The Characters in LEGO DREAMZZz travel from Brooklyn, to Fantasy worlds, to Villages to castle, to worlds made entirely out of Candy. But this is not the first time that being able to travel between different LEGO Themes has been used as a framing device for a LEGO narrative. Last time, we looked at the 6000 IDEAs book and followed the adventures of Mary and Bill as they traveled from Town to Space to Castle.
Today, we meet Max Timebuster, a miscreant who jumps between pages of the LEGO Catalog, gathering bits and pieces as he goes.
Joins us for a healthy bit of 90s nostalgia as we continue our survey of ways that LEGO Media have encouraged creative play by having characters Cross the Themes
Max Timebuster comes to Town (and Space and Castle and Pirates…)
While the classic smiley figures in Town, Castle and Space had brought us through the ’80s, the ’90s saw a period of diversification in the world of minifigures: the new faces of pirates; new factions in castle and space, to say nothing of various short-run themes: Western; Aquazone and more.
With so many options for when and where a set might ‘take place’, the time was ripe to bring a unifying force across the LEGO SYSTEM universe, and it arrived in the form of… Max Timebuster. Max made his debut in the 1993 catalogue, indulging in Go-Kart racing and petty theft.
The following year, Max appeared on almost every page, hopping between LEGO Town, Ice Planet, Pirate Cove and the distant eras of the Dragon Knights and Wolf Pack, in a style challenged only by Wally/Waldo, as avid readers attempted to track Max down in the Catalog (images via brickset.com). His face flooded LEGO Town sets in 1993-1994, appearing in over 20 LEGO Town sets (out of 45) during this time .
And then he was never seen again! (well, except for a reissue of the Airport in the early noughties.)
Did you find Max in these pictures? Here are some shots from the pages where Max is a little more hidden.
And then he was (virtually) never seen again…
During the course of the catalog, it appeared that he might have been accumulating parts to put together this. This Time Machine was designed by Christian Faber, a designer working for ADVANCE, the in house Advertising agency. [He went on to create a little theme called Bionicle, amongst other things]. It was never released as a set, but incorporated elements from across the 1994 LEGO Range.
Time Buster comes to the Comics
Meanwhile, in the LEGO Klick magazine, Max drops years in age, and manifests as a boy, working with his grandfather in the lab. It turns out that he has developed a time machine very similar in design to that seen in the ADVANCE studios.
A misunderstanding in Professor Nockelberg’s laboratory with a bright yellow Time Machine sees young Max dragged back in time to an adventure with Captain Roger of the Pirates. Without any understanding of The Prime Directive, the dangers of messing with timelines or advanced moral philosophy, Max has no problems using his Time Machine to impersonate a god to the Islanders and use its lasers to defeat Admiral Woodhouse’s fleet!
The Timebuster comic crossed between a variety of themes in Klick Magazine in 1995, including Pirates, Aquasharks/Aquanauts and Dragon Knights.
As you can see, Merlin and the Dragon appear far more sinister in the comic than they did in actual LEGO form.
As you might imagine, shenanigans ensues
At the end of this battle with the wizard, the time machine is involved in a terrible, magical explosion, and it changes form into the Flybo – One of the primary craft involved in Time Cruisers… but I digress, and am indeed feeding into the next instalment of our series…
Do you want to go down a Rabbit Hole? Check out https://emilyinternet.zone/realms/ogel/buster/: Here you can find the Time Busters and subsequent Time Cruisers comics in their entirety, as well as a little more history on the Time Buster campaigns as they aired on US Television. Catalog images are via the Brickset Library
Both forms of Max: the Catalog Crook, as well as the kid in the comics, managed to jump between lots of different themes – and this time skipping behavious only gets a little crazier next time, as we move forward to Time Cruisers, which I remember being the first words out of a lot of people’s lips when they first saw the early DREAMZZz promotional material.
What was your favourite 90s theme? Did you try hunting down Max in the 1994 catalogue? Please leave your comments below and join us next time as we count down to the new series of LEGO DREAMZZz
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Until Next Time,
Play Well!
