Monday 8 April 2013

Hold on to Your Butts!

I've already said how Jurassic Park is one of my all-time favorite movies and one of my favorite toy lines.  So let's just get right back to the figures!


This nice looking young man is Dr. Snare, one of the "Evil Raiders".  The Evil Raiders are dino poachers and the enemies of the Dino Trackers (and the other heroes from the movies).  There were only 3 of them planned, as far as I know, and only two were released.  A cyborg named "Scrap Davis" was shown on the card back, but sadly never came out.  Scrap Davis was the weirdest-looking one, and    would have definitely been my favorite.  Anyway, in keeping with the "everyman" toys aspect that I love so much about these figures, Dr. Snare could just as easily be at home in some post-apocalyptic wasteland story as a villain from Jurassic Park.  Actually, he'd fit in well with Cadillacs and Dinosaurs.    Both of the Evil Raiders came with removable pieces of clothing that would reveal "dino-damage" battle scarring.




Usually the dino-damage was reserved for the dinos in the line, though I kinda like how it works on the humans too.  At the very least it adds another element that you can use for your crossover toy imaginings.  Aside from the dino-damage, the Evil Raiders still came with the standard big gun/baby dino accessories.  In this case Dr. Snare came with a little carnotaurus.



Dr. Snare also appears to come with a "dino leash" so he can take his baby beast for... Walkies?  The "collar" part could also be used to take larger dinos for walkies.  Assuming I'm using it right...



Dr. Snare's partner in crime is this guy:  Skinner.  Skinner's also a figure I've had for a long time, and he got a lot of use over the years (usually as a villain - isn't that weird?).  Both he and Ellie have stood up rather well considering how much they were played with, so these figures are durable too.  Skinner came with a baby baryonyx, a gun that could be pulled apart, and a large case to store the gun parts.



Want to see what's in the box?  DO YOU!?


NOTHING!  Sadly all of the pieces of Skinner's gun are long gone, which is a shame because it was one of the better weapons in the line.  Still, I have a nice case for weapons from other lines.  Rounding out Skinner's accessories is his rather cool-looking arm armor.  ARMor.  It covers his dino-damage.




I have a lot of love for this figure.  He looks like a tough old bastard who would make a good musclebound henchman for other, more diabolic looking figures in whatever stories you're making up. He even has main-villain potential!  Plus he survived a dino bite to the head.  Seriously.  Look at his head!  The bite-marks are there.


Moving on.  The Jurassic Park 3 figures sadly came out in a smaller scale.  I say "sadly" because these figures don't mix as well with the previous ones.  On the other hand, they're better scaled with the dinosaurs so I guess it's a give and take.  But while I usually favor the 3.75" scale figures, these ones are lacking that special "something" that makes me love the older figures so much.  And as usual, they don't look like their actors.  This is Amanda Kirby, who was played by Tea Leoni.  Unfortunately her figure looks more like a young Jon Voight.  Okay, I guess her face is feminine enough, but she doesn't look like who she's supposed to.  I KNOW I have her accessories somewhere, but they're mixed up in a random accessory box down in the toy room, and I'm not digging through those yet.  And while the humans got smaller with this line, their pack-in dinos got bigger (and less cute).  Amanda came with a spinosaurus.



Next up is Amanda's estranged husband Paul Kirby.  In the movie he's played by William H. Macy, but yet again the figure looks nothing like the actor.  Actually, in this case the figure looks more like David Caruso from CSI: Miami.


And you guessed it: I've lost Paul's accessories.  All I have left on hand is his pack-in dinosaur, a stegosaurus.  At least the stegosaurus looks pretty good.



Billy Brennan was a student of Dr. Grant's that accompanied him to the island in the movie.  I can't really recall what his actor looked like, but I'm going to go out on a limb and say that this figure doesn't resemble him.  I also think the figure might be a little bit short compared to some of the other figures when he should be a taller guy, but he does have an extra bit of articulation that none of the others have.  He can do this:


I know!  Way better than a measly ol' swivel joint.  Billy gets the added articulation to hold his pack-in dinosaur, a pteranodon.  The only problem is I can't get the pteranodon to sit right on the hand.  But compromises can made...


I won't even mention where Billy's other accessories are.  You already know.


My Dr. Grant figure from this line has gone the way of Dennis Nedry, which means I no longer have the figure, but I still have the dino.  Grant came with this velociraptor.  If you look at the very tip of it's tail, you can see that there's a little flaw that I must have overlooked when I bought it.  It looks like some kind of weird little... sphincter... that maybe squirts acid.  And that's gross.


The movie characters were rounded out by Paul and Amanda's son Eric Kirby, but I never got him.  There were some characters in the toy line that never appeared on-screen though, one of them being this guy, the Military General.  I could swear that I read somewhere that his name is General Finch, but I can't find anything that backs that up.  Maybe I dreamt it.  I still think of him as General Finch, though. I think he may have been a bit of a peg warmer, but I actually like him quite a bit.  For a made-up character he has a nice amount of detail in the face and he's got a lot of toy line crossover value.  His pose is a little funny, but I can deal with it.  If there's any complaint I have for him it's that the crotch area of his torso doesn't match the tops of the legs.  He should have the bottom of his jacket showing under the belt, but it's just the fly of his pants.  The legs show the jacket, but it's almost like the sculptors just forgot to add it to his lower torso.  The General came with a small t-rex that's been repainted a bunch of times. I like the t-rex a lot, so I may try to track down some of the other versions at some point.


This t-rex has small "stands" built into the bottoms of his feet so he doesn't fall over, but they kind of (ever so slightly) look like hover discs.  Already my imagination is going wild.  If I get some of the other versions, I could have a team of airborne tyrannosaurs...


A general needs his troops, so the Military General got this guy, the Military Diver.  I suppose he's unique looking with the rips in his wetsuit, but he's less useful than the Military General.  He's still got the crossover potential, but he can only ever be used as a diver.  The Diver came with a spinosaurus, but it's different than Amanda's.  Hasbro didn't have to make two different molds for the same dino, but since the Diver doesn't get something new, I'm glad they put the effort in.


Let's end here and save the rest of my collection for one more post.  There's still a human or two to be seen, but I've also got some bigger dinos (sans humans) just waiting to be shown off.


2 comments:

  1. Ha! Young John Voight. You're right though, her face really does look like that!

    I love the "dino damage" on those guy's silly putty skin. Just looks like it's a minor inconvenience. Like "Oh crap, my skin is all pushed around again. Hey, help me mold this back into an arm!"

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  2. Ooh, putty people! See! You can use them for anything!

    ReplyDelete