We are celebrating the final half of season 2 of LEGO® DREAMZZz by looking at themes, books and more that made a point of inspiring kids to combine sets of multiple themes in creative play. We have already looked at the 6000 Ideas Book and explored the adventures of Max Timebuster throughout the 1994 catalogue. Today we move on to one of the themes regarded as a spiritual predecessor to DREAMZZz, the 1996-97 Time Cruisers.
Catalogue Capers
As we moved through the 1990s, themes started to develop an ongoing internal narrative, starting in the catalogue and extending into the comics featured in various LEGO club magazines of the day.
These comics are all from the opening pages of these themes in the UK 1994 catalog
In our previous installment, In 1996, we saw Max Timebuster make a transition to Tim, with his flying time vessel, and the Time Cruisers theme was born.
The sets featured Tim and Doctor Cyber along with Ingo the Monkey. The range was somewhat limited: only four sets in the first wave, followed up in 1997 by the Time Twisters, which featured a couple of villains, assisted by a ghost as well as an animated skeleton wearing a wizard’s hat. This villainous group travelled through time, searching for high stakes treasure to steal.
When I first emerged from my dark ages in the late 2000s, Time Cruisers was regarded as a bit of a joke among AFOLs: kids who might have played with it at the time were still typically in their mid-to late teens and not in a position to point out its virtues to the existing AFOLs. When I asked what was so funny, it was pointed out to me that the sets were a bit crazy, looking like they had been created using the random elements swept up off the design studio floor.
This was not necessarily the entire truth.
If we consider Christian Faber’s initial time machine from 1994, this craft features many examples of neat parts usage, from the Paradisa Driveway as the bonnet to the race car’s spoilers used as radar dishes, the Islander’s head as a bonnet decoration, and more. Elements came from across the 1994 sets. In short, it demonstrated the many ways in which LEGO Elements from all themes could work together to create something special.
And it was in the spirit of this creativity that the designs behind the Time Cruisers sets came into being, using elements in new and exciting ways: installing jet engines and dragon wings on any variety of vehicle, adding spinning spirals and bursts of flame where you least expect them, and more. Especially hats: lots of hats and helmets, used to help define just when and where they would land next.
A quick look at the end of the 1996 catalog reveals this curious contraption, where kids were invited to identify the sets in the catalog that contributed the labelled elements. Like the the time Cruisers sets themselves, this served to provide an ongoing
A Few Rapid Reviews
Lets take a quick look at a couple of the sets, which just happen to be in the living room at the moment:
6491 Rocket Racer: a small, simple set, which has an ingenious mechanism to turn the rotors – as they are touching the rims of the tires. Unfortunately, once the rocket racer takes off, the rotors no longer spin.
6492 Hypno Cruiser: Featuring the spiraling Hypno-disk, this is one of the sets that embodies the razy creative attitudes behind the theme: its a car, with rortating rotors (again, they dont spin unless the vehicle is on the ground. We have the most of the ‘good guy’ minifigures for the Time Cruisers: Tim, Ingo and Dr Cyber. There is also an android that s exclusive to the Mountain Laboratory, and has evaded my capture so far.
I love that this vehicle must fly: it has the helicopter rotor, jet engines and dragon wings.
On the back is a trailer containing a wide variety of hats for the time travellers to put on. The movement features are all the result of rubber bands attached to the front axle.
6493 Flying Time Vessel: Also known as the Flybo , this is the vessel that appears in the Time Cruisers comics, until it was abandoned in the desert. It includes preformed hull elements. The wings flap, and the rear propeller spins as you roll the vellel along the ground. It also incorporates the Aquazone periscope, as well as isolated Dragon Arms. To say nothing of lots of transparent neon green lasers and dishes. And Crossbows. Unfortunately, the ship does suffer for space to place the characters on deck, with most of the available floorspace being in the cabin, or half-way up the mast.
6495/6499 Time Tunnelator
Tucked into a small package and reasonably inexpensive on the secondary market, the Time Tunnelator brings one minifigure – Dubbed Tony Twister / Baron Blomberg. The other human is Professor Millennium / Commodore Schmidt and along with the Ghost and Skeleton appear in other sets acrss the range. There is some unexpected parts use here: from the paradisa sailboard sail, to the bugle to the barrels supporting the spars. And like every other set in the Time Cruisers range, dragon wings.
There are of course, other sets in the theme, but I don’t yet have them on hand…
The Time Cruisers Comic
In our most recent installment, we discussed the Time buster Comic in the European ‘Klick‘ Magazine and, following the arrival of the Time Cruiser’s theme, it continued in a similar vein, with the introduction of the flying time vessel. With time, it moved over the the LEGO World Club magazine. I have sourced translated images from European magazines at https://emilyinternet.zone/realms/ogel/buster/contents. you can read the entire 140 page epic there, as well as a 12 page promotional comic for the German cookie company, Prinzen
Tim and his monkey companion, Ingo, travelled from the Explorien’s to the Wild West, encountered the Time Twisters, visited the Fright Knights, watched them get overwhelmed by the forces from UFO before returning once again to the Wild west – this time, spending time with the Native Americans.
A narrow escape saw Tim rescued by the Extreme team before heading off into the Egyptian desert, in search of Dr Cyber’s brother: Articus Kilroy (or Charles Lightning in the American market).
This adventure brought us to the end of 1998 – at which time the Time Cruiser’s sets were retired. Having left the Flying Time Vessel into the desert, Tim now travels using different means…
After visiting the Insectoids, Aquazone, City and Dino Island (and more great themes around the turn of the century, Tim arrives in Hollywood Studios. After watching the director storm off, Tim takes over the direction of a Dinosaur Action film, and saves the production.
And he was never seen again.
The comics certainly established a fun narrative within most of the active LEGO Themes of the period, but using Tim as a ‘Point of View’ character for the readers. The end of the Time Cruisers comic came at a time when we were starting to see more and more licensed themes appear on the scene: Spiderman, Star Wars, Harry Potter and More.
But That’s Not All: Time Cruisers, The Board Game.
Time Cruisers was also the subject of a board game. Released in 1997, the goal is for players to collect artefacts from across multiple different eras, in order to prove to the world that Dr Cyber is not lying about having discovered time travel.
You collect artifacts across Space, Western, Castle and Aquazone worlds, with your minifigure token needing to carry all of the items – a hat, a neck piece and two hand-held artifacts – collecting one from each time zone. All while avoiding the Time Twister, who will take one of these artifacts away from you. Play is driven by a combination of dice rolls and ‘Vortex’ cards.
Giving otherwise generic minifigures the chance to ‘dress-up’ in accessories from different themes is a great mechanic for a theme-hopping board game. While it is not a game 55-year-old me would necessarily get much diversion from, I can imagine 7 year old Ramblingbrick, otherwise playing Snakes and Ladders, Chinese Checkers and Sorry, would probably enjoy it. A shame that I was still 20 years too early for this game!
Live your DREAMZZz: Redesigning the Time Cruiser Classics as DREAMZZz
Last year, when we saw our first previews of the LEGO DREAMZZz range, the mashed-up designs with neat parts usage had many AFOLs comment that the theme felt a lot like Time Cruisers V2.0. Some said this with affection. Others, less so. That said, I have found myself slowly working to adapt a couple of the original Time-Cruisers models to a Dreamzzz-based aesthetic, and I have to admit, I have enjoyed the path this is taking. Hopefully, I will find time and space to continue this little project in the future. In the meantime, I’d love to know what you think…
First we have Mateo and Z Blob’s Rocket Racer, retaining the same propeller action of the original set, it is a relatively simple recolour, while ensuring we have an adequate number of weapons (because these are necessary these days, as well as a place for Z-Blob to sit.
Next, Cooper’s Hypno Cruiser: When I first saw the flat leaf elements in dreams, I immediately thought of the Hypno Cruiser and its rotating helicopter blades. From there, I set out to use the colour palette explored in the Monster Truck and ended up with this. It doesn’t yet have the trailer full of spare hats, but I don’t feel that to be entirely necessary. Perhaps it needs a little more neat parts usage to completely feel that it is meeting the brief. Let’s call it a stalled Work In Progress.
In Conclusion
The LEGO Time Cruisers theme featured imaginative models, featuring unusual parts usage, as a mechanism to inspire kids to build creatively. By seeking out the shapes and alternative functions for an element, more intriguing models and toys can be created. A true multimedia theme, the secondary Story telling mechanisms – including the comic series as well as the board game took the time/space travelling MacGuffin as a way to combine the storytelling with many other themes of the 1990s, with Tim serving as a Point of View character for the reader. I do appreciate the way that the Flying Time Boat was removed from the narrative around the same time that the set was retired from sale
Likewise, DREAMZZz can be seen as a spiritual successor to Time Cruisers: we have imaginative models, often mashed up in intriguing ways (rollerskating anime-rabbit; Monster-Truck; Robot-Dinosaur; Shark-Pirate ship; tortoise- foodtruck) as well as action taking place in a variety of worlds: The Candy realm, Murky Realm, Nightmare realm, Cyber realm and more – places for Hi-tech, and Castles and sweet treats and animals. To say nothing of run-of-the-mill LEGO Brooklyn.
But is LEGO DREAMZZz the only spiritual successor? While it certainly features creative models and storytelling, it hasn’t left mes going ‘wow, they did what with what, now?’ the way that I did when putting together the Time Cruisers sets. To that extent, has this aspect of Time Cruisers been taken over succeeded by the Botanical Collection? I’ll just leave this here for you to consider.
In the Meantime, new episodes of LEGO DREAMZZz are live today (today might vary depending on where in the world you are. Australia is in the future compared to most of the world), concluding the Night of the Never Witch Arc. I have some more articles to complete this series over the coming weeks, as well as a review of 71486 Castle Nocturnia coming up Real Soon Now.
I’d like to know: What were your experiences with Time Cruisers? Childhood joy? Adult deridement? A great distration? Or great inspiration? Did you engage with the comics, or board game? Please leave your comments below.
In the meantime, you can check out the new LEGO DREAMZZz episodes on Netflix or YouTube over the weekend.
Did you miss the previous installments in this series? you can read them here:
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Until Next Time,
Play Well!
[…] the years, we have seen Bricks N Pieces, Klick Magazine, LEGO Mania, LEGO World Club, LEGO Magazine, LEGO Club, and most recently, LEGO Life. The stories in […]