Jurassic Park III: Pack Raptor

Year of release: 2002

Description: this creature stands in a very active position, like it’s ready to jump on its prey. When it’s mint in box, the figure stands with its tail high in the air and its body pointed at the ground, except for its head which looks upwards. Its body is also slightly panned to the right, especially its arms, as if bracing itself for the jump. Unfortunately this is the only position in which this sculpt looks good; in other poses it looks just damned silly, as if being shot or having a seizure of sorts. Also, its head and feet are oversized and, most peculiar, its lower jaw is longer than its upper jaw, as if someone cut of the tip of his skull.

The figure sports a predominantly grey paint job with darker tones of grey mixed in. Other that that it’s got black stripes on its legs and head, and one big stripe all the way from its nose over its back to the tail. On either side of this stripe a smaller blue stripe is found, running from the nose to the base of the tail. These stripes are adorned with orange dots, as are these Raptors facial ridges and “feathers” at the back of the head. The creature’s belly is coloured in a lighter tone of grey, its eyes are orange and its claws are black. A black JP III logo can be found on its left leg, just next to the necessary (according to Hasbro it seems) dino damage wound.

This wound is all red with one white button in the middle, activating a hissing sound. The other sound can be made by pressing the button on its throat: this sound is a typical Raptor attack shriek. Pushing this button also causes the mouth to open, as if making a biting move.

Analysis: this is a very lame sculpt. The jump posture makes it very hard to make the creature look good in other positions, and thus greatly hinders playability. You might as well leave it mint in box if you got it new, because that’s the only way it looks cool. The figure can hardly stand, unless you have it be supported by its left arm, or you bend the legs back far enough, making its posture look ridiculous. His face is also damned ugly, like it’s deformed or something. And its feet are just way too large. The paint job isn’t very special either: the grey is just dull, even though the colours on the head and back added a nice touch to it. That one little piece of bone sticking out of the wound is very odd, it would have looked better if it was just painted red.

Other downsides are the action features and accompanying sounds. The biting action is the same as with the Wave 1 Rex and Spino, and in this case it also doesn’t look very convincing. The mouth can’t open very far and the button is located at a rather inconvenient spot. The pain growl is activated by the button in yet another stupid dino damage wound which can’t be covered up, so that the Raptor has to go through life with its flank hanging open and its insides exposed. The sounds are unfortunately the same as the ones the Wave 1 Alpha Raptor made, though the sound quality is better. When looking at this figure it’s obvious the JP III Wave 2 dinosaurs provided more of the same instead of offering some originality.

Playability: extremely limited. As commented above, the figure was designed to look cool only when it’s in a jumping posture. Therefore the head, tail and limbs are in a particularly odd position. Though the limbs are poseable they don’t make the figure look better in other poses. The biting action doesn’t add much either, nor does the wound. Even the sounds don’t provide anything new, since they’re the same as the earlier electronic Raptor model’s. Also, if you want the electronics to be kept in working order, you shouldn’t play too rough with it.

Realism: fortunately none of the JP III Raptors looked like this, otherwise people would really have complained about JP III’s lesser dinosaur effects. Though the Raptors assumed similar positions when about to jump on someone, they at least looked good in other poses as well. They also didn’t sport this somewhat monotonous paint job. Still, this figure is recognizable as a Velociraptor, mostly because of the sounds and the head (lower jaw excluded in comparison). The figure is far from paleontologically correct: compared to the human figures it’s way oversized. Also, its upper jaw is too long, its feet too big, and the sickle like claw on the toe is stuck far too much on the side of the foot.

Repaint: fortunately this figure never got repainted, though a repaint was considered for the JP III Camo-Xtreme line (the Tropical/Swamp Raptor).

Overall rating: 3/10. This is a very crappy figure. I recommend it only to completists like myself who collect them all. To other people I would say: none of the JP III Raptor figures are really good, but the others are way better than this one. Like all Wave 2 dinosaurs, it’s somewhat rarer than the Wave 1 electronic figures (in some territories even quite hard to find), but in this case that’s no loss.