Jurassic Park III: Military General & T-Rex

Year of release: 2001

Accessories:

-Bazooka-like gun (with missile)

-Tyrannosaurus figure

Description: the Military General figure wears a bright green shirt with darker green stripes, a silver utility belt, dark grey trousers and black boots. His trousers and shirt sport some slight tears, like he’s had a conflict with a small unpleasant dinosaur. He’s very blond and has a rather grim look on his face. The weapon is painted in a slight shiny metallic colour: it can be loaded with a bright red missile, which is basically a stick with a large oval shape with two round holes in it at one end. The Tyrannosaurus figure is brown with some grey tones mixed in, an almost white belly, black stripes on his back and a black JP III logo on his left leg. Its feet are supported by some extra plastic, so it can stand on his legs without falling over.

Analysis: the paint job of this figure is okay. The green colours aren’t very special, but fit a military character. Some neat extra details were added, like name tags and rank insignia, giving it more realism. Other than that you wouldn’t be able to tell this guy is part of a military organisation. The figure stands in an odd and clumsy position, making it a bit hard to let the figure stand up right. His right arm is hanging down a bit, which knocks this figure further out of balance. The tears aren’t really noticeable at first, but cover most of his chest. No skin is revealed, so the General probably wasn’t hurt that bad.

The weapon is not very impressive. It looks rather unrealistic: it has a small monitor screen on the top, maybe for logging onto dinosaurs or something. It also has a large cylinder shaped part sticking out on its lower part, giving it additional, unnecessary weight. It has got one grip at the back end, so the figure can hold it. Though the figure can hold stuff with both hands, this weapon doesn’t seem to be made for either hand. One hand is opened too wide, so the weapon doesn’t stay in place. The other, at the arm that’s hanging down, can hold it: when it does however, it looks like the General is dragging the weapon down on the ground. Holding the weapon with either hand further knocks the figure out of balance. The weapon also features a rather lame firing mechanism: the end of the missile sticks out of the back when the weapon is loaded, and you have to press on it to fire. Unlike the weapons from earlier JP toy lines, where you just had to press a button, this feels awkward and cheap. The missile also does little damage: it gets off course easily and just flies around, so when you try to hit a specific target this gun doesn’t really work. It doesn’t hit a target hard anyway: so far I’ve never managed to knock the Rex figure over with it…

The Tyrannosaurus is interesting. It certainly doesn’t look like a hatchling, but more like a miniature version of an adult dinosaur: the same goes for most of the JP III hatchlings. The colours of this dinosaur are pretty standard, nothing special there. The figure stands in an attack posture, like it’s about to jump on its prey. Its head is tilted up and looks pretty ferocious, one of his arms is outstretched and its tail is slightly curled upwards. The mouth is opened so it can hold a figure between his jaws. It’s a pretty neat figure, but it does have a negative point: some additional pieces of plastic are attached to its feet, so it can stand on two legs. If these pieces weren’t there, it would probably fall over, which would make it look silly. So though it doesn’t look very accurate, at least it serves a purpose.

Playability: not very high. Like stated above, the figure’s irritating pose compromises playability, and the fact that it can’t really hold the weapon very well further diminishes the level of playability. The weapon doesn’t work very well either unfortunately. The dinosaur has no moveable body parts and can only stand in this one attack posture: it might be suited for dioramas though.

Realism: though Jurassic Park III did feature military characters (soldiers, pilots) at the end of the movie, no Military General was there. This figure was made up, and therefore it can’t be judged on likeness. The bazooka like gun wasn’t featured in the movie either. The Tyrannosaurus is a decent and fairly accurate miniature model of the Tyrannosaurs seen in the Jurassic Park movies in both shape and colours, though its arms are somewhat too large for a Rex; in real life its arms were smaller, almost tiny.

Repaint: no. The General would be repainted for the JPD2 toy line though, along with his weapon (see Velociraptor with Dinosaur Trooper), and again for JP 2009, featured in both its own set and as canon fodder for the Deluxe Electronic T-Rex (in neither case it came with its original weapon, but was featured with weaponry from other JP III figures instead). The Tyrannosaurus figure would be repainted a record number of times, twice for the JP III Camo-Xtreme line (with a third one planned but unreleased), four times for JP Dinosaurs 2 and 3, and another four times for JP 2009. Apparently Hasbro thought it the coolest dinosaur figure around, worthy of endless repainting...

Overall rating: 3/10. This figure really isn’t very appealing. The weapon basically sucks, and the General isn’t something one would care for either. The only thing you might want is the Rex. Fortunately this figure is very common, so you can get it cheap easily, should you really want one.