Subject:
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New Dinosaur set reviews, 6721, 6722
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.reviews, lugnet.general
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Date:
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Mon, 14 May 2001 14:01:33 GMT
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Viewed:
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2686 times
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After much anticipation I got my two dino sets in the mail on saturday built
them, played with them, reflected on them and here review them.
I hedged my bets by only ordering 6721-Mosasaurus and 6722- Styracosaurus.
These to me looked like the more realistic of the four adult sets and had
the most interesting heads. Besides, I find brachiosauri/apatosauri rather
bland and I am bored with generic T-Rex figures (though I will probably get
the Studios JP III set with the spinosaurus). But on to the review:
I'll skip a detailed description because, with all the new pieces I could go
on and on painting the picture. Suffice it to say that the sets meet my
basic expectations but fail my grander hopes.
The positive:
These sets look like real dinosaurs. The main models at least bear a good
resemblance to real beasts. The alternative models less so though the alt.
models for the Styracosaurus are just more ceratopsians-the camarosaurus,
the triceratops, etc so they aren't bad.
More importantly, the models are in realistic scale to the mini-figure. This
is one of the best aspects of the setgs and speaks favorably to their
integration with minifigure sets. Now you can have real adventures instead
of playing with the previous wimpy dino figures.
The figures are nicely poseable, you can do reasonable approximations of
running, rearing etc.
The Mosasaurus has an articulated jaw and tongue. Very important for
reenacting scenes of devouring. The Mosasaurus head is IMO the best dragon
looking head in the range and I was able to combine the two sets to create a
pretty good fearsome dragon. It would help to have the T-rex or duplicate
sets so you don't have to mix blue and green pieces.
The sets come with enough extra parts so that a single set has a respectable
amount of playability. It is certainly better to have multiple sets though
and I think the play value really only come out when you mix in minifigures,
knights etc. I would like to create an army of aquanauts riding a host of
Mosasauri and plesiosauri (an alternative model to the brachiosaurus).
The tail tips/Styracosaurus horns are nice pieces that should find a lot of
nice uses as dragon horns, rib bones, insect legs etc. I like that the dino
eye sockets will fit horns. Also there are enough peg holes so that it
should be fairly easy to create mecha/dino mixes or to arm your dino with an
appropriate array of weaponry.
The negative:
The pieces aren't as flexible as I had hoped. The pairs of legs are
inseperable and not separately articulated. The body, consisting of two
pairs of quarter pieces can only be assembled one way. You can interpose
bricks between the front half and the back half though. This means that you
can make the body longer but not wider. The tail and neck pieces are not
infinitely extendible. The tail consists of three pieces. The root piece is
very wide at the base and attaches to the body via a technic friction pin.
It tapers to an end that accepts a friction pin. You can attach these pieces
one to another in a chain but it won't look like anything. The central tail
piece doesn't taper much at all but has a technic pin at one end and a hole
to fit a peg at the other. By peg I mean that type of antenna-like rod that
will fit through a hollow stud. The tail tip fits into the central section
with a peg. If the central tail piece used a technic pin at both ends then
one could make tails and necks however long. You could make a snake or an
infinite coil or whatever. I don't know why they didn't do this.
The Styracosaurus jaw isn't articulated, the head is one solid piece. Seeing
how they molded it, it seems like an easy step to hinge the jaw.Then the
head would be removable and usable as, say, a mecha chest piece or the front
of a car. As it is its not much good for anything else. Whereas the
Mosasaurus head should make a good cockpit adornment for a space ship.
Conclusions:
The line overall is a solid introduction and should be valued for how it
expands the LEGO world and adds pieces and possibilities not previously
available. However the main limiting factors to the line's continuation and
growth is that to create more dinosaurs they will need to mold more heads
and in general increase the line's flexibility by developing new more utile
parts. I am not sure Lego will do this. This might be the full extent of the
line planned.
The pieces can be used in other lines. With only a new head I can see how
LEGO could make a satisfactory Rancor Pit monster from Star Wars or even a
dewback with the pieces the have now. Also I expect them to utilize some of
these pieces for Norbert, the Harry Potter dragon. It would also not
surprise me at all if they used these pieces for an official Knight's
Kingdom dragon set (think St. George). Or think if they came out with a line
of sets based on the same general idea as Dinotopia, a cross between real
dinosaurs and medieval society.
My litmus test for Lego is whether or not I would have liked it when I was
six or ten years old. The answer is a resounding yes. I wish it success.
Jonathan Lill
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