Last week the wife and I hit up a special one night only showing of Jurassic Park at a local theater. Apparently they've been screening old flicks every Wednesday as a sort of cinema throwback special. For 5 bucks you can check out a different classic each week, which is a pretty sweet deal. The selections thus far have ranged from Casa Blanca to the likes of Monty Python and the Holy Grail. The Jurassic Park original film reel print came complete with dust and scratches in the picture, as well as an obviously deteriorated sound track. Despite any of these flaws it was still awesome. In fact it was rather surprising to me how effective scenes like the T-rex attack (which I've seen dozens of times) still were. There's just something magical about seeing these scenes in a movie theater, and that may sound pretty cliché but it's a simple truth. I was approximately 13 when Jurassic Park first came out and I also recall being the first kid on the block to get my hands on the toys. This would have awarded me, at the very least, 5 cool points with the local kids on the street. However this was likely only fortified by the fact that all the kids who lived on my street were 3 or more years younger than me. Being 13 and recently promoted to teenager status I was a bit too old to be playing with toys, or so was the common opinion of my school peers. That's a stigma that never really stopped me from collecting toys all through my High school years, although it wasn't something I would have readily admitted to at the time. Looking back, I'm happy that I risked being viewed as a retard since I otherwise would have missed out on the awesomeness that was the Jurassic Park toy line. Thanks to the power of the internets you can get an idea of what I'm blathering on about. The kind folks at JPtoys.com were nice enough to let me borrow from their catalog of images. (Thanks guys!) So, during the course of this article I'll be sharing a small sampling of Kenner's Jurassic Park toy line with you.
Before Jurassic Park some of the nicer dinosaur themed toys belonged to a little line designed by Tyco called Dino Riders. One of Dino Riders selling points was their extremely detailed dinosaurs, which I recall Tyco referring to as "museum quality". Kenner took this a step further with the "JP" dinosaurs and brought with it a level of detail and quality that I haven't really seen rivaled to this day, at least where dino toys are concerned. In addition to quality these toys had quantity going for them as well. There were a huge range of different dinosaurs to choose from, some of them much more obscure species than the main stars of the movie. Movie based toy lines have never been all that concerned with maintaining complete story accuracy, and Kenner was pretty masterful at expanding on the Jurassic park theme with non-movie additions. But more on that later. One of the accuracies Kenner did maintain with their toys was that Dinosaurs love to tear the crap out of each other. Along with "real feel" textured skin, many of the dinos included a battle damage feature that Kenner dubbed "Dino Damage". In most cases this was executed by having removable pieces of the dinosaur's hide, which kids could peel away to expose the dino's delectable juicy innards. In a time when video games were simply not violent enough, Kenner had struck gold by giving children a perfect outlet for their blood lust. Consequently "dino damage" was one of the things that added to the "JP" toy success. 
Kenner knew that something kids liked even more than making dinosaurs mutilate each other was making dinosaurs eat humans. So they saw to it that a full line of the films main characters would be available in action figure form. Like I mentioned earlier, this is where Kenner took some liberties in expanding the characters and storyline. In the Jurassic Park toy world Alan Grant wasn't just a paleontologist, he was also a supreme bad ass. Dr. Grant had apparently designed the world’s first hiking pack to include a catapult, which could launch everything from net traps to what appeared to be plutonium bomb canisters. Alan wasn't known for his patience. He would try his best to capture dinosaurs with nets, but when pushed too far he would burn Jurassic Park to the freakin ground.
Another one of the main characters who was badassified was Dennis Nedry. In the film Dennis was played by actor Wayne Knight, who you may be more familiar with as playing "Newman" on Seinfeld. Kenner apparently felt that kids wouldn't want to play with a fat man action figure, so they made some changes to the characters overall appearance. The end result looked something like a middle aged, slightly pudgy, rent a cop. Nedry came complete with a spray gun attached to a water filled backpack. Maybe most kids would imagine Dennis was using the spray gun to shoot acid at dinosaurs. I myself would like to think that he was simply spraying extremely poisonous pesticides on the island plant life, which in turn would cause his dino enemies to die from a slow painful death. Once again encouraging kids to indulge in their violent nature, Kenner included a "dino damage" feature in which Dennis Nedry's arms could be ripped off. Of course this particular feature was a real favorite of mine as a kid. While the liberties Kenner took to make the characters appear more cool to kids were actually pretty neat, I can't help but wonder what a movie accurate Dennis Nedry with "real feel" fat man skin might have been like.This is only a sample of what the Jurassic Park toy line had to offer. In addition to the human figures and dinosaurs, Kenner also produced various vehicles as well as one giant amazing Command Compound Playset. The toy line was successful enough that when the movie sequel "the Lost World" came out years later, Kenner was able to produce another fantastic line of similar toys and figures. I can't remember why, but for some reason I never indulged in collecting the sequel line, and it's unfortunate since it was just as cool as the first. If you enjoyed this feature, and would like to see nearly every aspect of the Jurassic Park toy line, then check out JPtoys.com. The good folks over there have done a fantastic job archiving the entire toy line and I'd like to thank them once again for letting me use the images for this article. Until next time folks, take it easy...
