Mighty Dinosaurs might be overselling it a bit, but this is a solid Creator 3-in-1 set from 2017 that’s still in some shops, and often discounted.
The A model is a very posable tyrannosaurus. It’s close enough to mini-fig scale that it could easily ravage the more remote parts of your LEGO city. These Creator 3 in 1 sets are some of my favourite at the moment, they’re good value (no licensing fees), have lots of reusable parts, and often have interesting builds with novel techniques.
Although Creator sets usually are rich in common parts, this set had some new ones for me, as well as some familiar ones in new colours. The most interesting part was the 74261 Joint Extender. You can see it in the image above – the grey element connected to the t-rex hip ball joint.
As I was placing it, I assumed it was just an extension, but if you flip it over and look inside the cavity for the ball, there’s a black grippy (I guess rubber or silicone) insert. I imagine the point of this is to add some rigidity to the joint to allow stiffer, larger constructions. Given this, it makes sense that it first appeared in the Hero Factory sets in 2012. It’s still common in larger posable figures, and especially big mechs like the recent Hulk Buster.
As it’s a “3 in 1” set, it includes paper building instructions for building a B and C model – a triceretops and a pterodactyl.
If you go to the LEGO instructions page on-line however, there’s a nice bonus; official instructions for a D model brontosaurus. And is that an E, F & G model‽
I’m not sure what the story is with the last three. I have seen a few times an extra set of instructions for official models, but they usually have the LEGO style cover art like this fourth model. I downloaded the other instructions and they look just like LEGO instructions. I assume they have been created by LEGO designers, and proposed but not accepted for the official release.
The 4th Model was enjoyable to build – nothing amazing, but a nice bonus.
I also built one of the other models: the green ankylosaurus. There is no way this design would pass the normal LEGO quality control. There were two spots that had failures if handled. One is a decorative assembly supported by a single stud. Single stud connections are legal in LEGO, but they usually only support the equivalent of one stud of plate – for example a round 1×1 plate being used for a headlight.
As expected these (there was one each side) fell off constantly. The second issue was probably more egregious: the middle section of the tail has a ball joint attached to a 1 x 2 plate (14417). This ball joint needs to support the weight of the end tail section. It could easily do this, except that it’s only attached by those two studs and not reinforced.
So it’s is nice to have these extra instructions, but it seems like you should regard them as a fun bonus rather than part of the set. If that’s still not enough building for you from an $18 set, there are plenty of MOCs for these Creator sets.
Beam 'n' Pin 