Today, I’d like to welcome Branko as a contributor to the Rambling Brick Team. He’s been providing some editorial assistance for a little while, and today we publish the first of his reviews. 

When LEGO recovered from their near bankruptcy, they re-focused on what LEGO does well; building different things with the same bricks. For me that was highlighted best with the animal sets, and this Wild Safari Animals box reminds me a lot of one of my old-time favourites: 4884 Wild hunters. That is a very good start.

31150 Wild Safari Animals is the largest of LEGO’s creator 3-in-1 set launched in January 2024 and will set you back AU$99.99/£59.99/$64.99/€64.99 for 780 pieces (pretty similar across currencies at time of writing). The tent-pole of this set is the tall giraffe with flamingo and tree, both of which are already great, but in addition alternate instructions are included for a lion with butterfly or a pair of gazelle. With this set you should not be wondering if you should buy it, but rather, should you buy one, two or more!

This box is filled with pieces in soft colours that are usually quite rare (Medium Orange, Nougat, Medium Nougat, Magenta, Dark Pink, Bright Pink), a nice build experience without repetition, and five models that each deserve to be seen

Isn’t there anything disappointing about this set? Surely LEGO cannot release a perfect set right at the start of the year? Read on to find out; there will be animals, there will be LEGO pieces, there will be Pilates with impressive core control and there may be a crocodile and perhaps even a tiger (in Africa?)!

I’ll look at three mains aspects of this set to determine its worth; the finished sets, the pieces provided in this set, and the experience of building these models. For a set to be considered perfect it will need to score well in all these categories, as well as a final value-for-money adjustment.

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