Johnny Thunder never leaves home without his trusty video camera, but he probably should have budgeted a little more for his transportation in this trek to find the cursed Ruby: he arrives on the scene in a mobile coffin!

While the vehicle lacks a windscreen, this set is actually packed full of playability and the three minifigures included allow for multiple scenarios to be acted out. A variety of pieces keep the build process interesting and the printed pieces make up for the relatively low number of elements at this price point.

High marks for:

• Detailed decorations on five elements, with the coffin lid taking 1st prize
• Yellow Parrot (2 included!)
• Moving play features throughout the model

Could be improved by:

• A few more pieces to help round out the car
• Brick-built door on the tomb would allow the coffin lid to be placed over the mummy
• Replace Johnny's rifle with a shovel

I had also forgotten how the Adventurers instruction books are works of art in their own way, one could make a case for obtaining/keeping the physical copy just to admire the effort that went into this aspect of the sets.

In terms of value today, 5919 is holding its own. Those yellow parrots are becoming more valuable and the use of prints never hurts. Let's hope Johnny got enough footage for his documentary before Baron Von Barron jacked his coffin car!

Great set on so many levels: beautiful parts (like the sarcophagus lid and royal headdress), good play value, nice traps, a swag of minifigs, the great Golden Mummy Case. I really liked having short sets of instructions for the constituent parts: young minds did not become distracted while building each part of the set. The tomb is great fun and the snake trap makes a good pitfall for our heroes; the car's spare tyre is cool. I had to have this set when I saw it came with the mummy case - that is a lovely way to transport your favourite Adventurer toys.

This set is one of the few sets which includes a big sarcophagus statue. It's so big that you can store the pieces of this set in this statue. This big piece also has a few stickers. These're the only stickers you need to put on. All the other pieces are printed. It also comes with some neat stuff like a little tomb which you can use to drop the snakes if you move the lever and a bigger tomb with a sarcophagus which has a skeleton in it which has a yellow hood of a mummy. I also like the car, which has a cool cockpit. I like the way LEGO used the sarcophagus as a cockpit. I also can't complain about the number of minifigs which are included in this set.

All in all, this set is a great set and I would recommend you to get this. You can find this set on eBay and BrickLink for sure. Here is the link where you can check out the full gallery I made for this set on my website: www.klokriecher.de


Videos I made of this set:

Stopmotion

Review

Speed Build

Overall 4 bricks : Got this nice set in a lot I bought of the Adventurers theme. A real nice set, very playable for the kids, nice to built and filled with great parts. The only thing stopping me from the maximum of 5 bricks is the price if you want to get it as a used or MISB set.

Building 3 bricks : not exceptionally difficult but fun to do. There are 4 things you have to built, here they are :

• 1. The car : funny oldtimer desert car, with several plates as base and solid axle plates. A sarcophage used as bodywork and a lot of accesoires to finish it, very basic building.
• 2. The snake trap : cute small building with several tile parts which results in good working trap that reveals a snake if you want to steal what I think is some kind of jewel. Nice accesoires again to finish it.
• 3. The sarcophage : the remains of the Pharao hidden in a sarcophage you mount on a hinge on a small plate with some red bricks.
• 4. The Pharao's Tomb : a nicely build small tomb on 2 baseplates with a Snake trap in front of it. Nice basic building with a lot of beams and slopes, easy to built but a great result thanks to the great regonizable parts that are used.

You can place both the Snake trap and the Sarcophage in the tomb, a very nice result in a great color setting.

Parts 5 bricks : first the container in the shape of a sarcophage in which the set comes, never loose it ! Several parts in the set are great, such as are : 2 two beige containers, 2 grey and yellow birds and the lid with mummy relief. Minifigures are great as are all small accesoires, also I need to mention the 1x16 beam with pattern and the 2 bricks with hieroglyphs.

Playability 5 bricks : Considering the result it has great playing possibilities for a young owner. A kid can play hours with just the content of this medium sized set, very good.

Value 3 bricks : The last known new price you see here is converted to Euro's €15,16 which was a very good price then. If you look on Bricklink the average price asked is now some €35,00 which is a bit much I think for a set this size. On the other side if complete with the container a collector maybe will give it, complete it will probably increase in value. Without container it is defenitly worth considerably less.

The Adventurers theme is in my opinion one of the finest themes from the late 90s. It had a broad range of sets, covering both structures (tombs, statues, temples etc) and a variety of vehicle builds. This set is however one of the weakest of the Desert sets, comprising a number of insubstantial small builds, which fail to provide either a particularly pleasing build or play experience overall.

Box/Instructions

It should first be noted that the large plastic mummy case (which looks suitably Lego like) incorporated into this set is one of the key draws to why one would purchase it. The mummy is set into a cardboard box, which displays the primary builds on the front and secondary build ideas on the reverse.The instructions are nicely printed, with a background papyrus look. The first two pages feature the set in 'action.'

Parts

The second key draw to getting this set would be the variety of parts on offer, which are a must for any egyptian moc. The printed sarcophagus lid and the columns printed with hieroglyphs are beautifully done, with plenty of other specialised pieces (mummy headdress, film camera, snakes etc) in addition.

Minifigures

The selection of minifigures for this set is relatively weak. The two key characters of theme are included with a scary skeletal mummy as well, but given that they're virtually in every set, this isn't much of a bonus. Putting this aside, the actual minifigures are delightfully characterful, with excellent printing and facial expressions, the bad guy's [or whoever he is, the names of the villains weren't very consistent with this theme] pith helmet is a rather cute element.

The build

The build itself is rather lacklustre, taking around 10minutes for the three seperate component builds. The small car is constructed first followed by .... well whatever that square objects supposed to be; altar, coffin, tomb, monument... who knows? Also the addition of a translucent green cone to the mechanism on this 'trap' is quite an odd choice colour wise. Lastly the tomb which comprises the 'main' build. The building techniques involved are simple, so at least it is accessible to most ages.

The completed model

Whether child, teen, or adult, let's face it this model isn't staying built for long. The play features are underwhelming; the black box thing ejects a snake, trap door lifts up to reveal... another snake and the coffin rises on a hinge. All of these comprising elements could and were most likely immediately used better for the (x)fols own builds. The lack of sides and roof to the tomb also make it generally point to the lack of pieces in the set overall. It just looks rather unfleshed out.

Overall opinion

Unless you're a completionist for this theme, I'd generally avoid this set. The golden mummy case is a nice addition but doesn't save the set from being a disappointment. The next wave of the adventurers theme really demonstrated how a carry case could be incorporated, the truly excellent #5956 Expedition Balloon. For the same price point when this came out, one could have bought the #2879 #5909 Desert Expedition which boasts more minifigures and two great vehicles, whilst other sets in the series did the whole tomb thing far better; #5958 comes to mind. Top tip: Best picked up second hand for the parts/case or just avoided like a curse.