Branko woke up from a dream wondering if Construction Equipment was on the way out. He couldn’t get back to sleep until he came up with the answer…
In January 2026 LEGO will release another wave of Dreamzzz sets and the balance between ‘dream’ and ‘nightmare’ seems solidly to have swung towards ‘Dream’. There is only 1 set out of 5 in the wave that is considered a nightmare, and it is the smallest of the lot at that. Cue “Nightmare Scorpion Digger 71513”, coming in at 505 pieces for AU$79.99/£44.99/US$49.99/€49.99. This is not a small set, it’s just the smallest of the lot (read more on that here).
The sets in this series are all associated with animals, and some machinery, but it struck me that this particular one is very strongly related to construction equipment. In recent years fans of Technic have been complaining a bit about a reduction of the number of construction equipment sets, so this left me wondering. Has construction gotten into bad books? Is digging holes no longer considered cool?
Join me as we have a quick look to see if Technic fans are objectively correct in their gripe, and then we will cheerfully ignore that and have a look at how construction equipment is used to create this particular nightmare creature.
This set was generously gifted by LEGO, but the expressed opinions are my own.
Construction in LEGO
Construction equipment has long been a staple in LEGO sets; kids like playing with things they can see real life, which is why police, fire fighters and construction are everegreen staples. In the LEGO movie our hero, Emmet, was also a construction worker, which does not seem like a coincidence.
For reference, at time of writing 445 of all LEGO sets in Brickset have been tagged with ‘construction’ and similar number (464) has been tagged with ‘police’. Many more sets (716) have been tagged with ‘fire’, but that is because it also includes ninjas and dragons wielding fire powers, not just firefighters.
Let’s look at the number of construction sets over time for all LEGO. We’ve also included cars, for reference.
The graph shows the percentage of sets tagged with ‘Car’ in blue, and ‘Construction’ in red/orange. The lines show the overall trend. This shows that over time a growing portion of sets is considered a ‘car’ and a steadily declining percentage ‘construction’. With the release of Speed Champions I’m not too surprised about the car ratio, but 1 in 5 sets having a car is a bit more than I thought. The construction line feels a bit off to me. Didn’t we have several great construction vehicles appear in LEGO City in recent years? Let’s have a look at *just* City sets:
Ahah! Yes, there we are, a significant portion of City sets contain cars (no surprise there) and we also see an increase in construction equipment, in particular a boost in 2024 and 2025.
So are Technic fans correct in complaining about a lack of construction vehicles in Technic?
Notice that since 2014 the relative number of ‘car’ sets in Technic has increased from about 15% to 40%, where construction vehicles have gone from representing over 35% to less than 10%! This is indeed a drastic change that would be noticeable on the shelves.
This long introduction really just set up the question: is there something wrong with construction? Has an excavator become evil or a nightmare? I was briefly wondering if there someone at LEGO who is positioning construction as not such a good thing, but the trend in City shows that not to be likely.
Nightmare Scorpion Digger then
So we established that the ‘Digger’ part of 71513 Nightmare Scorpion Digger is probably coincidental, there was just a need for a nightmare set and someone had an idea how to use the shape of excavator buckets in an unusual way. Neat Part Usage I would say.
The set comes in a square box with four bags and a small sticker sheet. The stickers are purely decorating the sides of the buckets and are a nice touch but not necessary; a plus if you do not like stickers.
As with all Dreamzzz sets in this wave, the instruction manual shows different colours for the ‘common’ part of the instructions and the two alternatives. The pages show only a modest yellow (common) section which is even a bit deceptive, because the only common part is Cooper’s mini mech, Mateo and the crystal cage for a red crystal creature.
The real ‘meat’ of the build begins after choosing a path, which means that the two alternative builds do not have any common base other than the pieces used; it’s a full alternate build.
Option one: Scorpion
The main build sets us on a path for building a scorpion. This is a creature of nightmares for many people, and I must admit I’m never entire comfortable when walks across my hand; they simply carry a few too many weapons.
In the first bag we see printed eyes. Four on 1×1 cheese slopes and another 6 on the face of Arika, the main nightmare sidekick of this season. In this set Arika comes with only 2 legs, but it’s arachnid friends make up for that shortage of legs.
The build progressed to making a large head with mandibles and a crystal skull, not at all similar to Indiana Jones’ variant, which provides space for a spider. Is it healthy for a scorpion to have a spider in its skull?
The scorpion’s claws are assembled with the first two excavator buckets and they do a great job of capturing the typical shape resembling a scorpion’s pincers.
The final bucket is used as the tail’s stinger that can curve up and over, as expected for a scorpion.
Next we will address the axles on the sides, almost giving the impression we’re going to get a bunch of wheels, but such is not the case. We will build crystal legs instead.
I have to criticise the set for some artistic license here. A scorpion is a member of the Arachnid family, just like spiders, and should have 4 pairs of legs in addition to their pincers. Given Arika’s apparent affinity with arachnids, and the presence of several other spiders it makes sense to have the main creature being an arachnid, but it is missing two legs!
with that said, the scorpion look menacing and does the job representing nightmares. The set is a bit underwhelming in comparison with the huge hero sets available in this series but it does the trick.
After finishing this build there are some pieces, representing some differences for the alternative build, discussed next:
Option 2: Wasp
The second option in this set is NOT an arachnid, but an insect. A Wasp. Again this is a creature that many people not regard fondly, so it’s a good subject for a nightmare creature. There is no common part between the scorpion and the wasp, so we start from scratch. Immediately we build the torso with two large mounts (for the wings) and a head that can move, unlike the scorpion’s head.
The buckets are used along the wasp’s abdomen (tail) to give the curved expression of a wasp. The golden pieces together with the stripes on the side of the buckets really carry home the black-and-yellow stripes common with many types of wasps. The purple and lime colours distract a bit in this build.
The spiky legs underneath the wask give a proper insect-like appearance, and there are six of them, as there should be for an insect! When following through we will add six wings, which is not entirely correct for a wasp (they have four wings). I think we just need to leave the counting out of our consideration and consider the overall looks.
The wasp looks menacing in a different way, but there is something a little off. When propped up on it’s tail (which requires some extra support) the belly is shown and it’s flatness stands out as a bit of an eyesore. The grey blocks connecting to the six wing also seem out of place in this creature, it would have be nice if the thorax was a bit bigger and rounder and wings connected to that. I assume the limitations of a 2-in-1 set show through here.
Conclusions, dig it?
As you make your way through various reviews of this wave of Dreamzzz you will notice this is not my favourite or best set out of the lot. It’s a nice attempt at creating a nightmare creature, but it falls short of some of the great attempts of recent waves and, more importantly, it pales in comparison to the other creatures in this wave. The wasp is decent but not quite as polished as the scorpion, but both make for decent play sets.
I give this set an arbitrary 3.5 out of 5 praise units. Certainly not bad, but I urge you to save a little bit more money and get any of the other Dreamzzz sets; you will not regret it. If you have a particular affinity for construction or excavation equipment, then this set might be just what you wanted. A different way to celebrate a digger.
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Until Next Time,
Play Well!
If you have enjoyed this post, please feel free to share it with your friends, families and communities. You can also keep up to date with us by following The Rambling Brick on our socials: Facebook, Threads, Bluesky, Tumblr (or just sign up for our mailing list) and find some extra content on Instagram and TikTok.
We really value your feedback: please let us know what you think about the sets we review, and the articles we post. And if you wish to support the Rambling Brick, consider clicking on our affiliate links before going shopping at LEGO.com. The Rambling Brick receives a small commission, and it costs you nothing extra.
Until Next Time,
Play Well!