The next installment in the Jurassic World franchise, Jurassic World: Chaos Theory, will release in a little under a week. To partner the release of the show, LEGO has dedicated a handful of sets to the animated show, which can only mean one thing: new dinosaurs! The flagship set of this mini-wave is 76966 Dinosaur Missions Allosaurus Transport Truck, whose 588 pieces include – you guessed it – an all-new Allosaurus. Retailing for US $89.99 | CAN $119.99 | UK £79.99 and releasing on August 1st in North America (or June 1st in Europe, Australia and other global territories), should you summon up the courage to face this fearsome predator? Read our review to find out!
The LEGO Group provided The Brothers Brick with an early copy of this set for review. Providing TBB with products for review guarantees neither coverage nor positive reviews.
The box and contents
Although relatively large, the box is pretty well-packed, with not much space left inside. The box art shows off the play features of the set and the perils of trying to ferry a big angy carnivore around.
There are eight paper bags in total – six numbered ones, and two containing the Allosaurus components. There’s a loose black plate kicking around too.
Slightly less daunting (but only slightly) than the Allosaur is the modest sticker sheet. Their application and the build will be spread across two instruction booklets.
The build
The titular Allosaurus is the first step of the build, and no doubt what many are excited about – but good things come to those who wait! We’ll take a look at that alongside the minifigures later on. For now, bag 1 warms us up with some of the simpler builds in the set: an ATV…
…and a flying drone. The drone makes use of some small propellor pieces atop 1×1 ‘inkwell’ pieces for the blades.
It’s in the second bag that we move on to the main focus of this set: the transport truck. Its base is a couple of Technic beams, that are quickly built upon with plates and bricks.
There’s a nifty 2×4 plate with a ball joint mount at the back, which is where the trailer will slot into. Whether by accident or design, it actually bears a pretty good resemblance to the mechanism you would see on real trucks.
That’s not the only bit of realism, either – at the front end, a handful of parts go towards putting an engine in! It’s a nice, if unexpected, little detail. Note the headlight pieces, too: 1x2x2/3 curved slopes, with a pair in trans-clear for the first time. The trans-yellow ones are new in 2024, but this is already their fourth appearance.
Speaking of re-colours, the windscreen is another new addition to the rapidly-growing trans-black family of parts. We’ve already used a couple of our stickers in the second bag, on the dashboard and for the number plate.
On to bag 3, and we start using up a bit more of the sticker sheet. Two of them are used for the fuel tanks on the side of the truck, which go on a pair of curved pieces.
Clearly this truck can go for fairly long distances, as a portion of the cab is dedicated to some small sleeping quarters. It’s assembled separately with some sideways studs on show, which we’ll put to good use shortly.
Then we make the walls and roof of the cab. Another sticker is used on the inside of a panel to make it feel a bit more homely.
Back to the outside, and we add on some smoke stacks before covering up our remaining SNOT panels. The cab sides make use of yet more stickers.
With the wheels on, we’re done with the driving half of the truck. It looks rather Mack-esque, don’t you think?
And so to the trailer from our last three bags, and the loose 6×16 plate. The construction is similar to the front, in that it’s plates on top of a Technic beam core.
There are a few instances of locking in the little side builds with plates over SNOT brackets. I guess you’d want your Jurassic Park equipment to be pretty sturdy. No dinosaur is taking this thing apart in a hurry!
Well, perhaps we shouldn’t speak so fast… Bag 5 includes the mechanism for the flagship play feature of this set: collapsible trailer sides. It starts off with a selection of plates and brackets…
…And then we add in some Technic parts, including a spring. The red and black parts are colour-coded to help you line it up correctly.
With a ball joint link in place, the assembly is mostly finished, but exactly how it works isn’t immediately clear at this stage.
For that, we’ll need to keep building. As before, this sub-assembly is locked in with tiles on top of inverted bracket pairs. We dip into the sticker sheet again to put some hydraulic jacks on.
The last step is to put some red Technic ‘Bohrok’ eyes on, and at last the cage mechanism becomes a little clearer; actuating the lever at the front dips the teeth downwards.
We’ll finish things up with the trailer’s cage, which will (hopefully) contain the enormous Allosaurus. Both sides are identical, consisting of a mirrored Technic-beam-and-scaffolding build.
A small lever forms the lock for each side of the cage.
This lever slots in very nicely behind the aforementioned teeth, and suddenly our trailer looks nearly complete.
All that remains are a few finishing touches: a ramp at the rear and, of course, the wheels.
The minifigures and dinosaur
A contingent of four minifigures complement the vehicles in the set: Kenji, Yaz, Darius, and a Jurassic Park guard. The latter features a head in the newest shade of sienna brown.
Kenji and Yaz both get alternate scared expressions on the reverse of their heads. Clearly the guard and Darius are not as easily fazed! All of them still get back printing, though.
And to be fair to Yaz and Kenji, if I was faced with this Allosaurus, I’d probably be bricking it (ahem) too! 8 parts make up this predator – the head, jaw, body, tail, and a pair each of arms and legs. The head and tail are both on ball ‘click’ joints, and together with the limbs, it’s pretty well posable.
It’s clearly seen some action as its right eye is glazed over, and there’s some scarring present among the detailed printing. On the whole, it looks pretty badass – until you close its mouth, and I daresay it looks a bit derpy…
The finished model
Once it’s all put together, the finished convoy is quite impressive! There’s a role for everyone to play.
The drone can be stored behind the truck cab, although be prepared to pull off a few more bricks than you bargain for when taking it off.
The ATV can live in the trailer, too, as long as there isn’t a great big dinosaur in there!
Inside the cab, it’s pretty roomy. The roof comes off for easy access, and the jumper plates in the front mean two minifigures can comfortably sit side-by-side.
The best part, though, is the cage mechanism. By actuating the red double-cheese-slope lever, the red teeth parts release the Technic bushes on the cage, and their weight allows the sides to drop down naturally. It works really well, and it’s easy to put the cage back up again. However, I would question the logic of putting it within easy reach of the mouth of a great big carnivorous dinosaur…!
Conclusions and recommendation
It can be a little tricky to judge sets like the Jurassic World ones. Clearly, price-per-piece has to go out of the window; although this set only has 588 parts, 8 of those are specially moulded and printed parts for the Allosaurus. For its part, it’s certainly an imposing addition to the Jurassic menagerie, and it’s particularly nice to get a creature that will presumably have a decent part to play in the upcoming show.
The rest of the set is pretty good in its own right, too. The inclusion of the ATV and drone gives a much-needed extra dimension to play, and I’m impressed with how well the opening cage feature has been executed. Nevertheless, I can’t help but feel that this set is maybe $10-$15 too expensive; it doesn’t quite feel like $90 worth of stuff. Unless you really want the Allosaurus – and for collectors, you will do, as it does look great – I would advise keeping an eye out for discounts before picking this one up in a hurry.
LEGO Jurassic World 76966 Dinosaur Missions: Allosaurus Transport Truck will retail for US $89.99 | CAN $119.99 | UK £79.99 upon its release on August 1st in the USA and Canada, and June 1st in other global territories. It may also be available from third-party sellers such as Amazon and eBay.
The LEGO Group provided The Brothers Brick with an early copy of this set for review. Providing TBB with products for review guarantees neither coverage nor positive reviews.
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