LEGO 75936 Jurassic Park: T. rex Rampage, the biggest LEGO dino ever [Review + Interview]

Last week, LEGO announced the biggest set yet in the Jurassic World license, 75936 Jurassic Park: T. rex Rampage. While most of the LEGO Jurassic World theme has centered around the new films starring Chris Pratt, this is the second time LEGO has revisited the 1993 Spielberg classic film, following 75932 Jurassic Park Velociraptor Chase last year. With 3,120 pieces, this new set banks on scale with a huge Tyrannosaurus Rex and Jurassic Park gate, which are much larger than minifigure scale. In addition to our usual review, we also had the chance to speak to LEGO Senior Designer Mark Stafford about the set. T. rex Rampage will retail for US $249.99 | CAN $299.99 | UK £219.99 beginning June 19th for LEGO VIPs, with general availability beginning July 1st.

The background

T. rex Rampage dates back farther than you might think. I spoke with the set’s creator, LEGO Senior Designer Mark Stafford, to get some inside info on the set’s history and how this massive set came to be.

Mark: “When we got the Jurassic World license, we were starting off, and we went around the office to see what we had from the old Jurassic World sets, Jurassic Park, LEGO dinos, and anything else dinosaur related. And that’s when we found this model of Mike Psiaki’s behind his desk, right on the shelf. And we asked to borrow it, and it sat on a shelf in our project through all of the development of the first year stuff [released in 2015].”

Mark holds Mike Psiaki’s original sketch model from 2012

Mark: “Everybody was like, why don’t we make this? [The response was] ‘It’s not minifigure scale, it’s too big.’ But James Stevenson built a version of the gates to put with it that was a little smaller than the final one. When those were put together, it was so iconic that it was considered a no-brainer to try to slot this as one of our direct-to-consumer large sets for this year.

“And then I was handed these two sketch models and told by Marcos [Bessa], our design lead, ‘build the ultimate dinosaur.’ Which is when I built one that was far too big. That couldn’t be supported by hinges, and then I came back closer to the scale in the next iteration. The gate I did take a little bit bigger. It’s probably about eight studs taller than the first version.”

Mark shows off his unfinished sketch model that was too big to hold its own weight.

Mark: “This is way over minifigure scale. There are minifigures with it, four of which are unique. But the scale of the gates and the dinosaur are way over the size of minifigures. And it’s one of the issues with doing a vehicle with this; the Jeep or the Ford Explorer or anything like that. The jeopardy of Jurassic is about the figures being in the vehicle, and that threat. But of course, the scale to work with the dinosaur is too big for the minifigures to work with the vehicle. So what do we do for the figures? And the number of scales was not working there. It just wouldn’t work.”

TBB: “Was there any thought of what other elements to it to include with the set? I know you mentioned that you played around with the Jeep.”

Mark: “We didn’t play around with it. We knew it wasn’t to scale for either dinosaur or the gate. So we didn’t–it was never included. We do have versions built at minifigure scale. But from what I understand–and I’m just a designer, so I’m not sure how accurate it is–but there is some complication between the licenses. We have a Jurassic World license, and then a Jeep license is a separate thing. And a Ford Explorer license is a separate thing. So we’re not sure. From what I understand, there are still legal things to be sorted out before we could do either of those as they were in the first movie. And I know from Jurassic World, I designed Owen’s truck, which in the movie was very obviously a particular brand. I was asked to make sure it didn’t look too much like that brand, even though it had to look like that truck. So, you know, as this is a love letter to the movie, it would feel wrong to do a generic vehicle instead of the specific vehicles that it should be. So no Jeep here.”


The box and contents

The box is suitably large for a 3,000-piece set, and is sure to dominate its shelf space in LEGO stores. However, the first thing I noticed is that there’s a Jurassic World logo on the box, not Jurassic Park.

TBB: So I have to ask, the set is branded Jurassic World? But it’s clearly Jurassic Park.

Mark: “From what I understand, the franchise now is known as Jurassic World. It’s like the Wizarding World and Harry Potter. What do we brand it as? And in this case, they prefer Jurassic World. But of course, everything here is from the first movie. It’s a love letter to that first meeting.”

Now let’s look at the contents. There’s plenty to go around, as the box is stuffed quite full despite its size. As with most large sets, about half the parts are packed into a plain white inner box. The 30 bags are divvied among 15 numbered steps, plus a loose 16×16 tan plate and a bag containing the instructions and sticker sheet. There are lots of brown, dark brown, tan, dark tan, and dark grey elements in the bags, but apart from the sudden plethora of greens in the final bags, there are not many other colors.

TBB: “So it looks like there might be a few re-colored elements in here. Are there any totally new elements?”

Mark: “Not that I’m aware of. It was filled with existing elements. That was part of the agreement.”

TBB: “So when you’re designing a set, is there is a goal in mind to not necessarily use new elements?”

Mark: “Yeah, I mean, with this because it was a brick-built dinosaur, in some ways designing a new brick felt like cheating. ‘Oh, I can’t build a nose, so let’s build a new nose element.’ I don’t like that. So it was: all right, we have these existing elements. How can I build this? How can I make his toes? How can I make his mouth work? What’s his tongue gonna be?”

Speaking of stickers, there are only seven on the sticker sheet. It’s dominated by the UCS-style placard and Jurassic Park sign, leaving just three small stickers for the park’s computer systems.

The instructions are split into two manuals. The first is a landscape-orientation booklet that builds the T. rex, while the second, portrait-orientation booklet has instructions for the gate and placard.

Lending evidence to the supposition that this is an exclusive, Ultimate Collectors Style-set rather than just a very big “normal” set is the panoply of introductory materials in the front of manual 1. These give an overview of the set, characters, and design process, including brief interviews with set designer Mark Stafford and graphic designer Casper Glahder.


The build

Starting with book 1, the dinosaur model starts off the torso, which is mostly built studs-up for the center core. Hiding right at the very center is a green frog, because, as Mark put it, “frog DNA is necessary for Jurassic dinosaurs.”

Very quickly we move on to the neck, which is supported by two large Technic click hinges. Already we can see the abundance of SNOT bricks and brackets which will hold the T. rex’s skin, which are large plates with lots of curved slopes.

Next up are the legs, which are mirrored versions of the same structure. Each leg is about 26 studs tall, and supports the entire creature’s weight despite the complex shape. The “knee” joints don’t move at all, and although the ankles do, when extended the dino’s center of gravity is no longer above the feet, so it can’t stand. More interesting, though, is the hip joint, which employs two small 12-tooth gears mounted on Technic friction pins rotating around a larger 28-tooth gear. This introduces a considerable amount of friction to the system, and incredibly it’s enough to balance the weight of the dino. The legs actually connect to the body via the two ball joints on the top and bottom of the gear assembly, and this gives the legs a tiny bit of lateral rotation.

Attach the legs to the body, and voila, the creature can stand. Although, at this stage it looks more like a headless, plucked chicken…

Now we move on to the massive tail. The tail segments are connected with ball joints, which Mark says is “something Mike figured on this the original sketch, and I couldn’t find anything better cause it’s an awesome way of doing it.” There are two types of ball joints used, however, because the 3 Mixels joints used on top give the tail the necessary friction for side-to-side movement, but they don’t stop the tail’s weight from just ripping the joints free. The bottom towball element is turned 90° however, so it functions as a stop. “Lots of trial and error with this one,” Mark says.

There are 10 tail segments in total, each built around the same basic structure although no two are the same.

Finally, we’re ready for the T. rex head. Much like the body, the head is a core of SNOT bricks with a cladding of plates covered with smooth curved slopes. Mark says this is his favorite part of the model. He even made sure to include a tiny pink 1×2 plate as the brain. “I’m kind of happy with the head,” he says. “Especially as it’s one of the things that’s so different from Mike’s original. A lot of the other things I kept the same, but the head I completely changed. That’s completely me. One-hundred percent my head. So I’m happy with that.”

The head connects to the body with a single large ball joint, which is enough to give it a bit of side to side range, but not enough to support the head’s weight when looking up. The head can be raised, but it won’t maintain that position. The dino’s eyes are the only new printed element, apart from the minifigures.

Finally, the full dinosaur is ready to behold. My guess is that kids and adults alike will pause here between booklets to do whatever the prehistoric dinosaur equivalent of “swooshing a spaceship” is. We’ll return to look at the dino’s features more after the set is complete, though.

Book two dives straight into building the gate, saving the placard for last (unlike the recent Stranger Things set 75810 The Upside Down, which put the placard as the very first item built). In a move that will shock no one, the gate begins with a large swath of plates for the ground. The plates are quickly covered over with brown bricks and plates, including dozens of brown 2×2 rock elements for the tracks.

Inside the gate are little vignettes of iconic scenes from the film. These vignettes are minifigure scale, akin to the way some Star Wars sets like 75222 Betrayal at Cloud City mix scales to create a playset within a more sculptural model. Unlike that set or the Death Star playsets, however, here the sculptural model takes precedence over the vignettes, as the model is first and foremost a large-scale Jurassic Park gate. Nevertheless, the rooms have surprising amounts of detail. It’s clear that although tiny, they weren’t throwaway designs crammed in at the last minute.

The walls are sheathed with plates on the sides and front, in many areas three plates thick, that give a smooth exterior to the rough structural framework underneath. The side panels are hung from the top, and don’t attach at the bottom.

TBB: “So in terms of the structure of the gate, you’ve got it all clad with plates Was there any thought of doing it a different way?”

Mark: “I looked at building it as a fully studs-up, brick-built object. But one nice thing about the plates, especially on the front, and then the beam I’ve got on the back, is I can pick [the gate] up with the one hand. It’s structurally strong. By having all of that sideways locking, I have that strength. Also, when I went back to the movie and looked at the gates, it’s not a smooth slope. It is three separate angles, which meant I had to build three separate angles and we don’t have bricks at those angles. We did happen to have wing plates whose angles were close enough–mainly because of the new wing plates that Star Wars just made (the 6×4 wedge plate). Otherwise, I couldn’t have got that central angle and I don’t know what I would have done. And this was it, that certain things just came together to allow the stud-cladded version to work.”

Mark: “One thing I really enjoyed about this set was these three panels that are loose on the side and just hang from the top, when I took them to our MCC–which is an internal group to see whether this was a legal build or if I was in some way stressing the bricks–it’s the only time they’ve ever come back to me and said, ‘We don’t know–it’s too complicated. It seems okay to us.’ I’ve never broke them before so I was really happy with that!”

The doors are so large compared to minifigures that as I was building them I was reminded of ancient city gates. The minifigures themselves are sprinkled throughout several bags in the second booklet. The top of the gates have a simple mechanism to connect the doors together. They can be opened and closed together by spinning the gears in the middle.

A few more stacked bricks for the structure, and a few more plates to clad the exterior, and the park gates are complete. Finally, the placard comes last. It’s a straightforward build, though you do have to be careful with the stickering for both the info card and the Jurassic Park sign, since they’re huge stickers that are easy to misalign.

Overall, the set was an easy build, with both the dino and the gate going by quickly. That’s not to say it was simple, but the comparative lack of minifigure-scale details such as those from other similarly large sets I’ve built recently (like 70480 Apocalypsburg) means that there are fewer fiddly bits, and overall this was probably the quickest I’ve ever built a set of this size. There was one exception, however, and that was the plantlife around the gate’s base. Aligning each of the plants to its precise stud location on the wall and the ground took some close scrutiny of the instructions. For most people, it probably won’t matter if they’re a stud or two out of place, but I like models to be accurate to the instructions for our reviews.


The complete model

The set’s 3,120 parts are split about evenly between the gate and the dinosaur, and both are massive. However, there’s no question that the Tyrannosaurus Rex is the showstopper here and the reason most people will buy the set. It is a masterwork in LEGO building. With mottled brown and dark brown stripes down its back and a dark underside, the beast looks ready to claim its place as the apex predator of your LEGO collection.

It’s probably the most accurate T. rex LEGO has ever made–and they’ve made a lot of them. Ignoring the awkward brick-built step-child from the Dinosaur line, here are all of LEGO’s T. rex variations through the years, which began with the Jurassic Park-inspired Steven Spielberg Studios sets of the early 2000s (whose classic green dinos are second and fourth from the left). Of course, the new dinosaur isn’t intended to be minifigure scale, but this evolution of dinos is too much fun to ignore.

Mark: “We have a guy at work, Neils, who’s been there since the 70s. He worked on classic space, and has sculpted so many of our models, but he’s a bit of an amateur paleontologist. So I kept going to him and saying, ‘How’s this look? Because I know the Jurassic Park dinosaur, and I’m staring at it all day.’

“But it’s like, to him what’s working and what isn’t? And one of the things he noticed–because I took it from Mike’s original–was that I didn’t have the arch over the top of the eyes. And a T. rex has very prominent eye arches. When I went back and looked at the movie, and yes, they are there in the movie, but I had not realized I didn’t put them in the Lego model. So again, just bouncing it around at work, especially with people who really know a lot about dinosaurs, is really useful.”

And as Mark noted earlier, this dinosaur is about as large as it’s possible to build using “legal” techniques for an official set, while still having a model that can balance and support its own weight. The T. rex is very poseable for a model of its scale, with the tail and head perfectly balancing each other.

The T. rex’s main points of articulation are the tail, hips, neck, and head, though the jaws, arms, and toes are movable also. The giant lizard poses easily in a variety of manners, from stooping down with its nose to the ground to rearing up for a mighty roar.

But just how big is the T. rex? This is one model where most pictures really don’t do it justice, so I introduced the model to my cat. The T. rex is about 27 inches from nose to tail, and about 13 inches tall at the nose when fully extended.

The T. rex’s mouth is more than large enough to swallow a minifigure.

Meanwhile, the feet and even the tiny arms positively dwarf figures.

The gate is similarly accurate, though the smooth stone facade gets lost a little in the sea of exposed studs. However, complaining that official LEGO sets have too many visible studs is a bit like complaining that water is wet; the stud is part of LEGO’s design language and brand identity, and while LEGO designers have been taking a more subtle approach over the last decade, we won’t be seeing studs disappear from finished models anytime soon.

From the front, the whole model is large scale. There aren’t a large number of details, because the gate is a pretty simple structure in the film, but the ones that do appear are well done.

TBB: “I’ve just been noticing the ruts details there. That’s great.”

Mark: “Yeah, the tire prints. You wouldn’t believe how many times I’ve watched parts of this movie. The electrifying rails down the middle for the Ford Explorer–which never seem to be referenced in the movie–I did notice in several scenes, they’re just painted bits of cardboard laid down on a track in Hawaii. It’s all these little tiny details you don’t notice except when you’re freeze-framing the movie to see whereabouts are the flames placed on the gate and things like that. And again, it feels like the guys throwing the set together were just like ‘stick one there!’ Because [the flames] are all out of whack and out of line. But I had to make it look like that because then it’s….right. You know, when you look at it, you go, ‘Yes, that’s the Jurassic Park gate.’ But you’re not sure why. That’s not just another triangular gate. But it was fun to do. I love doing this model. It was a lot of things to solve.”

While the set sadly doesn’t come with a Jeep or Explorer, it does fit the VW Camper Van quite nicely, if you’re interested in a different sort of camping experience. The wheels line up nicely to the ruts, but I wouldn’t want to sleep in that Coke can-lookalike van with a monster T. rex on the prowl.

And speaking of monsters on the prowl, the gate doesn’t include any fence sections.

The gate is about 19 inches wide and around 17 inches tall, which like the dinosaur it’s hard to get across in pictures just how big it is. Again, I conscripted my cat to illustrate.

Turning the gate around, we get the series of minifigure-scale vignettes; seven in total. The vignettes are pretty much a bonus, since that space would have been hollow otherwise. However, as I noted when building them, they are nicely made with good details.

TBB: “Is there anything about the set that you think is really cool that somebody building the set might not notice?”

Mark: “That’s the difficult thing–I have put things in there, which they will notice. Like in the dinosaur for example, there’s a frog. And again, we have this little brown element here which, yeah, what could it possibly represent in that room where Laura Dern turns all the switches on? Which we don’t communicate at all, because you know it’s slightly outside of LEGO’s normal bounds. But it’s iconic to the scene.”

For those who can’t quite remember, the maintenance shed in the bottom right corner, with its stacked-plate back panel and wall-mounted control panel, is where Ellie is surprised by a severed human arm falling on her shoulder. I think this might be the first LEGO set to feature a dismembered body piece. And yes, there’s a bit of transparent red on the other end. The ‘arm’ is wedged into the grille panel and dangles luridly. I applaud this little easter egg. If LEGO is going to take on licenses for PG-13 movies, they need to be prepared for what that entails, even if it’s just subtle nods of this nature.

The storeroom is on the bottom left, and is loaded with crates and boxes and cans of soda. There’s also a small cabinet holding a few well-hidden guns.

Mark: “You know, one thing I was noticing was the room where Jeff Goldblum is recovering. He’s just laying on a stone slab. Why he’s laying on a study slab, we’ve got no idea. The shelves in the background have cans and boxes and things. But again, until I was looking at that room to build it, I hadn’t noticed these things.”

The left middle room is a tiny vignette of the park cafeteria. The small details are appreciated, like the consistency with the flooring using multiple sizes of tiles to fit around the rug without breaking the pattern. Although the green Jell-O was technically in a different iconic scene, it makes sense for it to be placed here in this ultra-condensed version.

Mark: When [John Hammond] is eating the ice cream and the jelly, there are murals of dinosaurs in the green in the background. It is very key to the color tone of that scene. Yeah, so I worked some plant leaves in on the back wall. Which when you’re building it, you might be thinking, ‘Well, what are these?’ but I’m trying to make that scene come alive. So with each of them, you might wonder, ‘Well, what’s this?’ but next time you watch the movie, you’ll be like, ‘I’ve never noticed that before.’ And that’s what I wanted here was to call out a few details that you might not have noticed.”

Then at the top of the left side there’s a micro scene of Dennis Nedry dropping the embryo canister into the mud on the left.

On the right in the middle is the park’s IT center from which Ray Arnold can command the computer systems. One detail I appreciated is that the monitors are cleverly mounted such that they’re all slightly angled, which gives it a more authentic feel.

Above that, you’ll find a toilet for you to re-enact your own lawyer-munching scene (lawyer not included).

Up at the top behind the gate’s Jurassic Park logo on the arch is the seventh and final vignette: a dino nest with a couple of hatched eggs.

Finally, there’s the placard and minifigure stand, with a UCS-style info card for the T. rex. Although it doesn’t bother me on the box, the Jurassic World logo seems decidedly out of place here. It’s like putting an Avengers logo on an Iron Man Mk. I suit info card.

The stand has room for all 6 minifigures, plus it has the set’s second dino, a baby T. rex. Presumably, he’s what hatched from the last vignette.


The minifigures

The set includes six minifigures to help populate your minifigure-scale Jurassic Park creations, and four of them are totally new. They’re all nicely detailed, and four of them have alternate expressions. From left are Ellie Sattler, Dennis Nedry, Ian Malcolm, Alan Grant, John Hammond, and Ray Arnold.

Drs. Ellie Sattler and Alan Grant both appeared in last year’s Jurassic Park set, and the versions here are identical except that Ellie has different hair. Dr. Grant carries his velociraptor claw that he uses to frighten annoying children. Both figures are printed on the back, and Ellie has an alternate expression.

Next are Drs. Ian Malcolm and John Hammond. Malcolm has appeared once before in a minifigure pack, but this version is new and shows even more of his sweaty chest. Hammond is all-new and sports a white shirt with short sleeves and carries his amber-tipped cane. Overlooking the cane’s ludicrous size (which really can’t be helped) the cane ought to be tan or white, not brown. Both figures have back printing, and Malcolm has an alternate expression of fright.

Finally, the park employees, Chief Engineer Ray Arnold and the programmer Dennis Nedry. Both of these characters have never appeared in LEGO before, though this is the fourth character of Samuel L. Jackson’s to appear in minifigure form, after Mace Windu, Nick Fury, and Frozone. Unsurprisingly, LEGO left out Ray’s characteristic cigarette. Both of the figures have tiny versions of the Jurassic Park logo on their shirts, and Nedry’s jacket has a large version on the back. They also both have alternate expressions, with Nedry sporting a face full of Dilophosaurus venom.


Conclusion and recommendation

The Tyrannosaurus Rex is a stunning sculpture and amazingly well engineered. It is without a doubt the best brick-built creature LEGO has ever made. It looks both terrific and terrifying, and its poseability and balance are remarkable. The gate is also a very good model but not nearly as exciting. However, it’s hard to deny that this wouldn’t be much of a Jurassic Park set if it included only a T. rex, so the gate works well to tie this into the theme and provide a suitable backdrop for the dino. The minifigures and vignettes are a pure bonus. And the figures are great, bringing the rest of the lead cast of the movie to minifigure form with the usual quality.

While it’s unlikely many people will be buying this to part it out, at $250 for over 3,000 parts, it’s undeniably a good deal from a raw numbers perspective. Nearly all the bricks in the set are earth-toned, with only a handful of brightly colored filler bricks.

75936 Jurassic Park: T. rex Rampage will be available from the LEGO Shop Online for US $249.99 | CAN $299.99 | UK £219.99 beginning June 19th for LEGO VIPs, with general availability beginning July 1st. It is also available via third-party sellers on Amazon and eBay.

Our special thanks to Mark Stafford for answering our questions. The LEGO Group sent The Brothers Brick an early copy of this set for review. Providing TBB with products for review or designers for interview guarantees neither coverage nor positive reviews. 


Footnote:

Since the set’s announcement, a few outspoken voices in the online fan community have been raising questions concerning some similarities between this set and a rejected LEGO Ideas project from 2013. The Ideas platform has always been pretty forthright about the fact that there’s a good chance your submission may overlap with similar internal designs, and this is all the more likely when dealing with IP. In these cases, Ideas projects will always lose. Additionally, the Ideas team may reject an idea for one reason, but another LEGO team is able to work around those issues–a James Bond Ideas project is unlikely to be approved, and yet we have an official James Bond Creator set.

The Ideas project creator has said that he feels there was no foul play, and the LEGO Ideas team have also issued a statement:

Although the new 75936 Jurassic Park T-Rex Rampage set shares similarities in design to the LEGO Ideas submission “Jurassic Park” by senteosan, this model was developed entirely internally by a team of LEGO Designers who create great new sets that kids and adult fans alike are passionate about. The basis of their model was a large, grey, brick-built T-Rex created by LEGO Designer Mike Psiaki in 2012 when he joined the LEGO Group and from there the model evolved by including the iconic Jurassic Park gates to add additional building experience and value for “Expert” builders.

In our desire to continue to allow LEGO Ideas members to submit product ideas based on third-party licenses, we have in the LEGO Ideas guidelines acknowledged the fact that there may occur unintentional overlaps between products being developed internally by our design teams and those submitted by fans via LEGO Ideas. This is simply because great minds think alike sometimes, especially when basing designs on popular licenses of movies, TV shows, vehicles, buildings and more, with whom we either already collaborate with or who fit the LEGO brand values for potential future collaborations.

And if you’ve made it this far, here’s a picture of a ferocious predator tasting a giant proto-chicken.

18 comments on “LEGO 75936 Jurassic Park: T. rex Rampage, the biggest LEGO dino ever [Review + Interview]

  1. Felicia Barker

    ‘which are much larger than minifigure scale’

    The Rex is a little larger than Minifig scale, but the gate isn’t – In fact it’s considerably smaller than Minifig scale. The gate in the film is HUGE. The roofs of the jeeps don’t even come close to the base of the first torch when they drive through.

  2. Johnny Johnson

    Amazing how he designed those nostrils to be in there. Looks great.

    Fantastic cat photos, also!

  3. SPIKE

    Why the dino have grey feet like a giant chicken or like a robot…? Real one in the movie is green/brown….

    And the Gate is a remake of Lego Darth Vador Castle with many small inside? Don’t remember in the movie, the gate was a secret home !!!

    I love JP but this set seems unfinished… 300 buck for that !
    I prefer use $200 on strangers things and save $100….

    With no Ford explorer*, this $300 set will be the last set on Jurassic Park (1st sequel) with all the details we can have in this Magical Gate 2 in 1 (Gate and Home in 1).
    So after the75932 Jurassic Park Velociraptor Chase, there no issue for a new set on JP1…. i’m disappointed.

    *Lego can’t deal with Ford (existing licence with Speed Champions) for this set but Lego succeed with 007 x Aston martin – double licences !

  4. Mark Stafford

    Thanks guys – great article.

    Felicia: You’re right! Despite the number of times I looked at that scene I hadn’t actually realised that – probably because we never had an actually vehicle!

    SPIKE: The feet are grey for two reasons, first because the movie dinosaur is so boring in colour I went back to the original concept art (available in the original JP art portfolio) where the dino had a tan/white belly and grey legs. The license holder requested it return to closer to the movie dinosaur.
    But second this couldn’t be done with the legs because too many of the parts are colour locked and the feet looked like a cyborg when too much dark tan was moved down there, Hence the grey legs – like a chicken or many other birds.

    The interior scenes are because we have no idea when or if we will return to the first movie again, and many of these scenes wouldn’t make good kids toys either, so let’s try to pay it as much respect in this set as we can. I hope we can return one day (For Genero, Wu and my favourite Muldoon) but if not at least we have these scenes.

    The Jurassic license is not the Speed Champions license or the James Bond license. I don’t know what the issues are, I am not a lawyer, but apparently there are some.

    Oh, and the Stranger Things set is awesome, I hope you enjoy it! Thanks for buying LEGO even if this particular set isn’t for you.

  5. Marc

    Hello Mark,

    thank your for the good insight to this project. Could you explain why you (Lego) left Genero out? You already included his famous seat from the movie, though it would have made a lot of sense to include him as well?

    Marc

  6. Tomahawker

    What an excellent review. I really like how you wove in the Q&A with Mark. That type of information really helps the understanding of the constraints that Mark was under and design decisions and tradeoffs. I have a much greater appreciation for this set after reading this review. Plus the photography (and cat for scale) is fantastic.

  7. Purple Dave

    The frog makes up for the endless whinging about this set. It looks like there might be enough room to stick a floppy-armed skeleton and the appropriate hat in there, as well.

    This “MCC” sounds a lot like the “Design Department” of a few decades ago, and I’d assume it’s filling the same role, but I’ve never heard it referred to by those initials, or what they stand for.

    And in sets like this, studs provide some semblance of texture where it makes sense (both on the leathery skin of the T-Rex, and the stone panels of the gate structure). On a car, they tend to detract from the look. On large craft like a Star Destroyer, a mix of studs and tile helps portray the mottled plates of metal that form the hull. And on many other things, it’s all a matter of personal preference.

  8. Mark Stafford

    Marc: Genero was in the set for a while, but was cut. I’m not entirely sure why. I kept the toilet as it’s so iconic and is also where Malcolm was injured. Plus if we ever do him in the future he has somewhere to sit. I figure if anyone asks tell them big rexy has already eaten him.

    Frankie Normal: Yes it should. But I used up all my colour changes on the dinosaur and gate.

    Purple Dave: MCC = Model Competency Centre, They are there as ‘model coaches’ for the designers to make sure the quality of model is that which LEGO sets deserve to be. They are also there to check any build you present them with to see if we are stressing the elements (“illegal builds” as we often refer to them). They help a lot.

  9. Bricabrac

    Thanks for the great review! The pics of the t.rex are great – they really show off the size and posability of it (even better than some of Lego’s official pics…)

    @Mark Stafford: thanks for taking the time to answer questions, both here and on several of the other Lego forums. I think it’s a wonderful set and that you did a great job! It’s a massive lego t. rex, what’s not to love ?!?!?!

  10. Rob Boerakker

    “The feet are grey for two reasons, first because the movie dinosaur is so boring in colour”

    Thats some disrepect for both the most iconic dinosaur in this franchise that LEGO is earning massive amounts of money on, and for the fans this set is targeted at. So, the gate isn’t accurate and the dinosaur isn’t accurate. How much money do you want us to pay for this set again?

    I get that this pet dinosaur project would make more money if you slap the Jurassic Park license on it, but you could at least then have the courtesy to treat it with some respect.

  11. Bricks&Bits

    Why did TLG came out after bricksauria hit 5K supporters on IDEAS and said ‘Everything looks good from our end, good luck getting to 10K’?

  12. Andrew

    @Bricks&Bits: Because LEGO has demonstrated time and again that their left hand has no idea what their right hand is doing. ;-)

  13. Purple Dave

    @Bricks&Bits:
    How long did it take to pick up the back half? It’s possible that they hadn’t even entered into negotiations for the JW license when the 5k congrats went out. It’s also possible that the Ideas team didn’t know they were on the verge of signing papers when they posted it. I’ve got the impression that the Ideas team sits pretty low on the totem pole, and likely wouldn’t be privy to this sort of information until the deal is finalized and starts to impact their business decisions.

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