LEGO Sonic the Hedgehog 76992 Amy’s Animal Rescue Island review

Can a LEGO Sonic the Hedgehog set without Sonic the Hedgehog stand on its own two feet? That’s the question 76992 Amy’s Animal Rescue Island aims to answer, pulling away from speed in favour of play.

To zip straight to the point: this is actually one of the strongest sets in the new-for-August-2023 LEGO Sonic the Hedgehog range, as with less of a focus on speed and more emphasis on environment and roleplay, 76992 Amy’s Animal Rescue Island offers a lot more avenues for creativity as a plaything.

— LEGO Sonic the Hedgehog 76992 Amy’s Animal Rescue Island set details —

Theme: LEGO Sonic the Hedgehog Set name: 76992 Amy’s Animal Rescue Island Release: August 1, 2023

Price: £46.99 / $49.99 / €52.99 Pieces: 388 Minifigures: 2

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— Where to buy LEGO Sonic the Hedgehog 76992 Amy’s Animal Rescue Island —

LEGO Sonic the Hedgehog 76992 Amy’s Animal Rescue Island will be available from August 1, 2023 from LEGO.com, LEGO Stores, and third-party retailers. Check back after the set has released for the best deals.

— LEGO Sonic the Hedgehog 76992 Amy’s Animal Rescue Island build —

With a personality as big as Sonic at its forefront, there’s rarely an opportunity for the supporting characters in the Sonic the Hedgehog franchise to get a moment in the limelight without being overshadowed. 76992 Amy’s Animal Rescue Island is the only LEGO Sonic the Hedgehog set that doesn’t include a Sonic minifigure, but this isn’t a drawback, as a focus on Sonic’s friends leads to an incredibly inventive set that’s filled with play potential.

To a certain degree, the LEGO Sonic the Hedgehog range is limited by its goal of recreating the experience of playing a Sonic game. Thankfully, unlike a certain other LEGO incarnation of a popular video game franchise that will remain nameless, the LEGO Sonic sets all offer a certain amount of roleplay to go with its speed spheres.

In the case of 76992 Amy’s Animal Rescue Island, with no Sonic to rush around, there’s an opportunity to go slow and smell the roses. Where other LEGO Sonic sets borrow liberally from the LEGO Stuntz subtheme, 76992 Amy’s Animal Rescue Island instead feels like a LEGO Friends set. There are cute animals to feed, brush, and put to bed, and there’s a cocktail bar and beach, complete with sandcastle.

The LEGO Group has worked to shed the image that LEGO Friends is only for girls, but there is likely a strong crossover between the kinds of Sonic fans who buy Amy Rose merchandise and the kinds of LEGO fans who buy Friends sets. Borrowing from the Friends range feels particularly appropriate given Amy’s traditional role in Sonic lore as the nurturer, the character with the biggest heart, who does the dirty work of actually caring for those around her when Sonic is too impatient to stay still once his animal pals have been freed.

Judging this as a Friends-adjacent set, it is a strong offering. 76992 Amy’s Animal Rescue Island is filled with nooks and crannies to explore, hidden doors for characters to slip through, play areas for various characters, and secrets to uncover. One part of the set is even reminiscent of the first wave of LEGO Elves sets, with a magical artefact to be discovered by breaking apart the ground.

76992 Amy’s Animal Rescue Island is a reminder that recreating video games in LEGO form doesn’t always need to be an accurate translation of gameplay. The set does bear some resemblance to the Chao Garden from Sonic’s Dreamcast games, but more than anything, this is an exercise in worldbuilding, inviting the builder to imagine what it must actually be like to live in Sonic’s world when there’s no particular robot apocalypse to prevent.

— LEGO Sonic the Hedgehog 76992 Amy’s Animal Rescue Island characters —

There are two minifigures in 76992 Amy’s Animal Rescue Island, along with one brick-built badnik and a trio of smaller animals.

Amy is the star of the show this time around, with a minifigure that is identical to the one included in 76994 Sonic’s Green Hill Zone Loop Challenge (albeit with slightly different brick-built hammers in each set).

The minifigure is not perfect – her skirt piece isn’t accurate to her in-game appearance and her head is a bit too large – but she’s fairly typical of the many other LEGO adaptations of cartoon figures in recent years.

The Tails minifigure has the same strengths and weaknesses as Amy. His two tails are rendered as a single, rather large element, but it doesn’t get in the way as much in this set as it does in his other LEGO set (76991 Tails’ Workshop and Tornado Plane) simply because he’s not meant to fly a plane here.

Accompanying Tails and Amy are three small animals: a pink Flicky, Johnny Lightfoot and Porker Lewis. Fans of the UK’s Sonic the Comic will be particularly pleased to see Johnny and Porker in the same set, while uber fans may be disappointed to note that pink Flickies in Sonic 3D Blast have their head feathers gathered into pigtails. Strict accuracy to 30 years of Sonic lore was always going to be a big ask. Of the three animals, Porker Lewis is the most inventive, as he’s repurposed from a mould originally designed for a puppy element.

The set also includes one of the most famous badniks from Doctor Robotnik’s army of robots. Crabmeat is a familiar sight to anyone who’s spent time in Green Hill Zone, although this version of the robot looks more like Shellcracker from Sonic 2’s Metropolis Zone. Again, Sonic lore is hard to nail, but only truly nerdy Sonic fans will notice.

— LEGO Sonic the Hedgehog 76992 Amy’s Animal Rescue Island price —

Priced at £46.99 in the UK, $49.99 in the US and €52.99 in the EU, 76992 Amy’s Animal Rescue Island is right in the middle of the Sonic theme’s price range. While this is by no means the cheapest set of the lot, its focus on environment and roleplay over the gimmicks of the speed sphere mean that there’s a few more bricks in the set than would be possible at this price point otherwise.

— LEGO Sonic the Hedgehog 76992 Amy’s Animal Rescue Island pictures —

— LEGO Sonic the Hedgehog 76992 Amy’s Animal Rescue Island pros and cons —

Despite (or, indeed, because of) the lack of a Sonic the Hedgehog minifigure, 76992 Amy’s Animal Rescue Island has a lot to offer. A lack of focus on speed and stunts means that the set instead feels like a LEGO Friends set, and includes a lot of neat play features that will encourage creativity and roleplay. It’s easy to recommend this for Sonic the Hedgehog fans who have a soft spot for Amy Rose and her particular brand of heroism.

This set was provided for review by the LEGO Group.

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— Alternatives to LEGO Sonic the Hedgehog 76992 Amy’s Animal Rescue Island Base —

A good alternative to 76992 Amy’s Animal Rescue Island that isn’t a LEGO Sonic the Hedgehog set would be the LEGO Friends set 41736 Sea Rescue Center, which features several cute sea animals including otters, a seahorse and a turtle, but no anthropomorphic foxes with too many tails, and no evil robots.

Another option for anyone looking for a set about an iconic video game heroine would be 71403 Adventures with Peach from the LEGO Super Mario range. The LEGO Peach character is battery-operated and interactive, although the set does lack the level of detail and imaginative play that’s present in 76992 Amy’s Animal Rescue Island.

— LEGO Sonic the Hedgehog 76992 Amy’s Animal Rescue Island Base FAQs —