Jurassic Park Dinosaurs: Lynx

Year of release: 1999

Accessories:

-Three pieces of capture gear

Description: this muscular carnivorous quadruped stands in a rather active posture, with its right hind leg and front left leg posed forward and its other legs positioned backward, as if walking. The rest of the figure’s body assumes a neutral pose. Lynx comes with biting jaws: pulling the right hind leg back causes the upper jaw, equipped with four ferocious dagger like fangs, to raise upwards as if the creature is opening its maul, ready to close those jaws around an unfortunate victim’s body. An interesting detail: the beast’s tongue sticks out when it opens its mouth. Releasing the leg makes the jaws close with a powerful snap.

The figure sports a paint job much different from its predecessors. It's coloured completely dark grey, with subtle swampy green stripes running over the neck, torso, tail and legs. The facial area is also coloured mostly green. On its neck, back and front half of the tail small black specks are found. The Lynx has big white teeth, also inside its mouth, a red tongue and black eyes. A black JP logo is located on the right hind leg.

The Lynx comes with three pieces of capture gear, all painted blue. There’s the required tag, in this case large enough to fit around the monster’s muscled neck, as well as some leg shackles shaped like a cross to fit the figure's leg positions and to keep it from walking away. Third, there’s a head piece which can go around the creature’s head, in an attempt to keep it from using those strong jaws. It doesn’t necessarily work though, since activating the biting action also makes the figure thrash the head piece off.

Analysis: the good old JPS2 Lycaenops also finds its way into the first JP: Dinosaurs line, despite not actually being a dinosaur (though that doesn't seem to stop a lot of JP figures for which the same thing counts). Once again, it gets a different name: this time it's Lynx. Why this name change is applied is a bit of a mystery, since it doesn't look much like a Lynx, being more of a dog like creature. It might be an abbreviation for Lycaenops, but certainly this name isn't harder to pronounce than Tanystropheus or Ornithosuchus and those figures kept their respective names intact. An odd decision, but there it is.

Lynx has an interesting though simple paint job. At first impression it looks rather dull, since the murky green stripes are only really abundant and appealing on closer inspection or under the right lighting. The paint job might have used some more work on details like the inside of the mouth and the claws, but it works well enough the way it is now. Apart from the green, the paint job is reminiscent of a common seal's colouration, being grey with a variety of black spots and cute big black eyes. And like a seal, Lynx bites when you get to close, hence the huge fangs. The biting action is as good as ever, a powerful chomping motion which hooks its jaws around unfortunate human figures. The extending tongue remains a nice little addition, though it could get in the way when biting bigger prey.

The Lynx features the same capture gear it was released with previously, in the blue Chaos Effect paint style, which does look odd on this figure; the traditional metallic grey paint job would have been preferable, considering it was used for most other JP: Dinosaurs figures too. It still does en effective job restraining the figure and provides for a nice creature-breaks-free-of-restraints option when the jaw movement is used.

Repaint: yes. This is a repaint of the original JPS2 Lycaneops, including its capture gear repainted in the same colour as the Chaos Effect Tyrannonops's gear. The figure would not be repainted again.

Overall rating: 7/10. Still a nice and unusual figure, with a bit of a minimalistic but effective paint job. Since this figure is a Wave 2 release, it is definitely harder to find than some other JP: Dinosaurs 1 figures, but it's worth a try, especially if you don't own any previous incarnations of this sculpt.