Jurassic Park Series 2: Sgt. “T-Rex” Turner

Year of release: 1993-1994

Accessories:

-Bow

-2 Arrows

-Backpack

-Triceratops hatchling

-Collector’s Card # 34

Description: Turner stands in a somewhat unusual pose, with his left arm held back and his right arm held close to his chest. The position of the arms facilitates him holding his bow. His left leg is posed in a forward move and his right leg backwards, as if bracing himself while using his weapon. He wears a black jacket with silver armour like highlights on his arms and chest. On his left upper arm he sports a JP T-Rex badge (the black Rex skull and arms in a yellow circle, most famously being part of the classic JP logo). Additionally, he wears grey trousers, adorned with a black gun holster on his right hip and a orange knife holster with a black knife handle sticking out on his left lower leg. He has black boots on, and wears a grey cowboy hat with a red band on top and the right flap turned upwards, revealing a second JP T-Rex logo. He has brown hair, ending in a short pony tail, brown eyebrows and black eyes, and carries a rather arrogant facial expression.

Turner comes with a bow and two arrows as his main action feature. The bow is a triangular, mechanical looking weapon (not the old-fashioned Robin Hood style wooden bow) with some protrusions sticking out, most notably a large tip up front and a rectangular plate right under this, sporting a handle on the left side so Turner can hold it, and a little hole to “load” an arrow in on the right side. A long transparent wire is used to “fire” arrows with: this wire runs over the bow in such a fashion that it appears there's actually three wires instead of one. The bow sports a single silver paint job. Two different arrows come with it, a long one with a cone shaped tip and a shorter arrow (though it's only less than a centimetre difference between the two) with a flatter tip. Both arrows are metallic grey in colour and have a tiny incision at their ends so they can be loaded in the bow by sticking them through the small hole and pressing the incision around one of the strings. Pulling the string backwards thus fires the arrow. Turner also comes with a small black backpack for storing the arrows when not used. It's basically a hollow basket with straps on it so he can carry it.

Lastly, this set comes with a Triceratops hatchling. 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 underside of the animal’s body (belly, throat, lower part of the tail) is painted dark blue, with the rest of the body sporting a paint job of light green mixed with brown. Its horns and upper part of his parrot like beak are white and its eyes are black with brown eyelids. A small white JP logo can be found on its upper left hind leg.

Analysis: the leader of the Dino Trackers is a butch looking guy, assuming his leadership position by wearing a hat not much unlike the one Alan Grant sports, making him look heroic and inspiring respect. He wears an interesting outfit, seemingly capable of resisting a close call with a vicious dinosaur considering the 'armour plating' type of features on his jacket. We may not know this man from the JP movie, but he seems like a person you wouldn't mind bringing along on an Isla Nublar field trip.

He comes with a unique weapon, even though it's basically a variation on the 'rocket launcher' theme. His bow is of a simple design: just load the arrow and pull the string, and see what poor creature you can hit. But does it work? Not always. You have to pull the string back pretty hard (fortunately it's strong material!) to fire the arrow over a decent distance. It's also hard to actually hit a target, so it's best used on bigger prey. Unfortunately, it's impact is pretty limited, since it's such a lightweight type of ammo. It certainly won't knock over most figures, except for bipedal hatchlings maybe (if you're lucky enough to actually hit such small targets). It's a short range weapon, which can be fired over a distance of approximately 60 centimetres. The backpack has no other function then to store the arrows. However, it is a tight fit and can be hard to both put on Turner's back and remove it. The straps should have been a little longer for convenience's sake.

The Triceratops might induce a sense of deja vu, which is not surprising, since it's a repaint of JPS1 Ellie Sattler's Trike baby. However, it's paint job is better than on its previous incarnation, more diverse (blue belly, brown eyelids even) and a more appealing colour scheme. And it's still a cuddly little dinosaur.

Playability: only decent. Turner has poseable arms, legs and head, but in the case of the arms poseability is limited due to the way they are positioned. His right arm can not turn a full circle because the lower arm gets in the way. The left arm has better poseability but looks a bit weird in some poses because of the way it's outstretched. Turner looks best when holding his bow in a typical archer's posture. The bow is an interesting addition to Kenner's line of weapons and even works to some extent, though it's not easy operating it when Turner is holding it. It's more easily to handle when you have small fingers anyway. Even though it looks like a fragile weapon, the string is quite strong and can withstand more roughness than you might be inclined to think at first. The Trike has no poseable body parts.

Realism: Turner is of course a made up character for the Dino Trackers/Evil Raiders spin-off line. Therefore, realism isn't relevant here because there's no actor he's meant to resemble. However, because of his interesting uniform with no less than two JP logos on it, he makes for a fine Park Ranger figure. The bow doesn't look much unlike modern bows (much more mechanical than bows used to be), though the arrows look a bit odd, more like rockets than actual arrows. Since Turner is a Tracker and not a Raider it seems likely he's not supposed to kill dinosaurs by shooting them, so these arrows might contain tranquillizing stuff of sorts to subdue their targets. The Triceratops looks much more like the adult JPS1 Trike figure than Ellie's hatchling did, adding some consistency to this figure after all. A shame they didn't bother to colour the lower part of his mouth too though.

Repaint: no, this is a new figure, complete with all new accessories. His hatchling is a repaint of JPS1 Ellie Sattler's baby Trike though. Turner would be repainted for the first JP: Dinosaurs line as a Dinosaur Hunter, including a reuse of his bow and other accessories (in the Young T-Rex with Dinosaur Hunter set). The Triceratops hatchling would not be repainted again.

Overall rating: 7/10. Sgt. “T-Rex”Turner is an interesting new character with an original weapon, even though both archer and bow have some downsides. The baby Trike surely benefited from its makeover. Turner got a relatively wide release and even made it to Europe in low quantities, making this one of the least hard to find JPS2 human figures. It usually goes for rather affordable prices.