Another Dakin review! I know you’ve all been salivating for my next review on the Dakin “Jurassic Park” toys and I didn’t want to keep ya’ll waiting too long. Do I still need to give a back story about these things? You know, these small JP figures put out by Dakin in 1992? Oops, I guess I did anyway! Well this time we’re tackling one of the oddest of the bunch, the Tyrannosaurus. Another little model I can recollect from my childhood this toy takes everything we had learned about Tyrannosaurus and completely disregards it. It doesn’t even manage to capture the essence of the movie creature but still, it has its charming attributes.
Standing about 5” tall this Tyrannosaurus stands in the old tail dragging pose. Kind of ironic considering the lengths “Jurassic Park” went to in order to popularize the Dinosaur Renaissance. But that hardly matters when every other feature of the model is just plain wrong. The oversized arms and pronated hands stick out in front of the creature, as if it’s doing a zombie walk! The toes on the feet are very blunt, large and club shaped. The entire body appears shrink-wrapped and starved and the head tries hard to look like that of the movie dinosaur but looks more like that of a mummified gargoyle skull with the yellow eyes sunken into their black sockets. The body is dull purple in color and it along with the tail dragging pose really make this look more like Barney than the mighty tyrant from the film. 
So what’s so charming about this model anyway? Who wants an undead Barney toy? Well it turns out that at least for me those features are what make it so charming. Sure, it’s ugly but it fails so badly at trying to be a “Jurassic Park” Tyrannosaurus that it ends up being a unique and novel character of its own. It may not be accurate or well made but it has character and if you’re a collector with a penchant for weird and offbeat models then I recommend seeking this odd fellow out.
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It’s interesting that this model gets a considerably higher rating on this blog than the recent 2014 effort by Carnegie Safari (currently 2 stars on 175 votes), despite the considerably more substantial effort by Forest Rogers to research the subject, than went into this one by Dakin. Great expectations disappointed, I suppose. On the other hand this one has a certain absurd charm and passes with a push because of it, perhaps.
One is a cheap JP toy from 1993 sold in Hallmark stores (for very cheap I assume) and the other is the 25th anniversary release from the premier line of museum quality dinosaur collectables. They’re both T. rex sure, but beyond that they don’t even approach the same league, you have to take it all in context.
Great review here.
I remember having one of these as a kid and being really fond of it, despite that it looked nothing like the movie counterpart. It’s probably still buried in a sandpit back at a previous home.
Just a not, I’m not sure if the tripod pose was “deliberate”. It looks to me like it’s only in that pose so it will stand up properly, just an idea.