Cue the Lion King : “Nants ingonyama bagithi baba / Sithi uhhmm ingonyama”, because there is indeed a lion! The mid-sized episode of ‘Contintents : Creator 3-in-1 animals‘ brings us a Lion. A Majestic Lion, apparently, and four of them at that!

I really liked the continent themed sets in this wave of Creator 3-in-1 animals, but this feels like a bit of a cop-out. Let’s do three African animals, like a lion. ‘Oh the secondary build can then be… another lion!’. But wait, ‘as a third build we could include 2 lions!’. Truth be told, it’s on the box, you get lions, and if you buy a set of three you can make a whole family. But does this set actually provide the same value as other 3-in-1 builds, or are the four lions too similar to keep us entertained?

LEGO gifted us this ‘Creator 31386 Wild Animals Majestic Lion‘ of 839 pieces retailing for AU$109.99,£59.99, $69.99, €64.99 to find out what’s lion about, so why don’t you join us and read on as we explore what this set has to offer.

Box

The front of the box reminds me a bit of the Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer’s Leo the Lion with its majestic low-angle view of a roaring male lion. No doubt, this is indeed a majestic lion. I guess this is why the word ingonyama in Zulu means lion as well as a reference to royalty (or a king). The rear and side of the box almost show a combination of the four highly varied builds: a family of lions.

Inside the box are 7 bags, 3 booklets and no stickers. The lion and lioness appear extremely similar, apart from the manes, so it’s intriguing why the booklets for both are so similar. Is there no common base between the two with just the manes added? We will find out soon!

Parts

The seven bags laid out show a fully expected smattering of tan and dark tan pieces, with a bit of green at the end for scenery. Nothing too shocking here, but overall a nice parts pack if you want to stock up on some tan.

Treatise on a Comparison of Lions

From little lions, bit lions grow, so we’ll start looking at these lions from the small end with the pair of lion cubs.The build starts with half a log, showcasing some nice off-grid construction.

Next up are the cubs. The start is promising with a cute little heart in each and an upside-down clamping technique so that, strictly speaking, the chest is not actually connected to the back on these animals. Nifty.

And I say animals, yes these two cubs are entirely identical. There is a 2x in the picture of the cubs at the start of the instructions, so don’t expect to get any variation between the two.

At the end of the line we get some cute little cubs with very little ability to be posed. Due to their fullfy chest they cannot move their heads down so they always appear to be looking up.

Their little face is cute, and very reminiscent of the lion alternative build from the 31150 Safari Animals a few years ago. Note how large these cubs are in comparison with the full lion from that set!

Also note the large number of parts left after building these cubs. It feels like there was more potential.

Moving on the mamma lion shows a different experience, again she has a heart, and the body is very similar to the grey wolf (or other similar animals)

a significant difference appears on the rear legs; they actually have a heel joint! The front legs have an elegant little bend in the elbow but it is fixed in position.

and then appears a nose… I like how the printed eyse give the lioness a very surprised look, immediately followed by a disgruntled one by adding eyebrows. We will just ignore that I did the upper lip a bit wrong in these pictures.

The head gets bulked out a bit and cute ears added and finally we are left with a lioness!

She is adorable and elegant, and quite posable, despite limited range of movement of all limbs.

As expected from the comparison with the cubs, she is a bit oversized compared to the earlier LEGO rendition of a creator lion.

At this point I fully expected to have exhausted the creativity this set had to offer, bar the mane on the lion. After all, isn’t that the whole difference between a lion and lioness? the mane?

So for the next part I specifically looked how different the construction really is.

Pretty much the entire torso needs to be taken apart to make a slight longer variant with some extra brown near the front. The overall structure of the torso is very similar, so it doesn’t really feel like a new or alternate build, but rather a strong feeling of deja-vu. To clarify this point look at the rear legs below; the left is the lion and the right is the lioness.

and the resulting legs , lioness above lion below:

You need to look quite carefully to see the difference; a different colour piece here or there but overall the build is extremely similar, by rounding even identical, so I felt a bit robbed.

The front legs are even more frustrating. Find the differences! On this side you can only see 1, which is the colour of the flowers used inside the legs. Yes. Colour. Of. The. Flower. This really feels like making it different just for the purpose of making it different and that annoys me, I can just feel my praise fizzling away.

I must admit that the resulting legs and torso do result in a more bulky appearance of the lion, especially when the heard and manes are added. (the head, incidentally again being nearly identical for the front part).

Seeing this quite impressive beast appear makes the frustrations a bit milder, especially when comparing to ‘the old one’.

Have a look at the difference between the boy and girl lion and notice there are some subtle differences between the two, not just the manes. Also the water is different!

It’s worth noting that the lion is quite a bit larger than the grey wolf we reviewed recently, despite the wolf’s best efforts to hide it. I cannot help unsee that the lion appears the be smiling at me in these photos, such a cute little boy!

This set should have been called ‘The Majestic Lion Family’, because if you buy 3 sets you can build a whole family. Unfortunately LEGO gifted one set for review so I have not been able to show you that combination.

It’s worth noting that the wolf’s excitement seems to have been infectious. I have found a number of these animals in varying positions recently, clearly they are having a good time.

To lion, or not to lion?

I cannot wholeheartedly recommend this set. The adult lions are great and (at AU$109.99,£59.99, $69.99, €64.99 for 839 pieces) well worth the price of admission, but with a 3-in-1 set I expected a bit more variation. On the flipside I do like that the three variants can be combined for a lion family so you can really lean in on your lion fandom if you want. This leaves me to give this set either 3 or 4 arbitrary praise units depending on where I look, so let’s settle on 3.5. The bar for Creator 3-in-1 is just too high.

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Until Next Time,

Play Well!