“Greetings and salutations once again, fellow dinosaur lovers! It is I, the one and only Dr. Bella Bricking, along with my trusty and ever-faithful companion, Beth Buildit! And today is a truly momentous occasion, is it not?”
“Yup, sure is, Doc. Exactly 30 years ago, a certain little movie called Jurassic Park opened in theatres worldwide and basically blew up right from the get-go.
Review by GiganotosaurusFan, edited by Suspsy
We take a different path today, not down a path of dinosaurs, but a dinosaur/robot. On September 17, 1984, lightning struck as one of the most popular children’s cartoon shows of all time debuted: The Transformers. 12 years later, a different path was taken with Beast Wars, where the Autobots became Maximals, and the Decepticons became Predacons.
Review and photographs by Sketchy, edited by Suspsy
Over the course of Kenner’s Jurassic Park line, three figures used the same Lycaenops sculpt. The first one was made for Series 2 in 1994. The second one was for the 2000 Jurassic Park: Dinosaurs line under the bizarre name of “Lynx.” And finally, Kenner made the third one for their Chaos Effect line, but called it the “Tyrannops.” Crazy.
Despite being the most popular of all dinosaurs, with multiple figures to its name released per year, everyone is still on the hunt for what they consider the “definitive” T. rex. Companies have tried to deliver it with mixed success. At various points over the last several years the title has been held by Safari, PNSO, Rebor, Beasts of the Mesozoic, PNSO again, and this year we have the long awaited Eofauna Tyrannosaurus hitting the scene.
Last year, when I wrote my review for the Hammond Collection T. rex I stated that, “I can finally say with some degree of confidence that I will never buy another Mattel T. rex, certainly not from the main line.” Well, I guess I’ll have to eat those words, because here we are.
Next year will mark the 30th anniversary of the release of Jurassic Park and in those past 30 years we’ve seen a plethora of movies, books, video games, toys, and other merchandise come along to capitalize on a film that has now become a timeless classic and a part of the pop culture zeitgeist.
All this buzz over the next instalment of the Jurassic Park franchise, officially now in production under the title of ‘Jurassic World’ and set for a 2015 summer release, has spurred me to take a look back at some of the toys from previous films. And, why not, speculate a little about what the future may hold for Jurassic Park action figures.
