#1042 THE LOST WORLD – PACHYCEPHALOSAURUS and GIANT PTERANODON (1997)

Unlike the toyline for Jurassic Park, the toyline for The Lost World included many dinosaurs WITH accessories. These were in all cases some kind of mechanical invention to prevent the dinosaur from attacking humans. Something like a giant muzzle. This part was, of course, easily detachable, so you could play the “dinosaur has release itself, let´s run” scene. Additionally, all of them could perform some action feature. For this movie, there were many dinosaurs made, I will show today two of the “big ones”, although there were many others in this size or even bigger.
 
Although the dinosaurs are not so hard to find, these accessories (traps, muzzles and so on) are really scarce. They are mostly grey parts with strange shapes that nobody could identify, so most of them were probably disposed sometime by the early 2000s, remaining only the dinosaurs. Many are probably mixed up with parts of other collections, as they could belong to any toy. The two dinosaurs I show today are complete.
 
Let´s start with the Pachycepahlosaurus. The dinosaur is really cool, and has one of the funniest and most interesting features (despite its simplicity) among the references in this toyline. It is a lot of fun to “head out” all other figures and dinosaurs one after the other. The dinosaur has an impressive size (It should be at scale to the humans in the collection), and a soft plastic skin (except the head and neck part), that makes it nice to play with. I guess it is one of those toys that sooner or later will degrade and break down. It belongs to a sub-series of the dinosaurs called Dino Strike, which included all dinosaurs with some mechanical attack action feature.

The accessories include a harness to be attached to the body of the dinosaur, plus a piece that fits the head with two bars that connect the harness and that piece. It is supposed to simulate a trap for the neck of the Pachy, so it cannot attack anybody with its head.

The Giant Pteranodon is also made at scale, and it is impressive in its size. The wings are partially made of cloth, so the toy, altogether, is not very heavy. The head is big and the beak can open and close. The wings also flap by pushing a button, and the small rear legs also move up and down, where the claws can grab something.  I am not sure what is the point on this, but the wings can be clipped to the body of the flying reptile. Maybe it is just a way to securely place it in the box, because the “sitting” position of such a creature is thought to be with the wings bent on the sides of the body, perpendicular to the ground, not parallel. 

The toy came with a muzzle and a small harness that fitted all four limbs to immovilize the beast.

Somo more diorama pictures:

FACTS and FIGURES:

• Name: PACHYCEPHALOSAURUS and GIANT PTERANODON
• Toy Line: The Lost World (Wave 1)
• Year: 1997
• Company: Kenner (U.S.A.)
• Scale of the figures: Around 11 cms

#850 THE LOST WORLD – ROLAND TEMBO and NICK VAN OWEN (1997)

Two more figures from the Lost World series. I already presented two carded figures a long time ago, and now I will present two loose ones.

The figures are Roland Tembo "Great Hunter" and Nick Van Owen "Video Expert".

Roland Tempo came with a Pachycephalosaurus hatchling, and a huge accesory that moves, called "dino stun prod", which may be some kind of capture-device for the dinosaur included, and also a small knife, that shares its cast with G.I.Joe´s Shockwave from 1988.

 

Nick Van Owen comes with a water launching gun attached by means of a thick hose to the backpack and a videocamera. This last accesory shares its cast with G.I.Joe´s Scoop from 1989. This action figure comes with the pteranodon hatchling.

Both accesories shared with the G.I.Joe toyline have a slightly different colour than the original ones.

Interestingly, there are two versions of Nick Van Owen. One with baseball cap, one without. I am still missing the cap version, but I have a chinese bootleg of it, found a long time ago (maybe in year 1997 or 1998) in a chinese bazaar. It still keeps its original backpack.

UPDATE 1 (NOV/2020): I bought the variant figure of Nick Van Owen (with cap) carded. Here are the pictures.

  

FACTS and FIGURES:

• Name: ROLAND TEMBO and NICK VAN OWEN
• Toy Line: The Lost World (Wave 1)
• Year: 1997
• Company: Kenner (U.S.A.)
• Scale of the figures: Around 11 cms

#222 THE LOST WORLD – IAN MALCOLM & DIETER STARK (1997)

I have already talked (shortly) about the Jurassic Park toyline and about the figures from the first movie. Three years after Jurassic Park, The Lost World was premiered, and a new bunch of toys were ready to be deployed in all toystores worldwide. It was already 1997, and by this time, there were already a lot of videogames and computers that were far more interesting for children than action figures. Maybe for that reason, these figures didn’t sold very well at the time, and were sold out very cheap. I think I bought each blister for around 0,50 Euros a few months after they were released (I payed in pesetas, since there were no Euros yet). Unfortunately there were only two models left, otherwise I would have bought all of them.

One of these two characters in Ian Malcolm, the chaos theory expert that also appeared in the first movie (was one of the most important characters)… For the second movie, the figure was released, and, interestingly, the figure wears black suit a sunglasses, just like in the first movie. In the second movie, he never wears sunglasses. In this same wave, there was a second figure of Ian, and it was one that came with a delta wing (this one was sold boxed, not carded). Something else worth mentioning is that the image on the cardback has a different head from the one that was finally used.

This figure came with a baby T-Rex.

The weapons are “recycled” from other series and collections. For example, the backpack/trap is very similar to one originally released with a Batman figure (also by Kenner), while weapons for other figures had already been available in JP figures or even G.I.Joe (Hasbro). The videocamera from Nick Van Owen was originally released with Scoop, by since Kenner was purchased by Hasbro in 1991, the cast was probably just “borrowed”.

The second figure is a secondary character, Dieter Stark, one of the evil dinosaur hunters and the “weapons specialist” in the Roland Tembo’s group. The figure does not resemble the actor at all, but it is still a nice figure. It came with two different guns, something rare in this toy-line were each figure came with some rocket launcher, water gun, trap or something with some action feature. These is probably so because the figure of Dieter Stark was more expensive to produce due to a built-in magnet in the chest.

The figure came with a Compsogathus that could attach to the chest of the figure by means of another magnet placed in its mouth, reproducing the way in which the character dies in the film.

 

The figures are very nice, although they are practically identical to the 3 years older JP figures: too few points of articulation, but cool accessories and action features. The best of the series was again the dinosaurs and also the cool vehicles. However, due to its late year of issue, they are not as interesting as other toy lines. 1997 is already at the limit of the toys I intend to show in this blog.

There were different cardbacks in this collection, this one is the "simplest" one with just 6 characters and 2 dinosaurs.

Also interesting to mention is that these figures were one of the first one to be “cloned” rather than bootlegged. I remember the copies were available in 1 Euro shops (at one euro) and the figures looked exactly the same, including the card. I think I still have one Nick Van Owen bootleg somewhere…

Figures copyright is from 1996, but they were released in 1997.

I have the figures doubled and would change them for another figures from this or any other series.

FACTS and FIGURES:

• Name: IAN MALCOLM & DIETER STARK
• Toy Line: The Lost World (Wave 1)
• Year: 1997
• Company: Kenner (U.S.A.)
• Scale of the figures: Around 11 cms