The Jurassic Park T-Rex toy was a childhood favorite for me.
I had many great memories of the movie
Jurassic Park the T-Rex was always my favorite dinosaur.
Often referred to as the “Red Rex,” the original Jurassic
Park T-Rex toy was released in 1993. I was 7 years old at the time and recalled
the enormous T-Rex with rubber skin, stomping sound action and roar. Before its release, every dinosaur toy was a solid
piece of plastic with no acticulation, so it was definitely a game changer for
me when they released the Red Rex.
Let’s jump back a few months before the release of Red Rex;
it must’ve been early 1993 when they started releasing various Jurassic Park
toys (In Canada, the T-Rex was released later in the year). My favorite thing to do besides buying the
toys was checking out upcoming releases on the cardbacks. What I saw blew my
mind even until today:
This was the T-Rex pictured on the back of the card. Needless to say I was way too excited for it,
this version looked like it came right out of the movie screen. What we got several months later was this:
Still a fairly good representation of the movie T-Rex, but
nothing close to what the cardback had us drooling over.
I guess most kids at the time didn’t notice the difference,
but I was kind of weird and my first thought upon seeing Red Rex in person was:
“oh wow! That can’t be it… It looks so different…”
From 1993 until today I always wondered what the cardback
T-Rex was and where I could get it…
I thought I’d contact the experts at JPtoys.com, and asked
them if they had any info on the mysterious cardback T-Rex. Ankie, who’s title at JPtoys.com is “Administrator Carcharodontosaurus”, was very helpful and
replied with the following info:
- Toy companies often make these pictures in early production phases resulting in prototypes or completely different stand in models.
- The “Red Rex” was still in production when they took the cardback photo, so the one pictured on the cardback was a stand-in.
- The stand-in is based off the Stan Winston Maquette, but is NOT a copy of it. In fact, it’s a new model in itself.
- Unfortunately, this model has NOT been found except in the one cardback photo.
Well folks there you have… the “mysterious Jurassic Park
cardback T-Rex stand-in prototype” is lost in time! If anyone has any info on this amazing piece,
please leave a comment or shoot me an email. Until more info is revealed, it will always be
a hidden treasure to me. Thank you to
JPtoys.com for the photos and info.
Side Note: The closest collectible you can get to this T-rex
is the Horizon T-Rex Model kit:
You can find this on eBay! Good luck hunting.
