7 replies on “Nerding Day: Jurassic Park’s Bizarre 1990s Toylines”
The 90’s had a certain perpetual optimism that I’ll always miss.
My JP Command Compound playset had a lovely habit of suddenly shrieking about “Dino attacks” without provocation from my closet in the dead of night. Good times.
So Mecha Tembo and his iconic Ultimasaurus sidekick weren’t the result of some toy designer drunk on unsupervised access to licensing rights. They’re accurate depictions of characters from a planned then cancelled animated series.
Apparently it was going to be about everyone going back to the island to ‘blood sample’ the remaining dinosaurs into the ground and then mash all their DNA together. For some reason.
You’re working from the mistaken assumption that “planned…animated series” and “toy designer drunk on unsupervised access” are mutually exclusive.
Look at the Transformers movie – Hasbro/Kenner/whoever made that toy line wanted to revamp the line, so they make a movie that starts with genocide before the credits roll and spends the next half hour killing off all the discontinued toy Transformers. Which, by the way, is so totally badass that the only way they could do a “gritty 2020s reboot” would be to throw the Autobots’ human kid friend into a woodchipper like Fargo or Deadpool 2.
I had almost everything from this particular line, including armless Dennis, Dr Snare, and a T Rex that could swallow human figures whole.
I’m not sure they knew Nedry was a bad guy. I’m pretty sure I remember a child shouting “I’ll save you, Nedry!” in one of the commercials.
I also remember the commercials for the Matchbox toys for the sequel, whose name had to be spoken in its entirety, making for the rather unwieldy jingle “It’s The Lost World: Jurassic Park from Matchbox!”
The only Jurassic Park toy I had growing up was the Jurassic Park vhs tape, but I probably played it more than most kids did with the dolls.
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7 replies on “Nerding Day: Jurassic Park’s Bizarre 1990s Toylines”
The 90’s had a certain perpetual optimism that I’ll always miss.
My JP Command Compound playset had a lovely habit of suddenly shrieking about “Dino attacks” without provocation from my closet in the dead of night. Good times.
So Mecha Tembo and his iconic Ultimasaurus sidekick weren’t the result of some toy designer drunk on unsupervised access to licensing rights. They’re accurate depictions of characters from a planned then cancelled animated series.
Apparently it was going to be about everyone going back to the island to ‘blood sample’ the remaining dinosaurs into the ground and then mash all their DNA together. For some reason.
You’re working from the mistaken assumption that “planned…animated series” and “toy designer drunk on unsupervised access” are mutually exclusive.
Look at the Transformers movie – Hasbro/Kenner/whoever made that toy line wanted to revamp the line, so they make a movie that starts with genocide before the credits roll and spends the next half hour killing off all the discontinued toy Transformers. Which, by the way, is so totally badass that the only way they could do a “gritty 2020s reboot” would be to throw the Autobots’ human kid friend into a woodchipper like Fargo or Deadpool 2.
I had almost everything from this particular line, including armless Dennis, Dr Snare, and a T Rex that could swallow human figures whole.
I’m not sure they knew Nedry was a bad guy. I’m pretty sure I remember a child shouting “I’ll save you, Nedry!” in one of the commercials.
I also remember the commercials for the Matchbox toys for the sequel, whose name had to be spoken in its entirety, making for the rather unwieldy jingle “It’s The Lost World: Jurassic Park from Matchbox!”
The only Jurassic Park toy I had growing up was the Jurassic Park vhs tape, but I probably played it more than most kids did with the dolls.