Jurassic Park III: Alpha Velociraptor

Year of release: 2001

Description: this colourful Raptor figure stands in a dramatic pose when it’s still in box, showing all its primal predator prowess, with its body straight upwards, its legs wide apart and its ferocious claws ready for battle action. The lower part of the body is predominantly grey with brown stripes, while the upper part of its body is mostly brown. This creature has a large red stripe running across its back, with two bluish purple stripes running on each side of this red stripe from the neck to the base of the tail: here a dino damage wound is located, showing some of its tail bones. On its back this creature has a small red lever, activating the dino attack action, namely slashing claws. The animal has red hands with black claws on both its fingers and toes. It has rather large feet. Unlike previous Raptor figures this sculpt has some red feathers on the back of its head, following the design change of the JP III Raptors. It also has two red nasal ridges on each side of its head. Its mouth is opened, showing its tongue and some lovely teeth: the mouth can’t be closed. On its right leg it has a black JP III logo, which is hardly noticeable because of the brown paint. This Raptor has bright orange eyes.

Analysis: this isn’t a great Raptor figure. It’s disproportional: both its feet and head are too big. It stands in an awkward pose with its legs wide apart, making it look rather fat. The head is turned to the right and can’t be turned another way, while its mouth can’t be closed. This severely limits playability. The paint job is way too colourful: even though the JP III Raptors had more colour than the Raptors in the previous movies, it wasn’t this extreme. The Raptor might be good for dioramas, but not much else.

The sounds are pretty good, and the attack screech is easily recognizable as a Raptor sound. The dino damage sound is a bit odd though: it’s a sort of rasping noise, not something one would normally associate with a Raptor. But still pretty cool. The attack action is similar to the one of the Dilophosaurus from this toy line: by pulling the lever the arms slash back and forth. It works pretty good, but it’s nothing special. Again, the dino damage wound cannot be covered somehow, so this dinosaur carries an open wound all the time, like all the larger dinosaurs of this toy line. It’s a real shame.

Playability: like stated above, the odd stance of this figure hinders playability. Though its limbs are poseable, its head and mouth unfortunately aren’t. Also, its tail is positioned in a bent pose, and not in a more neutral way. Also, because of the electronics you can’t play too rough with it if you want to keep it in working order. And beware the nasal ridges; they’re quite fragile and break off easily.

Realism: the colours are similar to those of the male alpha Raptor seen in JP III, but only slightly. Because of the disproportional body parts and the inconvenient position of this figure, it doesn’t resemble the JP III Raptors that much. Also, it doesn’t resemble the other Raptors of the JP III toy line a lot either, mostly because they all have different paintjob. Put them all together and you have a very colourful bunch of overgrown turkeys. This Raptor is also way too big compared to the human figures of this toy line, especially considering the Velociraptors are already oversized in the JP franchise. This figure doesn’t look much like a paleontologically correct Raptor either.

Repaint: no. This figure would be repainted four times, for the Camo-Xtreme, JP Dinosaurs 2 and 3 and JP 2009 toy lines though, in even funkier colours.

Overall rating: 5/10. It’s not a great figure and could have been better. None of the JP III Raptors are really good though. It’s not rare, so you can find it easily and probably cheap too, if you want one.

Jurassic Park Chaos Effect: Raptor Alpha

Year of release: 1998

Accessories:

-Three pieces of capture gear

Description: being labelled a night hunter, this particular Raptor figure sports a dark but surprisingly colourful paint job. Its underside (belly, parts of the lower tail, arms and most of the legs) are coloured bright blue. Its back, front part and very end of the tail, and most of the head and neck is painted black for the most part, while black stripes run over the middle part of the tail as well as on the upper legs and even on the flanks. The claws on both its arms and legs are also black. Between the black on the upper part of the creature and the blue on the lower part, there’s purple in between, featured on the flanks and tail. A set of four yellow stripes is located on the neck and back, with the middle part of each stripe being light green. Above the legs there’s an additional green spot, while a set of stripes, part blue and part purple, is seen on the animal’s head. The Raptor has bright orange eyes, white teeth and a pink tongue. A beige JP Chaos Effect logo, featuring a simple stylised version of a DNA string on the bottom, is located on the creature’s right upper leg, along with the number .01.

Raptor Alpha stands in an almost totally neutral pose, except for the tail which is bent downwards so the creature actually fits on its card. The figure is equipped with a biting action, which is activated by pressing the legs together, causing the head to move forward and the jaws to open, as if it’s snapping at prey.

Three pieces of capture gear come with this Raptor, all of them coloured very light brown in a shiny metallic fashion. There’s a muzzle which goes over the Raptor’s face, a limb restraint piece, securing both the arms and legs of this critter, and a small cuff. No creature-breaks-free-of-restraints action feature is present here.

Analysis: some figures always work well, no matter how often they get repainted. Once again this proves to be true with this second regular Velociraptor repaint (which is actually the fourth time this sculpt is released, having been a part of the JPS1, JPS2 and TLWS1 toy line before CE hit stores). Though some of the Chaos Effect repaints aren’t very good, or even downright ugly, this cannot be said for the Raptor Alpha figure which sports a very neat paint job, darker and more eerie than its predecessors, as well as fresh and vivid. I doubt many people will play with this creature only during the night time, but it’s certainly a worthy figure in broad daylight as well.

Granted, it’s not the most original figure to be repainted, but fortunately its funky biting action works as well as it ever did before. Pressing the legs makes the Raptor’s jaws snap and causes it to give a violent head butt at anything in front of it. Always a blast, always efficient.

The capture gear is repainted as well, but hasn’t been seen for a while. The TLWS1 version of this figure sported a new set of capture gear, which fortunately doesn’t come with this Raptor since it was excessively large and ineffective. So it’s back to the old JPS2 restraints, which by comparison with the TLWS1 Raptor’s capture gear actually do restraint the animal: it can’t snap its jaws, it can’t move or slash its claws and is thus rendered more or less defenceless.

Playability: Raptor Alpha, being a repaint of the old Raptor sculpts, comes with both poseable arms and legs, as well as a head and upper jaw which can be moved to a small extent. The figure also features the classic biting action, which still works fine. The three pieces of capture gear are always a welcome addition, though in this case a dinosaur-breaks-free-of-restraints option is absent. Overall, this is a very playable Raptor sculpt successfully making its way into yet another toy line.

Realism: the Chaos Effect toy line is of course entirely fictional and was never a part of the movies, let alone real life. Assessing the realism of this toy therefore seems somewhat redundant. However, judging by the rules of the Chaos Effect universe (though there aren’t any rules really, since it’s pure chaos all of it), this is one of the more plausible figures. It’s not crossed with different dinosaur species, it’s just a purebred Raptor. It is also immediately recognizable as a Raptor or at least a close relative, being a small bipedal carnivore with sickle shaped claws on its feet. Its dark colour pattern reflects its status as a nocturnal predator, though the yellow stripes on its back seem somewhat out of place, possibly giving it away at night when stalking wary prey.

Repaint: yes. This is a repaint of the original JPS1/S2 Velociraptor, which was first repainted for TLWS1. It comes with repainted capture gear which originally came with the JPS2 Velociraptor, but not with the TLWS1 Velociraptor which featured different restraints.

Overall rating: 8/10. Though not much points for originality are scored here, this is one of the better repainting jobs of this toy line (as well as in general), since it's actually quite cool for a change. Besides that, it’s the good old regular Raptor sculpt, which everyone undoubtedly has fond memories of since it was first released in the JPS1 toy line. It’s also one of the more common Chaos Effect figures and shouldn’t prove that difficult to find, nor overly expensive.