Jurassic Park Series 1: Ellie Sattler

Year of release: 1993

Accessories:

-Firing Grappling Hook

-Beacon Locater Backpack

-Triceratops hatchling

-Collector’s Card # 15 (alternate card for 1994 re-release)

Description: Ellie stands in a neutral pose with her arms raised somewhat. She is the only female figure of this toy line (this would also be the case with the JPS2 toy line). She has long blond hair, tied in a knot at the back. Her eyes and eyebrows are black however, and her face has a rather emotionless look to it. Ellie wears a pink shirt (no sleeves, short or otherwise) with a blue shirt underneath (seen only under her neck). Her shirt is tied tight around her waist by a black belt which sports a pocket on the left side. She has khaki short pants and a blue tag with a black JP logo on her right upper leg. A second black belt, holding what appears to be a small camera, hangs on her left hip, while a flash light is found attached to her right hip. She wears brown boots with beige socks sticking out. Above her left hand she appears to be wearing some sort of wrist band, but it’s not painted in a different colour than the rest of her arm.

Ellie comes with a large weapon, called a Grappling Hook. It’s basically a dark green tube with some protrusions sticking out, like a handle and a spyglass. Attached to the weapon is a long black string, which in itself is attached to a large light green dart with three curved hooks on it. When loaded into the launch tube of the Grappling Hook, pressing the light green button on the weapon makes the hooked dart being launched, capable of being hooked around any target in range. Ellie also comes with a Beacon Locater Backpack, which appears to be a dark blue radio box with beige straps attached to it so Ellie can carry it on her back. On top it has a small light green antenna. It looks sophisticated, but doesn’t do anything.

A Triceratops hatchling completes this set. It’s a small round pig like creature, with a head almost as big as its body. It has four little legs and a tiny tail, and very small horns revealing it to be a baby. The top of the animal’s body (back, top of the tail, upper part of the head and legs) is painted dark green, with the rest of the body being beige. Its horns are white and its eyes are black. A small white JP logo can be found on its upper left hind leg.

Analysis: being yet another well remembered good old JPS1 sculpt, Ellie is quite a neat figure and looks fairly movie accurate. Her outfit looks a lot like what Ellie Sattler wore in the movie, including the colour scheme. Though she has no action features of her own, her weapon provides some.

This grappling hook is fun to play with, but has several minor downsides. Fortunately it works quite well. Loading the weapon and firing it makes the hook being launched with some force over a respectable distance, though of course limited by the range of the string. It’s a good weapon, but its paint job isn’t very appealing; especially the light green of the hook looks rather odd and unrealistic. The hook is also lightly build and has often trouble doing damage to figures. Also, because the hooks are bend back pretty close to the dart itself they often miss grabbing any parts of targets, so they usually don’t hook onto something, unless by a lucky shot. They certainly don’t work on the baby Trike, since they can’t find a good place to hook on to, and the dart isn’t strong enough to pull back this rather heavy hatchling. Also, the string easily get entangled with itself, forming knots which are hard to unravel. Apart from these issues, the grappling hook is a good enough weapon.

Ellie also comes with a radio transmitter pack, which is plain redundant. It has no functions at all. It can be strapped around the figure’s back, but is heavy enough to make her fall over and only seems a burden. Its boring paint job also doesn’t help. It might have been left out altogether, it wouldn’t be missed. Apparently the designers couldn’t come up with a more interesting extra accessory.

The Triceratops hatchling also doesn’t sport a very good colour scheme (its JPS2 repaint featured a better one, which was more similar to the adult Trike figure of the JPS1 toy line), but it’s still very cute. It too doesn’t have any real functions but it’s a decent enough dinosaur figure, though not the best hatchling of the first line.

Playability: good enough. Ellie herself has the typical range of poseable body parts, namely arms, legs and head. The Grappling hook is a fine weapon, though it’s hard to really grab anything and its range is limited because of the string (which also has a tendency to get intertwined with itself). Unfortunately the hooks are easily damaged, often breaking off when handled to roughly. The radio transmitter pack does nothing and is basically a useless burden to the figure. The baby Trike has no poseability, as is usual for hatchling figures.

Realism: Ellie’s outfit certainly is reminiscent to what her movie counterpart, as performed by Laura Dern, wore in the JP movie, though it’s not an exact match. Her pink shirt and beige shorts, as well as blond hair in a knot make this figure a good toy version of the movie character, though her face doesn’t look like Laura’s at all. Her weapon is a bit over the top (especially the colours), but can be handy in dangerous encounters with prehistoric vermin, though a weapon like this wasn’t featured in the movie. The transmitter pack wasn’t seen either. The Triceratops is a decent little version of the adult animal, with tiny horns to underscore its hatchling status. Its colouring is different from the adult seen in the film.

Repaint: since this figure belongs to the very first JP toy line, it’s obviously not repainted. However, Ellie would be repainted for the JP Series 2 line, featuring a new head sculpt but the exact same set of accessories (though both the grappling hook and Beacon Locater pack would feature a new paint job), and this time including an Ankylosaurus hatchling instead. The little Triceratops would also be repainted for the JPS2 toy line and included in a set with Sgt. T-Rex Turner.

Overall rating : 8/10. Though her otherwise fun weapon has its downsides, this classic figure is great and comes with a cute little hatchling. Being produced in large quantities like most JPS1 figures, Ellie is easy to find, both loose and MOC, and shouldn’t be too expensive either.