the main comic. I intentionally assembled it wrongly for the photo, as otherwise the dino and the chicken leg bait get too close and it doesn’t look nice. I also couldn’t get the mechanism to stay up. It would be one row of studs more in and then it would work by holding the dino down as opposed to strangulating the little guy from below as it looks like in my image.

Regrettably it always seems things never come together fully and while this issue has good comics and acceptable posters, the extra is a bit lackluster. Not bad, just not as exciting as the last few ones. 😉

Blue T-Rex? – LEGO Jurassic World Magazine, December 2022

The LEGO Jurassic World remains my favorite of the currently available LEGO-themed magazines as I can always find something in it that gives me that good feeling in my tummy and the December 2022 issue does just that as well.

The comic is not my favorite, being that it’s one of those half/ half ones, but it is a definite improvement over last month’s “empty skies” orgy. There’s some panels with detailed drawings and interesting perspectives, it’s just that there could be even more density with e.g. the jungle looking more alive. It really would make those escape scenarios more interesting.

The posters are standard fare, but at least the one on the front is decent enough. The reverse on the other hand is any Photoshop user’s nightmare. They just stuffed in every existing rendering or cut-out of dinos they could find and arranged them in a fake photo, but it’s really all over the place in terms of colors and perspective.

The extra will be a familiar sight to regular followers of my blog or for that matter frequent buyers of the magazine. It’s another buildable dino, this time in the guise of Blue, the Velociraptor, bur rge basic structure is pretty much still the same of the original T-Rex we got after the relaunch in January 2020 and then of course we got it again in September 2021 in the form of a Dilophosaurus and even this year already in the February 2022 edition as another variation on the T-Rex. The nice thing about those creatures that you really have quite a bit of building to do and it feels rewarding, but of course it’s also getting a bit stale and repetitive to always have the same structure. Would be nice if they could design a few other species.

All in all this is an okay issue and worth its money. I still think we need an influx of some new dinos and also on a more general level new ideas, though.

Raptor Relay – LEGO Jurassic World Magazine, October 2022

The Jurassic World magazine for October 2022 is not that great. I can tell you that up front. However, despite this in a more general sense the magazine remains at the top of my list of Blue Ocean‘s publications and I always look forward to it, so let’s have a gander at some of its contents.

The comic can quickly be summed up as “another issue, another chase”, and to boot, of course we’re still stuck in the actual Jurassic Park and on the island. This is really becoming long in the tooth and boring as heck, even more so since there are so few interesting new dinosaurs. There’s only so many ways you can spin a Velociraptor story.

The graphical style also once more is of the “lots of blue sky” variety and the panels don’t look that terribly interesting. At this point clearly City and Star Wars have the lead with their much more explosive and varied visual storytelling.

Another department clearly suffering from the lack of new dino species are the posters, which make you think “Didn’t I see that just two issues ago?”

The highlight of the magazine once more is the buildable extra, which in the Jurassic World magazine tend to be reasonably decked out. Though the cover sells this as a “(communications) base”, it is of course not. It’s more of a relay or one of the many surveillance points and access points to different areas of the park.  It captures this feeling nicely, even if it is rather small. The “bad guy” Rainn Delacourt is from the Atrociraptor Dinosaur: Bike Chase (76945) set and so is the little raptor with the new print, joining his Pyroraptor buddy from the July edition. A small highlight are the two 1 x 6 dual arches. I have a ton of white ones and a few crazy colors like Dark Pink, but the Light Bluish Grey ones so far have eluded me. LEGO uses this element relatively rarely and often in sets that I don’t buy like expensive Star Wars ones, so it’s nice to have them. It would have been ace if they had thrown in a printed tile like this one for instance to connect the two arches and cover the studs.

As said in my introduction, this certainly isn’t the best edition in the series, but at least the extra is its saving grace. I’d really only get this issue for that reason because the rest unfortunately is very forgettable.

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.

Eggsy Hatchery – LEGO Jurassic World Magazine, March 2022

Inbetween this issue and the last one LEGO have announced a ton of new sets for the Jurassic World theme and while no doubt it will take at least two more cycles before we see something in the associated magazine, I’m quite excited and really look forward to some of that stuff after the last two years have been a bit lackluster in that department. For now, though, we have to settle on established stories, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing when it comes to dinosaurs.

One of my ongoing complaints for the LEGO Jurassic World magazine are the “flat” comics, but this month at least we got lucky as apparently out of their pool of illustrators the one with the most dynamic drawing style was at it again. This makes even those simplistic chase scenarios so much more attractive and if Blue Ocean were actually smart enough (which sadly they are not), they’d really exploit that more and be better off.

The posters aren’t half bad, but visibly only re-tread old paths and recycle existing imagery. That should improve with the new releases, too.

The extra this month is one of the automated hatching stations seen throughout the movies. The build is not dissimilar to that in Dr. Wu’s Laboratory (75939), just simplified even a bit further. While not particularly complex, this feels good due to the many large parts involved such as the turntable and the glass dome. It’s a good value and the small Velociraptor is a nice addition, too, even if it’s just an old color variant.

Overall this is a pretty neat issue and while not outstanding, delivers good enough content to keep you satisfied. Definitely worth buying!

Red Dino Bike – LEGO Jurassic World Magazine, July 2021

It’s getting notably hotter outside and the temperatures are slowly getting at me along with my usual health issues, so I’ve been a bit lazy this week, but at least there’s a new issue of the LEGO Jurassic World magazine to take my mind off things a bit. Let’s see what the July 2021 edition has in store for us.

First off the comic. In the last issue I criticized the somewhat dull and monochromatic nature of things. Thankfully, this time around things are much better and the comic is a lot more colorful and vivid. Story-wise it’s just another chase drama with a minor twist, so nothing new there.

The main poster follows the design template of the previous ones with a dino surrounded by a brick pattern. By now you could have a line-up of four or five of them side by side and it may actually not look that bad. The one on the reverse would in theory also not be that bad, showing different types of dinosaurs in a jungle environment, but unfortunately it is one of those terrible Photoshop hack jobs. Instead of organically placing the 3D models of the beasts inside a fresh scene, the poster is bashed together from existing separate renders all too recognizably. The lighting and scale of the individual creatures is way too inconsistent.

On the games & activities front there’s not much to do with only a bunch of simplistic and insignificant puzzles that wouldn’t stress out a first-grader, but maybe it can at least distract for fifteen minutes.

The extra that comes with this issue is rather unspectacular, but potentially still useful. Sure, nobody needs the 100th Owen, at least not when they’re not really doing anything with him in terms of different prints and components. They could have just left him out for once or thrown in a different character. The motorcycle on the other hand is nice. It’s the same type as the Dark Orange version that came with the City mag a few months ago. Together with the Pearl Dark Grey version from Pigsy’s Food Truck (80009) this completes my collection and I now have it in all three colors it currently exists in. The Red version otherwise only can be found in the hard to come by Monkie Kid polybag or two somewhat costly City sets, so getting it just like that is a good thing. It’s one more example where a little patience has paid off and can save you some money.

If it wasn’t for the red bike, this issue would unfortunately be very unremarkable. The comic is good, but the rest is somehow lacking and just doesn’t give me that kick. There’s simply that little something special missing that makes me love these magazines. Don’t let this stop you from buying it, though. I’m perhaps just being a bit too picky…

Dino Chopper – LEGO Jurassic World Magazine, May 2021

With the world still under the veil of the pandemic, little moments of joy become ever more important and so I’m always marking the dates on my calendar when a new LEGO magazine is supposed to come out. This week has the Jurassic World issue for May on the menu.

The comic is a bit lackluster in that the usual chase story (What else could it be?) is missing a few exciting twists and progresses rather predictably. It’s also visually rather boring with large swaths of blue – a blue dinosaur, a blue helicopter, blue sky, blue water. It just doesn’t really jibe with me as it feels rather sterile and many panels are quite empty even.

There’s very little else to do, with nary any puzzles and quizzes. I’ve already noticed this across most of Blue Ocean‘s mags recently. One can’t help the impression that under the current conditions they can’t quite pull their editorial staff together and are living of existing material and what little new stuff they can produce, stretching it extremely thin. At least the poster is okay and aligns with similarly styled ones in previous editions, so here’s one more for your gallery wall.

I’ll freely admit it, but the extra, a small baby chopper, made me go “Whuuuttttt?” already when I saw it in the preview in the last issue. Similar items in the City magazine have been pretty low-brow efforts, but this one is just plain ugly. It doesn’t even pretend to be anything else but a lump of bricks slapped together with whatever minimum energy they could muster. And yeah, there’s Owen and the “wrong” Blue again. As if anyone already owning a dozen of these figures would have asked for another one…. *sigh*

This is not a good issue and for all intents and purposes you can safely gloss over it without missing anything. If i wasn’t regularly reviewing it, I would really only buy this mag if there’s nothing else around to satisfy your LEGO fix. Otherwise it’s just disappointing on pretty much every level…

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…

July Hatchling

I’m always looking forward to the LEGO Jurassic World magazine and it is still my favorite of all the LEGO magazines at this point. The July issue sure doesn’t disappoint and lives up to this high standard once again.

As usual let’s begin with the included buildable pieces. These come in the form of a small hatching station and it’s positively awesome. The most important news is that it includes a new variant of the small dino. While previously only the Sand Green/ Dark Blue print and Dark Orange/ Dark Brown print versions have been used in polybags and on the magazine, now we get Echo in his Medium Dark Flesh/ Dark Green print glory. This is pretty remarkable, considering that so far it has only appeared in the T. rex vs Dino-Mech (75938) set, which is also fittingly being “advertorialised” on a dual page.

The rest of the pieces is just as useful with the round cracked egg/ crown piece in White, some 1 x 1 plates with clips in Bright Green and even the 75 deg. Dark Blue slopes. Yes, they are the complimentary, meaning you get the regular version and the inverted one to build this slightly slanted holder for the heating lamps. This is again pretty noteworthy, as some those parts are technically a bit rare (the inverted slope in fact only having been done for the The Rexcelsior! (70839) set from The LEGO Movie 2 previously), yet their coloration makes them widely usable and thus desirable.

Inside the magazine there’s a pretty nice Triceratops poster. The comic is quite decent, too and there’s enough puzzles/ activities, so all round this is once more a nice issue and from the preview the next one isn’t going to be that bad, either, when it comes out in August. Something to look forward to again, indeed…!