Triceratops (Remote Controlled)(The Lost World: Jurassic Park by Toy Biz)

Review and photographs by Funk, edited by Suspsy

After so many years of the DinoToyBlog examining every obscure corner of the dinosaur toy landscape, you’d think all older products in the Jurassic Park franchise to have been fully covered. That mainly seems to be the case for the beloved Kenner lines, but there are still many strange toys by other companies left unexamined, including the subject of this review. It is the remote-controlled Lost World Triceratops from Toy Biz, which I bought as a kid back in 1997, expecting nothing less than my own electronic Trike pet. Boy, was I disappointed.

Triceratops itself hardly needs an introduction, but it can be said that it had little more than a brief cameo in The Lost World compared to the sickly individual in Jurassic Park. It only appeared briefly in a scene where it is caged in the mercenary camp and later released to rampage through said camp. The selling points on the toy’s package were “WALKS AND ROARS BY REMOTE CONTROL,” “SOFT AND REALISTIC DINO SKIN,” and “AS SEEN IN THE MOVIE.” Wow, what more could a kid want!? There were also some other genera in this line, and I have the Stegosaurus somewhere, though I sadly never found the Tyrannosaurus. It appears there was also a remote controlled car, but that’s of little concern to this blog.

On the first point, well, the dinosaur could walk slowly forwards by pushing a button on a joypad-thingy that was attached to its belly by a wire. That was it. So, at most, you could walk it like a dog in a straight line; not much control other than starting and stopping. That feature has long stopped working in my toy, but I can’t say I miss it. It would have been a big improvement if this toy was able to turn to the sides rather than just walk forward, and if it was truly remote controlled without any wire, which severely limits how far it can walk (the wire is about 120 cm long, the dinosaur itself is about 24 cm). The roaring sound effect is very faint now due to age, but it always sounded like a pathetic wail rather than a roar, not really like anything from the films. I can’t find any clips online showing the toy in action, but it isn’t really impressive either way.

And how about that “realistic dino skin” that the packaging claimed? Well, the texture is rather good, with many scales, scutes, and wrinkles, but it is made of soft, loose rubber. This did give the skin some nice movement when it walked, but didn’t really suit the head, making the crest and horns very wobbly. To make things worse, not only has much of the paint worn off this skin, probably due to its wobbliness, it has also become very sticky, with a lot of dust and other nasty stuff covering it. Judging from online photos, this seems to be the case for most surviving toys, except the unboxed ones. The nine (unrealistic) holes around where the cloaca would be were presumably meant to make the roar more audible, I just wonder why the holes weren’t placed between the front legs instead.

Looking at this as a Jurassic Park toy, it is a pretty good match for the movie’s Triceratops design as opposed to the Kenner toy, which I always thought looked pretty off-model compared to the movie version. The Kenner toy had a very long snout and a concave back, rather than the shortish snout and rounded back as seen in the movie, and its skin was greenish-grey. In these regards, the Toy Biz version is more movie-accurate, and seems to have been modelled after the original Crash McCreery concept drawing, although the tail and body seem way too short. The frill is also more back-swept, and it has an unfortunate double chin. The Toy Biz version also seems a bit too lumpy and somewhat wonky. It is grey overall, with a lighter underside, beak, and horns, which reflects the movie.

As a representation of Triceratops, it is also pretty good, reflecting the movie version, which was also one of the most accurate dinosaurs of the JP franchise. I assume this is because ceratopsian fossils are a lot more “what you see is what you get” compared to many other types of dinosaurs, and the skin on the JP design isn’t too far off from what is indicated by recently discovered Triceratops skin impressions. Not going into the point of whether much of the head of Triceratops was covered in keratin (which was recently proposed), we know that at least the hand position is incorrect, since ceratopsians would not have been able to pronate theirs, so the toes would not all have pointed forwards as on the elephantine feet that ceratopsians were usually depicted with in the past.

So what to conclude about this toy, which is mainly a weird novelty that doesn’t seem to have been particularly popular? I can’t say I liked it very much as a kid, and now it’s just disgusting to touch and look at due to more than 20 years of decay. I can’t imagine most other unboxed individuals have fared much better, so whoever wants to get it for whatever reason (completism?) better get it unopened, and it doesn’t seem to be very expensive even in that condition from a cursory look. The electronic features aren’t particularly interesting either, but hey, the joypad thingy is pretty spiffy-looking, black with big red buttons, and the cool The Lost World logo stamped on.