LEGO Jurassic World dinosaurs must be brick-built

79674 Brick-Built Mosasaurus Boat Mission is proof of concept that LEGO Jurassic World needs to embrace brick-built dinosaurs or risk extinction.

Imagine a world of LEGO Jurassic World sets that you could afford; a land where LEGO dinosaurs of all species could roam wild within your collection. Well, the latest range of LEGO Jurassic World sets hints towards such a dream one day becoming reality.

What are we talking about? It’s no secret over the now 10-year history of LEGO Jurassic World as a theme that its sets are some of the most expensive, when it comes to the bare bones of the number of parts you get for the amount of money you spend.

Whilst using a price-per-piece ratio as a marker of LEGO set value is not always the most reliable or accurate tool, it can more broadly give an indication as to bang-for-buck. In the case of Jurassic World – and more specifically the many playset/minifigure-scale sets that it releases – some of the worst ratios of recent years have come in this theme. As a result, this is broadly speaking a theme that has – increasingly so in the past few years in particular – seen LEGO fans charged the most money for the least amount of LEGO in return.

That has always been put down to one thing – the dinosaurs. Following on from 2005’s Dino Attack/Dino 2010 theme and 2012’s Dino theme, Jurassic World has largely included large, plastic, printed moulded designs for its dinosaurs. Producing large pieces of plastic has always been positioned as more expensive for the LEGO Group.

The Creator 3-in-1 theme has explored brick-built versions of various creatures from millions of years ago, as well as a few outliers within the Jurassic World theme venturing into similar territory (75936 Jurassic Park: T. rex Rampage from 2019, 76956 T. rex Breakout from 2022, and this year’s 76968 Dinosaur Fossils: Tyrannosaurus rex, to name the most notable examples). However, most of what we’ve seen from Universal’s movie tie-in sets have been large designs made up of just a handful of pieces respectively for the body, legs, neck, tail and head, sometimes combined into single, even larger moulds too.

And those large, moulded and printed parts have been seen as the main reason for relatively higher-priced LEGO sets over the past decade. It should be said that not every Jurassic Word playset has offered the absolute worst value, but if you list out every set from the theme and sort by highest price-per-piece there is a general, worsening trend that places some of the very earliest sets near the bottom (offering best value) and most of the sets from the past three of four years towards the higher end of the list.

That cannot be sustainable, particularly in the global economic climate of the past few years that sees us all ever increasingly aware of the cost of everything, let alone this hobby.

But, there may be a solution, because if you glance down at the very bottom of the list of Jurassic World sets sorted by price-per-piece ratio, representing the cheapest, best-value sets are every single Jurassic World set that doesn’t include a moulded dinosaur. Every single one.

Where sets like the just-retired 76944 T. rex Dinosaur Breakout have a staggering 32.1p cost per piece, and 2021’s 76942 Baryonyx Dinosaur Boat Escape is one of many that register above a cost of 20p per piece, including this year’s 76975 T. rex River Escape at 22.6p per piece, the aforementioned trio of 75936, 76956 and 76968 are all priced under 7.5p per piece. They are joined by the Fossils and Baby Dinosaur collections, including two from this summer – 79670 Baby Dinosaur Dolores: Aquilops and, most notably, 79674 Brick-Built Mosasaurus Boat Mission.

Note the set name there. 79674 Brick-Built Mosasaurus Boat Mission. How often do you see the LEGO Group outright naming a set ‘brick-built’? For one thing, by definition, all LEGO sets are brick-built. Yet, the LEGO Jurassic World team knows that 79674 stands out for the very reason that its dinosaur is built out of bricks, rather than being made out of a combination of moulded parts. And that distinction is noteworthy – just as much as the price is, or more specifically, the value.

With no large, plastic-moulded dinosaur included, 79674 Brick-Built Mosasaurus Boat Mission comes in at is 6.4p per piece. For value and context, that places the set as much, much cheaper than almost all other LEGO Jurassic World sets released so far and very competitive with a lot of other LEGO sets available in 2025, even including unlicensed ones. For £54.99 / $59.99 / €59.99, this set contains 858 pieces.

By contrast, 76944 T. rex Dinosaur Breakout’s 32.1p price per piece is the result of a tiny 140-piece set being priced at £44.99 / $49.99 / €49.99. 76942 Baryonyx Dinosaur Boat Escape offered 308 pieces for £69.99 / $79.99 / €79.99. And for higher piece-count sets? 75941 Indominus rex vs. Ankylosaurus from 2020 offered 537 pieces for £89.99 / $99.99 / €99.99 (16.8p per piece). That included two dinosaurs, as did 2023’s 76961 Visitor Centre: T. rex & Raptor Attack which offered 693 pieces for £114.99 / $129.99 / €129.99 (16.6p per piece).

Bigger Jurassic World sets have tended to offer slightly better value, but the trade-off is still apparent and you cannot let proportional value fool you. Both 75941 and 76961 sit as some of the higher-priced sets within their respective collections released, but their piece-counts are actually closer in comparison to mid-range sets from practically any other theme in those same years.

The same can be said for the generally excellent (and unpronounceable) 76949 Giganotosaurus & Therizinosaurus Attack, which gave us 810 pieces but at a cost of £119.99 / $139.99 / €139.99 (14.8p per piece).

Over the years, whether you have kept it small, ventured into the mid-range of sets, or been able to pick up one of the most expensive releases from a Jurassic World wave of sets, you will have picked up something with a relatively limited piece count for the money. And with fewer parts to play with, whatever else is built within that set ends up smaller than you would have hoped, or that could otherwise have been possible if not for the chonky plastic dinos.

The better value that 79674 Brick-Built Mosasaurus Boat Mission offers stands as the clearest proof of this yet, whilst also representing a departure from the usual creative path for the theme and for the remaining minifigure-scale sets in the summer 2025 Jurassic World Rebirth range have taken. For 79674’s price of £54.99 / $59.99 / €59.99 and 858 pieces, you get a mid-size vehicle (a boat), two exclusive minifigures and a large dinosaur, one so big that it is comparable in size to the largest moulded plastic dinosaurs we’ve ever had in the range.

Indeed, the Mosasaurus here dwarfs the likes of the LEGO T. rex, Baryonyx and Spinosaurus and is best comparable in length with the likes of the Brachiosaurus from 2023’s 76960 Brachiosaurus Discovery, the Indominus Rex from 2015’s 75919 Indominus Rex Breakout and this year’s Titanosaurus from 79673 Raptor & Titanosaurus Tracking Mission.

At the same time, the design of the Mosasaurus is as credible and authentic as any of the other plastic moulded dinosaurs that come in the 2025 collection, and arguably offers more posability and playability than any of those static counterparts, as well as a more colourful and varied design through its entire body and, an actual LEGO building experience of a minifigure-scale-ish dinosaur in a minifigure-based Jurassic World set, which we’ve only had once before with the pricier adult-orientated 76956 T. rex Breakout.

Bringing the brick-built dinosaur concept into the younger age-targeted, play-orientated LEGO Jurassic World sets here marks a significant departure from what the last 10 years of theme has otherwise established, and opens up a world of possibilities moving forward. The challenge comes in the LEGO Jurassic World team being able to apply the brick-built approach to the long list of other dinosaurs we’d all want to see, whilst still delivering the same level of quality, authenticity and playability in design that we see in the Mosasaurus here.

But if the choice is between sets like 79674 Brick-Built Mosasaurus Boat Mission that give us 858 pieces for £54.99 / $59.99 / €59.99, or sets like 79675 T. rex River Escape that give us 199 pieces for £44.99 / $49.99 / €49.99 – and that is the choice as part of this summer’s Jurassic World Rebirth range – we know which we’d prefer every single time.

Over the 10-year course of LEGO Jurassic World, if you wanted a LEGO Tyrannosaurus rex, Velociraptor or Triceratops, you faced forking out either a very high price and/or accepting not receiving much else at all in the set you got them in. If 79674 Brick-Built Mosasaurus Boat Mission is a sign of how much a LEGO Jurassic World set can cost without a moulded dinosaur, though, then the dream of a world full of LEGO dinosaurs in your collection could be one step closer to reality.

This LEGO set was provided by the LEGO Group for review purposes.

Support the work that Brick Fanatics does by purchasing your LEGO via one of our affiliate links – thank you.