Jurassic Park III CamoXtreme: Arctic Tyrannosaurus Rex

Year of release: 2002

Description: like many of Hasbro’s bigger dinosaur models, this figure doesn’t stand in a neutral posture. It's posed in a bent position, head, arms and tail posed to its right, as if circling potential prey. Its predominant colour is white, which is found all over its body except for the upper part of the head, neck, back and tail. The latter three are coloured dark blue with stripes and spots running out of this colouring over its flanks, neck, upper legs and tail in a rugged, random pattern. Between the white and dark blue a hue of light blue is used to make it seem the white colouring gradually shifts toward the dark blue. This effect is also used on the lower legs. The upper jaw and face are painted light blue (in a darker shade near the nostrils), making this part of the head really stand out. At the back of the head it features a fiery orange spot while five small orange dots run over its snout. Around the eyes and along the upper jaw a series of darker blue spots is found. This Rex has orange eyes, beige teeth and the inside of the mouth (tongue and all) is coloured dark pink. Grey claws stick out of its toes and fingers. A black JP III logo is found on the upper right leg. It has a large dino damage wound on the right flank, showing bones and red muscle tissue. Inside this wound a button is located: when pushed it activates a rather high pitched growl. A second button is placed on its throat. Pressing this button produces a fierce attack roar, and makes the jaws open.

Analysis: JP III's medium sized T-Rex figure is back with a vengeance! It features a much different and more original paint job than its predecessor, making it look sporty and slick. Apart from the blue and orange colouring on the head this figure looks fairly well adapted to an icy environment (though of course the best camouflage in such a case would be all white, but that might have been overly dull). The decision to only paint the top part of the head light blue gives it a bizarre but certainly distinctive look, while on its back the dark blue paint scheme with its various spots and stripes established a sort of 'blizzard' pattern, hiding it while hunting in raging snow storms. Details like the claws are not forgotten, while other little things like the specks on the edge of its facial ridges and on the snout make for a more elaborate and appealing paint job. This is about as good as CamoXtreme ever got: if you don't like it, this toy line is just not your thing entirely.

Though the paint job is a huge boon to this formerly rather poor figure, the original shortcomings remain: an annoying posture making it mostly fit for dioramas while hindering overall playability despite its range of poseable limbs, and a big open wound on the right flank which cannot be covered up, making this figure perpetually wounded. The half decent action features remain untouched (some chomping activated by a button placed in an inconvenient spot basically), though the sound system may have been beefed up somewhat: it appears louder than before.

Repaint: yes. This figure was originally featured in the JP III toy line. It would be repainted again for JP Dinosaurs 2/3 and JP 2009.

Overall rating: 8/10. This figure proves that sometimes all you need is a great paint job to make for an attractive figure, even though there's little else of interest in the set. Despite its shortcomings, this T-Rex got a very successful extreme makeover making it much cooler than its predecessor (or any of its repaints to follow). The CamoXtreme Arctic T-Rex is not always an easy find but not (yet) excessively so. You can still find them irregularly on eBay for various prices. This figure was also imported in the Benelux in decent quantities, making it also fairly easy to find there.