The Young T-Rex was one of the many dinosaurs released for Kenner’s original Jurassic Park line of toys, based on the hit movie. Even although the young T-Rex never appeared in the first movie, it did appear in the novel and was sort of a cheaper alternative to the full sized T-Rex from the same line, but never the less, still cool in it’s own right.
Name: Young T-Rex
Line: Jurassic Park
Manufacturer: Kenner
Released: 1993
Price: First released – $30 AUD (guestimate). Now – varies $200-$450 MIB
Scale: 6 Inches in height
Accessories: JP Collector card #1.
I have a little bit of a long story about my original Young T-Rex (it’s not this one in the photos) that I owned as a kid (so I’ll try and keep it short). One night one of our family cats decided to have a fight with my Young T-Rex and rip up most of his face, needless to say I wasn’t very happy about this, but kept the toy anyway.
But you can bet what was at the top of my Christmas wish list that year – yes, that’s right a Jurassic Park Young T-Rex.
Unfortunately what I ended up receiving was the Triceratops from the series instead, although happy with it, it wasn’t what I wanted so badly. (The surprise of also receiving a G2 Megatron took away some of that let down, however)
Skip to years later and I decided I wanted to re-claim that part of my childhood and purchase a new Young T-Rex for myself, which is what I went and did, although this was a few years ago now. I decided I may as well review him now, in all his mid-1990s glory.
SCULPTING
This T-Rex has always had one of the more amazing sculpts out of the plethora of dinosaur toys my brother and I had as children. I’ve always loved how cool it looked and how much it evoked the look of the movie T-rex, even if on a smaller scale then the larger version (owned by my brother). There are a lot of great details here – skin folds, scales, claws, every little bit of detail looks great. Whoever sculpted this for Kenner went above and beyond in my book, kudos to them!
PAINT
The paint on the Young T-Rex is kept to a minimum, mainly skin pattern and things like the claws or the white underbelly of the dinosaur. That’s fine with me, I feel the base colour of the figure works great, it doesn’t even need a wash to bring it up either. All the paint apps are nice and neat, no problems there, just watch out for paint rub on the figure.
ARTICULATION
The Young T-Rex doesn’t have much of anything in the way of articulation, only his little arms, which are swivel joints and can be rotated 360 degrees without any problem. the T-Rex’s whole body is bendable, due to the rubber, but it doesn’t hold any poses, unfortunately.
The Young T-Rex also has a “Dino Damage” feature where a section of the side of the dinosaur can be removed to show internal organs, its cool, but never something I bothered too much with.
ACCESSORIES
None. Unless you are counting that collector card and I wouldn’t count that.
POTENTIAL PROBLEMS
There isn’t too much to watch out for here, besides paint rub and perhaps tears in the rubber body, discoloration maybe?
PRICE
I paid a decent price for a new mint in box, even although I can’t remember how much I know it wasn’t over $250. This figure was important to me, so I was happy to pay a bit more for one that was going to be in excellent condition and this one did not disappoint.
OVERALL
I think the Young T-Rex toy is great, it has really excellent sculpting, nice paint application, even if it’s limited in actual play value. I’d still take this over anything Hasbro has put out for the most recent movie any day of the week. If you are a fan of Kenner’s Jurassic Park line (and who wouldn’t be?) or just dinosaurs in general, I’m sure you’ll be able to find a spot for this guy in your collection, if you already haven’t.
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