With a name derived from the Latin for ‘king of the tyrant lizards’, you’d be forgiven for thinking there was no way a Tyrannosaurus Rex could ever be described as cute. Well, the latest LEGO Jurassic World set – 76967 Little Eatie: T. Rex – is here to challenge that view! With 317 pieces, this little gal depicts the dinosaur of the same name from the Jurassic World: Camp Cretaceous animated series. This successor to this year’s 76962 Baby Bumpy: Ankylosaur – from the same show – will hit shelves from January 1, and you can pre-order it now for US $24.99 | CAN $29.99 | UK £19.99. You might also be able to find it on sites like eBay or Amazon after the full release date.
The LEGO Group provided The Brothers Brick with an early copy of this set for review. Providing TBB with products for review guarantees neither coverage nor positive reviews.
The box and contents
On the box we have the same ‘eggshells not included’ gag that adorned Bumpy’s box. Little Eatie here also comes with a snack of her own, but T. Rexes being carnivores, this time it’s a hefty cut of meat.
Four numbered plastic bags hold the parts within. Alongside them, an instruction booklet with Eatie on a simple white background.
The build
The first bag of parts is significantly less dense than the other three, as its parts only make up the joint of meat. There is an interesting pair of parts in here though! Although at first glance you could confuse these for a 1x1x1 1/3 arch, what you see in the foreground here is actually a truncated version, being a plate shorter.
At this point I will tip my hat towards our friends over at New Elementary, who speculated this part’s possible existence a few weeks ago. As you might expect, they were spot on! And in the time it took you to read that sentence, we’ve assembled the small rock that Eatie’s meal will sit in.
After that little appetiser, we can get into the real meat of this set. And no doubt the parts monkeys among you will be glad to see a bunch of parts appear for the first time in dark orange as we open up bag 2.
Those 2×2 brackets in particular will get used a lot – there are 11 in this set alone. The first batch is used almost straight away, wrapping around ball joint elements of different sizes.
This will form the core of Little Eatie’s body. The curved slopes attach to the above to give everything a little more shape.
We’re not done with this bag of bits though, as the next section to go together is the left leg. A fixed knee joint forms, well, the knee, and is similarly covered up with curved slopes.
Her outsize big feet are next, and since the whole thing is built on its side, a few neat tricks with brackets are used to keep everything nice and secure. Baby Bumpy’s toes were very easy to knock off during play – I doubt there’s much danger of that happening here!
That’s the end of bag 2, so balance everything carefully while we build the other leg starting in bag 3. With both finally attached, we have a rather comical-looking walker.
Let’s make it look at least a little bit more dinosaur-like. First up: the stubby arms that T. Rexes are so infamous for. These use simple Mixel ball joints for articulation.
Now reader, I’ve been building LEGO for nigh on a quarter-century – and I didn’t realise until building the tail that the two curved slope elements at the tail matched up in this way. How did I never notice that?!
Anyway, there’s only one thing left to make now…
And that’s Little Eatie’s head. It starts off in similar fashion to the body with a core of brackets and inverted brackets. This time, though, we have a Technic axle with a ball joint that will be crucial for this set’s main play feature.
Another tower of brackets forms the snout, and we have two more of the new truncated arch piece in dark orange.
With a few plates now locking everything together, we can make the lower jaw to match the upper one we’ve now completed. This hangs loosely on to a pair of dark bluish gray trailer plates.
Why does it hang loose? So that when you press down on the ball joint from earlier, you can make Little Eatie bite!
If it looks like a great fidget toy – it is. I spent many idle moments looking for parts actuating this mechanism! But before we get distracted, we have a dinosaur to finish making. A series of slopes give some shape to the head, and make the lower jaw a bit more secure. The eyes are an identical print to Baby Bumpy’s, but this time on yellow rather than brown round tiles.
The final step is to place some more curved slopes on the crown of her head – and once we attach this to the rest of the body, we’re done.
The finished build
This is definitely more of a caricature of a dinosaur than an accurate model, but the design really works. Isn’t she cute?!
Those outsize proportions do have function, though. For one, those enormous feet give Eatie a very solid base to balance on, which is great for play.
While the tan/orange/dark orange colour scheme looks great, it’s not terribly accurate either. The Jurassic Park Wiki page describes her as having “skin brown in colour” – OK, dark orange is close enough – with “black-gray stripes […] along the dorsal region of her body”. Said stripes are nowhere to be seen, and Little Eatie isn’t especially recognisable as a result.
Still, it gets the point across, I suppose. I didn’t take much notice anyway – I was too busy playing with the biting maw! It’s simple, but it’s so much fun.
What that loose-hanging jaw does mean is that it isn’t particularly easy for our li’l dino to hold on to her meal. She can do it, but the only way I really found that worked was the orientation suggested on the back of the box. I guess the teeth need to lock in to the grooved bricks to stop it falling out.
Conclusion and recommendation
I felt that Baby Bumpy was a winner, and LEGO have definitely gone 2 for 2 on their cute dinosaur models. In fact – Little Eatie might even be a better bet than her herbivore counterpart! They’re the same price with a similar number of pieces, and they both have parts in unusual colours. But the posability and chomping jaw make this diminutive dino a lot more fun to pose and play with. There are some significant liberties taken with the design, sure, but it doesn’t take away from how much personality Little Eatie has. It’s a terrific, tiny T. Rex!
LEGO Jurassic World 76967 Little Eatie: T. Rex contains 317 parts, and will retail for US $24.99 | CAN $29.99 | UK £19.99. Pre-orders are open now, and shipping starts when general availability does on January 1, 2025. It may also be available from third-party sellers such as eBay or Amazon.
The LEGO Group provided The Brothers Brick with an early copy of this set for review. Providing TBB with products for review guarantees neither coverage nor positive reviews.
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