With the second wave of Time Cruisers arriving in 1997, Lego decided to focus on the villains of the piece: the Time Twisters. I don’t know what they did, probably twisted time or something, but they had three vehicles and the Whirling Time Warper was the middle child of the three – not as big as the Twisted Time Train but not as small as the Time Tunnelator.

And while Time Cruisers had already been pretty weird from the get-go, the Time Twister sets just take it further and with this vehicle, the Whirling Time Warper, they really just take the gloves off and go full on bizarro.

The Time Cruisers sets are just so strange and nothing that came before or after has ever looked like this. Like what was going on at Lego when this was though up? Looking at these sets you can almost see and hear the designers at Lego desperately trying to figure out how to make all these parts work - surrounded by large panels, parts and pieces, late at night, stressed out at impending deadlines:

“I think we should make another time machine” says the first Lego designer.

“Okay, sure, where do we start?” says the second Lego designer and the first designer, looking around going “Ummm” and “Ahhh”, trying to pretend they had the answer the whole time, spies the big white Belville Bathtub.

“Bathtub. Uhhh...Time machine bathtub. ”

Building Experience

So the whole build for the Whirling Time Warper is built around a Lego Belville bathtub. I wouldn’t have thought to use that ever but it’s kind of clever. There’s an assortment of bizarre pieces in here but overall, it’s a pretty simple build. You have some small sub-builds for the arms/pistons of the Time Warper with the dragon head crossbow things, and the blue cylinder thing, but it’s mainly a typical bottom to top build. The colour scheme of the Time Twisters with their blue and black works so much better than the yellow, light grey and whatever else of the Time Cruisers.

There are some fiddly moments though. A lot of the Time Cruisers sets have mechanisms using elastic bands, friction, gears, levers and I found that the Whirling Time Warper’s mechanism to get the dragon wing pistons to stay on was a bit fiddly. Same goes for the bobbing skeleton heads, they bob based on the pistoning movement of the wing things that piston based on the movement of the wheels. The whole set really works together so you just need to take your time to make sure the tolerances are right and that every piece has room to move. If you're buying this set for a kid, maybe just help them out with the elastic bands and getting it all set up correctly as it's fiddly for an adult at times.

Now I’m not going to say that this looks beautiful, sleek and elegant when finished, the kind of Lego model you could display next to other iconic sets. In fact, it kind of looks like a hot mess. It just doesn’t resemble anything on earth, not a car, boat or plane. It kind of looks like an interdimensional parade float or something. Everything is scaled in odd ways, some bits are just quite fiddly and not secured in the best way like the hinges on the bottom and those aforementioned pistons.

But, and here’s the thing...I can’t stop looking at it and playing with it. It’s one of the few sets that, as an adult, I like to push and play along with. It’s got this real 90s vibe to it, like something out of Power Rangers, Street Sharks or Dinosaucers. I’ll cover the push and play bit in the playability part of this but rest assured, it’s got ...something to it, a real charm.

Parts

Oh boy, is this a goldmine. Going back to the fictional beginning of my review, there’s a theory that Time Cruisers was a way for Lego to use up their spare parts inventory and if you start thinking about the Time Cruisers sets in that light, they start making a bit more sense from a “meta” angle.

First off, that Belville white bathtub? It’s a big single piece, white, with studs and it only appeared in two other sets aside from this one – and both of them the Belville sets. So if you get this set, you can easily use this piece in a home, a city set, or for your own nefarious needs. That blue 4x4 dish with a spiral pattern? That appears here and on the Twisted Time Train and nowhere else. Exclusive to the Time Twisters, and just looks so cool.

You want other cool parts? This set has them in spades. You’ve got a giant blue half-sphere canopy with hinged opening, two black dragon wings, two chrome gold bugles, gold coins, shiny trans-green, red, yellow and blue round 1x1 pieces, a magic wand, a ghost, a briefcase, trans-light blue cylinders, propellers, crossbows, dragon heads. It’s an absolute parts playhouse.

In terms of the minifigures, you get a ghost with a briefcase that doesn’t have a name and a human who of looks like an evil live action roleplayer or something. He doesn’t have a name either, and Bricklink just lists him as Bad Guy 2. So not much going on there personality wise but Bad Guy 2 has some cool epaulettes though!

Playability

Once you put the thing together, Time Cruiser’s second aspect comes into view: the sheer amount of functions and play features crammed into these crafts is really astounding.

As you push the Time Warper along, the wheels on the bottom turn, which makes the propellers on the back spin through an elastic band. As the wheels keep turning, the assembly on top of the wheels piston up and down like a train, making the wings flap on the back and as the wheels and propeller spin, the blue cylinder in the middle turns around and around, making the spiral dish move like a hypnotist's disc and spinning all the pieces inside it around. Lastly, as the pistons move up and down, the skeleton heads pop up and down out of their little blue cones.

It’s a real treat, there’s just a lot of cool sights and sounds of propellers spinning, wings flapping, the cylinder spinning and the pieces inside clinking and rattling around.

Now Lego was clever to make a time travel line like this because guess what? Every set you own is now linked through Time Cruisers and Time Twisters. You could blast back to your Pirates line, zip into the future to Ice Planet 2002 or Exploriens, travel into different dimensions like Technic and Cyberslam, or even just go to visit the same city in different time periods. Suddenly, every Lego set, every piece can become part of the story even if it doesn’t “fit” with the structure of another. What kind of stories could you have there?

Value for Money

I got this set, along with the 6495 Time Tunnelator, for $15 dollars Australian. For two sets, with all of these cool parts, that was a deal I could NOT turn down. The Whirling Time Warper is often going for $30 Australian on Bricklink by itself with all the parts complete. I think for what you get parts wise, and play function, $30 is a bit steep. I’d say pick this up at $20 or so. And in terms of value for money, I assume you could buy the parts from this set cheaper than buying the set.

Final Thoughts

Time Cruisers is one of those really oddball Lego themes and this, to me, is probably the height of that wackiness. There’s just so much going on here in one set. The whole mish mash of parts with no rhyme or reason, no internal consistency and shape, everything slap dash.

But when you think about it...that’s how a young kid builds. Having built Lego with young nieces and nephews, they don’t see a haphazard assortment of parts – they see a time machine, a plane, a house. Kids imagination makes any piece become anything else. They see cool parts, colours and moving shapes. So of course it doesn’t look like anything on earth – it’s a time machine! I feel like this whole Time Cruisers line was a reminder to kids that yes, things can be silly! You can mix and match your sets, don’t be afraid to take them apart and make new things. It’s funny how as an adult I’m worried about taking my sets apart but as a kid, I just threw it all together and built wacky contraptions that the Time Cruisers would have been proud to call their own.

I'm a big fan of this set, if only because I think the sheer amount of play functions and the build itself is fascinating. If you’re looking for a cool set to have on your shelf, I don’t know if would suit you. It just looks so odd and without the movement functions working it doesn’t have much going for it as a stationary still object on a shef or desk. But if you want some cool parts, you're collecting vintage 90s Lego sets or you just want a Lego set to really get a child’s imagination going, pick one of these up and get warping.

This is, in my opinion, an awesome set. Not only is the part count high, there are so many accessories AND two minifigures to boot! The fact that everything on the ship works, and all parts move as the wheels rotate, this is a mechanical masterpeice! From this one set you get two minifigures (one with the cool ghost sheet that glows!), tons of odd parts (like the tub, the window, the bars, the wings, claws, skulls, trumpets, mask, wands, knives, the dish with the swily pattern, coins.......... yadda yadda yadda, there's too much! A must buy for any fan since it is just plain fun no matter what!

My only complaints are as follows:
a) - the rubber band is hard to replace.
b) - ghost hardly has a place to sit.
c) - the skeleton heads rotate when lifted (but that actually adds a cool touch).

and finally

d) - this set would have been much better if this set came with the plastic "time machine" display instead of the other set.

The Time Twisters were the second series of the Time Cruisers sub-theme, and like all the sets in the sub-theme, rolling the vehicle along the ground causes other parts of the vehicle to move. In this vehicle, there are no less than 4 other moving things. The huge clear chamber with colourful bits inside and the propeller at the back are perhaps two of the most obvious, but the wheels are also attached to the crossbows held by dragon arms which causes those to ululate when the wheels rotate. In addition, the skulls with top-hat pops in and out of the blue cones. That's a lot of moving parts for such a simple action as pushing the vehicle along the ground.

The use of black and blue in this vehicle ties it in with the rest of the Time Twisters. Interesting bits on the vehicle includes the bubble dome cockpit and the flames heating the clear cylinderical chamber with the coloured bits. The vehicle is relatively sturdy despite the many moving parts. The vehicle is also easy to build.

This is a great set. It's a pity that the Time Cruiser sub-theme was discontinued after this.

It is great for parts. It has a bathtub piece, a large white one, that I had never seen before I got this set. The skeleton heads pop up and down, at different times, and the propeller spins, when the wheels turn. Some other good parts are the red horse helmets, crossbows, horns/bugels, a jail window, submarine cockpit halfsphere, knives, jewels, wands, a crystal, colored 1x1 dots representing jewels, a goblet,a suitcase, and eight gold coins. Looks quite odd. The reason only half of the set is shown here is the picture is continued on the other side of the instruction booklet.