Andy's Anachronisms

LEGO Time Cruisers Series

"Join the adventures of Dr. Cyber and his sidekick Tim as they travel through time in their wacky time machines. Where will they go next - Space, Aquazone, Pirates, Castle? With building sets from the LEGO SYSTEM Time Cruisers Collection only you the LEGO MANIAC, can guide these travellers through their next adventure in time."

Those wacky people at LEGO are always coming out with new adventure plays sets, but who knows what they were smoking when they came up with the Time Cruisers Series in 1996. The Time Cruisers series consists of such awe inspiring sets as Hypno Cruiser, Flying Time Vessel and Mystic Mountain Time Lab. I recently bought myself the Flying Time Vessel while it was on sale at a local department store. It looked as if they were in the process of phasing the series out in favour of the newest Nija Adventure Set (although the figures are more Samauri-like than Nija, but I digress).

It would appear the inspiration for the Time Cruisers series was little more than a marketing ploy designed to tie together the diverse range of sets. The Flying Time Vessel appears as if its sole design criteria was that it had to consist of existing pieces manufactured from other sets.

As you can see from the above graphic the Flying Time Vessel consists of the hull and rigging of one of the pirate ship sets, combined with pieces from space adventure set. A product of a mad scientist, with out a doubt.

The Time Cruisers series was followed up in 1997 with Time Twisters. Apparently Dr. Cyber and Tim needed some evil baddies to chase through time. The Time Twisters series features such twisted pieces as theTwisted Time Train, Whirling Time Warp, and theTime Tunnelator.

If you want to see images of these LEGO series or just want to see what's kind of things LEGO has been turning out recently you can try these sites.

LEGO Group Offical WWW Site
The offical LEGO site, while nice and professional looking leaves something to be desired. There are no histories of the pieces, nor descriptions of the sets. An on-line catalog does provide you with a lot of nice pictures to look at.

Fibblesnork LEGO Guide
As for fan sites, the best I found out there was this site run by Tod Lehman a certifiable LEGO MANIAC. Good pictures, some other information on collecting LEGO, but again lacking when it comes to the history of the pieces.

Catch you later, I'm off to play with Dr. Cyber and Tim.


Return to Leftovers Index

Return to Andy's Anachronisms Home