The problem with licenses these days is that you don't get good knockoffs in the form of Adventurers subthemes.

Yep, that's right. Dino Island is just a knockoff of The Lost World: Jurassic Park, change my mind.

Doesn't mean it's not still cool though, so don't mistake me, I still like it.

I absolutely wish LEGO would bring back adventure!

I love Adventurers so much!

Woah, I've never seen this one before!

Hmm, it's not all perfect, though - that boat gives me late 90s/early 2000s Lego vibes...

^ While Adventurers *mostly* avoided the trappings of the rest of Lego's themes during the late 90s ... absolutely, I feel, that "Dino Island" suffered from a bit of juniorisation. There were a lot of unnecessarily-block builds featuring bricks piled on top of each other.

Having said that, "Dino Island" was set on an island that had obviously been destroyed in some past calamity, and all the structures were in various stages of ruin and decay, so here, it kind of worked.

But you could kind of see it, creeping in on the edges.

These dinosaurs may not be as accurate, but uh, personally, I like them better than the current molds. They look more like LEGO.

la-la-lore!!

In the second year of Adventurers the world has discovered a new and far away magical land, an island inhabited entirely by dinosaurs! However the natural wonder has drawn the attention of the sinister lord Sam Von Baron. Von Baron has joined forces with his own viscous daughter Alexis Sinister and master-of-disguise Mr. Cunningham. Together the trio of villains plan on kidnapping the dinosaurs for their own nefarious means.

Our team of brave Adventures, now with the help of an old (business wise) but young (age wise) friend Mike, have set out to save the dinosaurs from Von Baron and his fiends, doing a little veterinary work on the side when possible.

Eventually the crooks were driven off the island and the heroes left, but it's legacy was not forgotten. When Hypaxxus-8's plans to take over the Earth were thwarted by the ADU he brought any army of dinosaurs to the planet to destroy it as plan B. Johnny Thunder's son (or grandson?) Josh Thunder stepped up to the plate and used the lessons his father taught him to capture these creatures before they destroyed the mainland and either return them to Dino Island or Hypaxxus' portal.

I wonder if that ship can be hijacked by one of those dinosaurs, who’ll then go on a small trip to San Francisco...

My brother and I played LEGO Racers 2 on my old laptop long after it was considered an obsolete game. It has a campaign on Dino island and many of the official sets are represented in the game, I'm pretty sure that blue car was on option once free play was unlocked. It really does wonders for these sets once you've seen them brought to life, even if it was in a 2001 computer game cut-scene.

Unique:
2622 8x10 boat prow in light grey x2

Rare:
2622 8x10 boat prow in white x1
4445 2x8 slope 45 degrees in light grey x6
30157 2x4 plate with pins in brown x6
30181 4x10 brick with cut corner in light grey x2
30184 6x26 trailer base in light grey x1
30456 dino tail in green x1
30456 dino tail in dark grey x1
30457 dino T-rex body in green x1
30459 dino T-rex head in green x1
30460 dino Triceratops head in dark grey x1
30461 dino Triceratops upper body in dark grey x1
30462 dino Triceratops lower boy in light grey x1

The dude standing on the back of the trailer must be ridiculously strong, holding up that gate/fence thingy.

@brickengineeringdude said:
"The dude standing on the back of the trailer must be ridiculously strong, holding up that gate/fence thingy."

Pffffttt... Johnny Thunder is pulling the whole cargo ship ashore by himself. With one hand.

50 bucks for two and half dinosaurs, three vehicles and 5 minifigures? This set sounds like it was a complete deal. You're lucky if you get half that for double the price out of Jurassic World.

As much as I love Adventurers as a theme, Dino Island is easily its weakest subtheme. With juniorized and frankly not that interesting builds, this subtheme was clearly banking mainly on the dinosaurs selling it.

And as far as the dinosaurs themselves go, they look kind of dated to me. Sure, they've got a certain charm to them, but they are ridiculously small and lack posability. The current Dino molds, while less LEGO-like, do a much better job not just at looking more realistic, but also being a lot more playable.

Yeah, Dino Island came at that awkward time (that boat build is a shockingly simple build), but 5920 and 5935 were both great vehicle sets with some good parts and building techniques.

@GSR_MataNui said:
"Von Baron has joined forces with his own viscous daughter Alexis Sinister"
I thought she was his sister? At least, that was what the Lego World Club magazine in the UK said; or was that one of those things that varied region-to-region, too, like the character names did?

For that matter, Alexia / Alexis seems to have had a serious identity crisis in any case, because the UK Lego Adventures magazines misidentified her as Pippin Reed in their comics and had her working alongside Johnny and co. - this despite the fact that Pippin herself appears in the sets of the Dino Island line! Someone seems to have got a little confused...

Not much to say about the set as a whole here, other than that I crashed into the truck *several* times in Lego Racers 2, given where it was positioned on the Dino Island map. And also that this set name would be reused several years later for Jurassic World set 75933. Um... all other considerations aside, that one *might* be a little more effective at transporting the T-Rex safely than this one looks!

...also does anyone else wonder how did they managed to get that triceratops onto the boat in the first place?

@ThatBionicleGuy said: "...also does anyone else wonder how did they managed to get that triceratops onto the boat in the first place?"

They asked it politely.

A meteor killed the dinosaurs. Good manners did not.