[PRESS RELEASE] 75936 - Jurassic Park

[Anonknee Muss]

On 6/11/2019 at 8:24 PM, Nabii said:

The use of the Jurassic World logo instead of the Jurassic Park one is the decision of the license holder.

I'm sorry reception of this set seems to have fallen so flat. I was hoping people would like it. It seems everyone was expecting a visitors centre, I have no idea why as this was never even discussed. Hopefully as people start to get their hands on it the general impression of the set will improve. I tried to make it cool. Cheers everyone.

Hey man sometimes you just have to ignore some of the community. I personally absolutely adore the T-Rex and entrance. It’s an absolutely fantastic set and you’ve done such a great job. I have in the past and now empathise how hard it is being a designer when leakers ruin everyone’s expectations, this so why I am so opposed to leaking. I hope you feel better soon.

Again the set is stunning and you’ve done such a great job.

[Vindicare]

After watching the interview & seeing the actual set...the T-Rex is quite a bit bigger than the picture makes it seem. Now I see where the bulk of those 3K pieces went. 

I’m curious how many of you would be disappointed had the Visitor Center not gotten into your heads? 

[arc]

16 minutes ago, Vindicare said:

I’m curious how many of you would be disappointed had the Visitor Center not gotten into your heads? 

Exactly this. People got their hopes up for something that was never more than a rumor, and I use rumor vaguely because it was more of a wishlist. Had this just dropped without all the wishlists, I think reception would have been much more positive. I believe it'll do great once it hits the market for the general audience. I know I'll be buying it day one.

[BitByBrick]

I’m disappointed and I didn’t want the visitors center. The gate and T-Rex are way too big. A minifig scaled down version would have been just fine. The large scale is probably why they didn’t include an Explorer or Jeep. Those are necessary to any JP gate set in my opinion. The vehicles being omitted makes the set feel lacking and the over-size makes it have (dare I say it) a Duplo-like feel. The one redeeming quality of the set is the 3 new design minifigures are great. 

[Mikeysee]

I only recently heard that there was a D2C JP set coming so I had no idea the visitor's center was the rumor.  That WAS the first thing that popped into my head though, and I'll admit I'm disappointed we didn't get it.  I think a nanofig visitor's center with some molded dinosaurs and a display for some figures would have been great.  I think the Helicarrier is a good example of this type of set.  You've got a big set for play with the nanofigs and then you've got the normal minifigs for display.

However, I'm coming around to what we got.  It's still not my favorite (the inclusion of a Jeep/Explorer would have helped a LOT) but the initial info I saw didn't clearly convey how large the dino and gate are and I didn't know the t-rex was articulated.  That makes it much more interesting in my opinion, and it really does make a great display piece.  Having said that, I'm still passing at $250.  I think $175-$200 will be my goal here.

 

[Vindicare]

2 hours ago, BitByBrick said:

I’m disappointed and I didn’t want the visitors center. The gate and T-Rex are way too big. A minifig scaled down version would have been just fine. The large scale is probably why they didn’t include an Explorer or Jeep. Those are necessary to any JP gate set in my opinion. The vehicles being omitted makes the set feel lacking and the over-size makes it have (dare I say it) a Duplo-like feel. The one redeeming quality of the set is the 3 new design minifigures are great. 

It’s meant to be a display piece though, making it minifigure scale would’ve been an underwhelming D2C(as it sits). It needed to have some heft to it. 

I can’t imagine them not doing either one, or both, of the vehicles at some point, guessing in the next wave of movie offerings, if we get there. They could always throw it in like they did the last JP set. They do love vehicles. 

[ukaskew]

I wasn't expecting or anticipating a visitor centre, but it's fair to say I was hoping for a minifig scale Explorer, Jeep and a new Dino (sauropod?) mould. Or a large set containing all of the above in the existing minifigs scale. Or even a Creator Expert size Explorer or Jeep. 

It just seems like such an obvious win for Lego that for whatever reason has not happened. Me and my 4 year old son would move heaven and earth for a set containing any one of the above mentioned features.

I don't think it would have been underwhelming as a D2C to have lots of relatively smaller elements to make one big expensive set, particularly as most are desperate for them. A couple of dinosaurs, minifigures, minifig scale Jeep and Explorer and then a smaller play feature would have ticked almost every box. 

As somebody has mentioned, it's like Ghostbusters sets without Ecto-1. Lego love a vehicle, the Avengers sets even have entirely made up one's! 

Edited June 13, 2019 by ukaskew

[Bartybum]

On 6/12/2019 at 12:15 PM, Digger of Bricks said:

Man, I can't help but feel this grey one is just SO much better than the final set:

- No underbite

- Aggressive eyes

- ARTICULATED HEELS

- Angular and realistic

Honestly, if this one were what we got, I think I'd drop the money to buy the set. Alas, what we got just looks so cartoonishly avian and smooth - it's a significant downgrade compared to the grey model.

It's gonna be a no buy from me unfortunately

Edited June 13, 2019 by Bartybum

[Mr. Cube]

(+) Brick-built T-Rex is great! I mean - it´s LEGO, after all. It´s large D2C set and it´s labelled as 16+. If you want molded dinosaurs, there are plenty of sets with smaller molded T-Rexes and other dinos.

(+) The gate! It´s not oversized. Just take a look on the gate in JP - it is really big.

(+) nostalgia

 

(-) Jurassic World logo on display stand. I understand, that the whole franchise goes under the JW licence, so there is JW logo on box, but on display stand should be JP logo!

(-) Nedry and Arnold have wrong version of JP logo on their torsos. They should have yellow version of JP logo instead of the red. In the set for 250 USD I would expect more focus on details like that. They could also give Hammond that bald headgear piece, instead of hat.

http://

(-) No Ford Explorer.

Edited June 13, 2019 by Mr. Cube

[Kevin Flemming]

Looks good overall, but there are few minor annoyances and it's far too expensive (as most larger LEGO sets are these days). I would look forward to building it in LDD at least.

And I do have to agree with and mimic Bartybum on this. The grey model looks so much better! The proportions, the pieces used, the stance and articulation. All are far better than the final design.

Now I've had a proper look at everything. The original animatronic T-Rex colours are more grey/olive/cream. The brown doesn't suit it at all. Not sure why they went for that colour scheme. It's quite ugly, to be fair.

The gate is cool, and the little scenes embedded into it are a somewhat strange choice, but it's still nice.

Minifigs are great, and probably the best part of the set.

Edited June 13, 2019 by Kevin Flemming

[Digger of Bricks]

Here's an interesting commentary piece from Brickset's site founder @Huw Millington on the reception to this set:

Brickset - Why the Negativity?

[Mikeysee]

49 minutes ago, Digger of Bricks said:

Here's an interesting commentary piece from Brickset's site founder @Huw Millington on the reception to this set:

Brickset - Why the Negativity?

I think a lot of the negativity comes from disappointment.  If Lego announced a new UCS Star Wars set that wasn't what people were expecting it would still be met with negativity, sure, but at the end of the day we all know there will be another UCS/D2C set coming that same year, then a couple more the next year, etc etc.  They also revisit sets, so if you don't like the current UCS Falcon just be patient, there will be another one.  This, on the other hand, might very well be the only big JP set we ever get.  It could be the only shot we fans have at getting the iconic set we've always wanted.  Unfortunately that set is different for everyone so it's going to be a miss for many, many people.  Personally what we got doesn't quite hit the mark for me but honestly, it's pretty dang cool and I'll likely try to get it after a price break.  But I do understand all the disappointment.  I was very disappointed at first as well when I saw there wasn't a Jeep/Explorer and it wasn't a visitors center.

This might just be me, but I think fear might play into it a bit, too.  Lego has kinda missed a lot lately with their big sets and with each one it makes me wonder a little more if they're losing touch with their audience.  I love Lego so that thought is pretty scary (in a nerdy first-world sort of way, haha).

My 2c.

[Whovastron]

On 6/11/2019 at 11:53 PM, Clone OPatra said:

I think this right here perfectly encapsulates how many of the vocally negative people here and on other LEGO sites feel.

There have been plenty of discussions on Eurobricks and probably elsewhere on the question of - is LEGO putting out too many very large sets? Personally I don't have a problem with the number of large sets, as long as they make sense to be so large. Cloud City - makes sense to be large. Ninjago City sets - beautifully large. Etc. Etc.

This set on the other hand feels like it has no business being as large as it is because, like some others have said, it has two builds that pretty much don't go together besides sort of being "icons" from a particular franchise. Both builds are very well done, but to me and it seems to a fair percentage of the AFOLs who post their opinions online, only one of the two large builds is of interest: the gates. Those gates are fantastic, and I even like the very AFOL-y touch of the vignettes inside, but when only 50% of a big set interests me, there's unfortunately no way I'm going to even consider buying it.

It does seem therefore that this set could alienate a potential market by not being just the gates, plus an iconic JP-coloured vehicle.

I’ve not really thought about it before, but I think you’re right. Don’t get me wrong, most of the big sets in the last few years have been amazing - The Falcon, Apollo 11, Ninjago City, Cloud City.

but Ninjago Docks, the wind turbine, the Taj Mahal rerelease, this, it might be a bit much. I think Lego just need to make sure that each set is the best it can be first. Don’t rush a Ninjago city sequel, give it a couple years and release something equal in quality. I don’t collect Ninjago, but the City is my only Ninjago set, and my favourite Lego set! But the docks...eh, doesn’t capture what is great about the first set to me.

lego have potentially had 4 years to develop this D2C for Jurassic Park, and it is a nice set, it just isn’t really what people wanted. With themes like this, copy Stranger Things; pour everything you have into it and make the one stop buy for a casual fan, and a necessity for a Lego fan

[ukbajadave]

I was never expecting a visitor centre so that makes no difference to my view of this set.  think the dinosaur itself is a great display piece and I can see myself bricklinking one but for me the negativity comes from this "... the model evolved by including the iconic Jurassic Park gates to add additional building experience and value for“Expert” builders...."

I'd rather do without the added building experience and value of a gate and have a non licensed creator T Rex at £120.

[VBBN]

In many ways, this set reminds me of the "UCS" Hulkbuster set. 

A majority of the negative feedback comes from the disappointment of the set - and not even from the fact that it's not the visitor center, but rather that this is a display piece, and not really something you can use with your JW sets collection. That's the issue with "D2C" or special releases like this- the sets are always varied in scope. You could have a Microscale Helicarrier or Hogwarts, a large scale Creator car, or a minifigure scale set like Joker/Wayne manor, Cloud City or the City Rollercoaster. I like the variety, but that leads to false expectations. Many people hoped for this to be a set that would encompass a great deal of the JP films in minifig scale. Instead they got a display model that can't really be incorporated with the existing sets well.

And that's where the comparison to the Hulkbuster comes from. It's a display piece, and took up a slot that many would rather have seen filled by a more interactive minifig-scaled set. Like the Hulkbuster, the audience here is for people who want a buildable display piece (emphasis on "buildable", because this of course is not the most definitive display piece from JP out there.

 

I guess, to me, the issue is this set doesn't have enough "cool factor." It's certainly a step up from the old 4507 Prehistoric Creatures set... but we've had plenty of Lego T-Rex's, big and small

 

[koalayummies]

3 hours ago, Digger of Bricks said:

Here's an interesting commentary piece from Brickset's site founder @Huw Millington on the reception to this set:

Brickset - Why the Negativity?

That complaint checklist at the end is both very accurate and hilarious. They just can't win!

[MAB]

The T-Rex - superb. The detail and even moreso the stability look great. 

The gate - quite an accurate design (from the front) but just a boring lump! Plus I don't think it works anywhere near as well as the Death Star did as a playset of smaller vignettes. If it was smaller and maybe had a tree either side it would have looked a little better, but still a bit boring. Where is the action?

The minifigures - great.

 

[Elrond]

4 hours ago, Digger of Bricks said:

Here's an interesting commentary piece from Brickset's site founder @Huw Millington on the reception to this set:

Brickset - Why the Negativity?

Meh, seems like that person is overdefensive of the set and TLG as a whole and doesn't seem to try and understand where the criticisms are coming from. It doesn't send the right message when you'd rather mock them with that checklist in the same message you ask for answers. Same thing when you ask questions like "So, why is there such negativity? [...] Because people think that every set released should appeal to them?". That little jab only shows you've already made up your mind and aren't really open for discussion.

Why so much "negativity" for D2C sets? Maybe because they're really expensive. 250 bucks is a lot of money for a lot of people, some will save up for a few months just to buy that set. For that price we're expecting the very best, especially for a license like this which might not get many more sets in the future. If people are going to drop 250 euros or dollars on a single set, they might have a number of expectations. If those expectations aren't met it just feels like a wasted opportunity. You could say everyone has different expectations, which is true, but looking at the complaints they're also pretty much all going in the same direction.

As for how to deal with this "negativity", why would we need to stop it? First I'd rather call it criticism and as long as it's constructive, I don't see the problem. Pretty sure a company would rather have feedback from their customers so they can improve in the future instead of people who will keep their opinions to themselves but still won't buy the product. I also didn't see anyone attacking the creator personally (which obviously would be really wrong and shouldn't be tolerated), quite the opposite. I criticized the set but I still think its creator is very talented, there's no doubt about that and he obviously put a lot of work into it. So what exactly is wrong here and needs to be changed? We're consumers, we have the right to express an opinion on an expensive item and I'd say it's rather healthy to do so and even helpful for the company.

Finally about the checklist and the complaints towards the D2C sets, I'd say it really varies from one theme to the other. For instance, you can't really make a genaral rule about vehicles. In the Star Wars theme where there are hundreds of sets, complaints about the inclusion of a vehicle in a D2C set might be justified because you're wasting a lot of pieces on something that has already been made in another set (for example, the snowspeeder in the Hoth UCS set). In this case, complaints about the lack of vehicle in this set are also justified because this is only the 2nd one for the JP theme and it might be the last.

Edited June 13, 2019 by Elrond

[hachiroku]

I'm very surprised with that brickset article. I can't believe they are using the argument of the vehicles here. JP cars are really important, I mean, there even conventions about people who modified Jeeps and Explorers to look like in the movie.

I see a lot of people saying they should release the vehicles in the Creator Expert style, and that's a really bad idea. The cars are important and iconic because how the characters are linked to these vehicles in the movie. There is a lot of stuff going on inside them (the first T-Rex scene, the gate scene, the T-Rex chase, the first time we see a dinosaur...). If they release the cars, they MUST BE minifig scale to work as a set.

This is not like a Bond car, where the car itself is the gadget and the "leitmotiv"? of the set. You need to link the minifigures with the cars.

 

 

 

 

 

[BitByBrick]

16 minutes ago, hachiroku said:

If they release the cars, they MUST BE minifig scale to work as a set.

This is not like a Bond car, where the car itself is the gadget and the "leitmotiv"? of the set. You need to link the minifigures with the cars.

Exactly! Imagine this set (only in minifigure scale) with the vehicles to recreate those iconic scenes from the movie. That would have been soooo awesome! Smaller. Less expensive. More playability by using the characters outside of the back of the gate “caves”. Able to tie in to the other existing JP set. Who determined that D2C sets had to be these large over-scale, super expensive sets anyway? Good grief! Give us something fun and a little more affordable. That would have been nice. 

[hachiroku]

11 minutes ago, BitByBrick said:

Exactly! Imagine this set (only in minifigure scale) with the vehicles to recreate those iconic scenes from the movie. That would have been soooo awesome! Smaller. Less expensive. More playability by using the characters outside of the back of the gate “caves”. Able to tie in to the other existing JP set. Who determined that D2C sets had to be these large over-scale, super expensive sets anyway? Good grief! Give us something fun and a little more affordable. That would have been nice. 

I think what failed here is understanding why the people loved the movie and why some stuff from the movie is iconic. What made the dinosaurs great are not the dinosaurs themselves, but how the characters reacted to them, and that interactions involves everyhting: What's happening, where, how, why.

And I think all of this should be adapted to Lego sets. You have the characters, you have a part of the gate and a dinosaur. But these things by themselves are not iconic. They become iconic when everything is working together. The Ford Explorer is iconic when it has two kids inside and a T-rex is about to eat them, or when the main characters are inside a room trying to lock the door because there is a raptor outside (I think this is a better known example xd). I don't know, I don't see that storytelling in this set.

 

[Kevin Flemming]

39 minutes ago, hachiroku said:

I don't know, I don't see that storytelling in this set.

 

Completely agree with that statement, to be fair. The Rex standing with the entrance gates isn't a part of the story. If it were with (as mentioned) an Explorer, some broken large electric fencing, or standing in the visitor rotunda (even just part of it), then it would have more of an impact. As it is, it's just two random things that don't really fit together. The Explorers driving through the gates, yes. The Rex taking down Raptors, yes. Rex standing in front of the gates, hmm not really.

[Mr. Cube]

...and I disagree. As an AFOL, I don´t know why should I see some storytelling in this set. What I see? Iconic T-Rex...brick built T-Rex with great shape and even movable. Iconic JP gate. Finally not some down-scaled version of gate. I could live without those scene-vignettes in the back of the gate, but I take them as some kind of homage to the original Jurassic Park film. They are not meant to play with them. They are just there to remind us the original Jurassic Park film, full of mystery, adventure and fun. This set should be displayed on shelf, it´s not targeted on kids, I really don´t get all that disappointment (or even "frustration"...come on!). As i said above, I would be more happier, if they included Ford Explorer and the minifigs/display stand had more accurate JP logos on them, but I really like this set.

[scottypavarotti]

On 6/11/2019 at 8:44 PM, Puresh said:

As someone who has been a huge fan of Jurassic Park my entire life, having seen all three of the original films 175+ times each, I absolutely adore the set you created. It encaptures the feeling of the film in an amazing display model while still giving us a few minifig scaled vignettes in the back to place the figures in. And the brick built T.Rex is just a piece of art, it looks even more accurate to the movie Rex than the molded one without losing any posability. I've talked to a few other hardcore Jurassic Park- and Lego fans about this set too and most of them were really happy with the final product. I think the backlash isn't down to the product you created, but rather the expectations that many, many people have had that it would be a Visitors Center. You made me and a lot of other Jurassic fans very happy with this product :)

Yup, when I saw the press release, my first impression was I am now tempted to buy this as my first and possibly only JP LEGO set. I think it’s great. Almost worth it for Golblum alone...

[Robert8]

Ok that Brickset article is something I can't agree with.

Negative comments are also feedback, whether you like it or not. Ignore them or try to shut them down is about the worst thing you can do in a case like this. If the reactions are mostly negative something is happening, and you cant just look away from the issue. Look at what just happened with the Sonic trailer.

But... the community is also in fault here. Why is there dissapointment about the set not being the visitor center? TLG never said it was going to be the visitor center. Someone else did. A "leaker". And why did they make up something like that? Well, because people believe it. Because there is a public for their lies. Everytime an unfounded rumor appears, there are several replies talking about it. Does that mean we cant discuss rumors? No. But I think it does mean we have to remember it is us who decided to believe them in first place. So, if the rumor turns out to be fake and we are disspointed it no elses fault but ours. 

My 2 cents on the matter.