As a teen I somehow missed the Jurassic Park boat.
No clue how it happened, just time and circumstances really, never saw it in the theater (and I was an avid movie buff) and only managed to watch it the day before Jurassic Park 2 hit theaters years later.
But from the moment I saw it, I was in love.
I, like most kids I imagine, was a huge fan of dinosaurs as a kid. I loved Land Before Time and just about any other dino-age movies there were.
But sadly over the years, the Jurassic franchise has been hit and miss, with the 2nd movie being a dismal outing compared to the first.
But with the recent resurgence of the franchise with Jurassic World, it is no small surprise Lego took the opportunity to strike and put out a behemoth of a set, capturing the iconic gates and the biggest bad ass dino to every walk the earth, the T-rex.
Unfortunately, even though I love Jurassic Park, I could not justify the $300 before tax price tag here in Canada.
And with the crash and burn of Lepin last year, it seem highly unlikely this set would be cloned.
Then out of the blue, close to Christmas time, the set showed up on all the reputable sites, for just around $100usd.
This made it an instant buy for me.
Coming in at over 3300 pieces, this is one of the larger non-UCS sets our there.
Thankfully it is numbered.
Now before we get into this, I wanted to mention that unlike any other set I have seen from Lepin / or their new company King / Queen / Jack, this set has 2 ways to assemble it.
The stock photos show a really crappy looking clone. Notice too how they cleverly disguise the full tail from view, so you cannot see it is missing parts. Cheeky!
But they also include all the parts to make the set just like Lego, in a seperate step at the end.
It addresses the 2 main flaws, the look of the upper part of the door, and the missing 3 links from the T-Rex tail.
HOWEVER
You will need to use the actual Lego instruction from their site, they can be found here for the T-Rex
Lego Official T-Rex Instructions
And here for the Gate
Lego Official Gate Instructions
I highly recommend these instructions as they are superior to the one provided by Jack.
The set starts with the T-Rex build, which is surprisingly good.
I was a little skeptical of how this would stand on its own, and for the most part it does, you just have to be very careful when moving the legs as the Jack version doe not have a great clutch on the weird leg mechanism.
Can’t speak on if it is better or worse than the Lego variety, but it is not stellar.
I did not know ahead of time that the tail was different, so when I hit this step I was pissed
But after a little google-fu I came to find that the parts are actually here and that you can make the missing area with the above mentioned instructions.
With the dino complete, it was time to move onto the gate.
Now that I knew I need the Lego instruction, I followed theirs exclusively going forward.
This did however lead to a bit of confusion.
The bag numbers correspond to the Jack version only.
So there are back from the following section that may be needed in the previous section of the Lego guide.
It was not a show stopper, but worth noting, if you are missing some parts, open up the next section, they are likely there.
One wish I have is that Lego would have just committed to making this standard gates.
I get they wanted to make this more of a play-set, and to include some of the memorable parts of the movie in the set, but they are so small it is barely worth putting in, in my opinion
The majority of us AFOL (adult fans of Lego) are not in this for the play value, and who buys a $300 set for their kids to play with?
So it is one of those odd design decisions we see from Lego time to time, like they will not just commit to making adult Lego, yet they try to make stuff with appeal to those of use with disposable income.
The set is a new 100% clone of the Lego variety with 2 small exceptions.
There is no mini raptor figure, and no broken eggs.
A little disappointing as both were unique to the set, but this is often the case with the first run, i would not be shocked if in subsequent releases we see Jack include them.
With all that said, it is still an amazing set. The gate is slim enough to fit on a standard shelf too which I really appreciate as well.
It is hard to find beautiful sets that have a 10″ footprint.
Mini figures on the other hand are hit and miss. Most of the mare good, but Malcolm is a little off, his head color is not matching his body, and his face seems a little zombie like compared to the Lego Variety.
A solid 9.5/10, only missing a perfect due to Malcolm and the 2 missing parts, but still a must buy for Jurassic Park fans.
The Compulsive Canadian Gamer 