Uploaded July 2026 | Updated September 2026, 2 weeks ago
That T-Rex lunging over the capture cage almost never existed at all. Nicknamed the Bull T-Rex, it started life as a planned dinosaur for Kenner's original 1993 Jurassic Park toy line, where it was called the Gulper and built around a gimmick where it could actually swallow a human figure. Kenner cancelled it before release over production cost, and it sat shelved until this 1997 Lost World line brought it back from the dead, repainted and renamed, as one of the headline pieces of the whole wave.
Here's a detail that surprises people. Kenner was not some scrappy independent toy company riding the Jurassic Park wave on its own. Tonka had already bought Kenner in 1987, and Hasbro bought Tonka, Kenner included, in 1991, two full years before the original Jurassic Park movie even hit theaters. By the time this Lost World commercial aired in 1997, Kenner had been a Hasbro property for six years, just operating under its own name as a sister company, the way Hasbro kept Kenner running until finally folding it into the main brand in 2000.
Getting to make these toys at all required Kenner to go back to the negotiating table too. They had to renew their agreement with Amblin Entertainment specifically to produce a Lost World line, bringing back Ian Malcolm alongside new characters like Roland Tembo, Sarah Harding and Peter Ludlow. Most of the dinosaurs in this wave, though, were the same sculpts from 1993 and 1994 wearing new paint jobs, with only a handful of genuinely new dinosaurs added to the lineup.
None of that should take away from how big a deal Kenner was at this point. This is the same company that landed the Star Wars toy license back in 1976 after Mego turned it down, and went on to invent the 3.75 inch action figure format that the entire industry still builds around today. A cancelled dinosaur, a company already owned by its biggest rival, and a hastily renewed movie deal, and it still turned into one of the most collected toy lines of the decade.
Subscribe to Game Forest GF for retro gaming content every single day.
#jurassicpark #lostworldjurassicpark #kenner #hasbro #dinosaurtoys #actionfigures #trex #90skids #vintagetoys #retrotoys #90snostalgia #toycollecting #starwars #1997 #gameforestgf #youtubeshorts
That T-Rex lunging over the capture cage almost never existed at all. Nicknamed the Bull T-Rex, it started life as a planned dinosaur for Kenner's original 1993 Jurassic Park toy line, where it was called the Gulper and built around a gimmick where it could actually swallow a human figure. Kenner cancelled it before release over production cost, and it sat shelved until this 1997 Lost World line brought it back from the dead, repainted and renamed, as one of the headline pieces of the whole wave.
Here's a detail that surprises people. Kenner was not some scrappy independent toy company riding the Jurassic Park wave on its own. Tonka had already bought Kenner in 1987, and Hasbro bought Tonka, Kenner included, in 1991, two full years before the original Jurassic Park movie even hit theaters. By the time this Lost World commercial aired in 1997, Kenner had been a Hasbro property for six years, just operating under its own name as a sister company, the way Hasbro kept Kenner running until finally folding it into the main brand in 2000.
Getting to make these toys at all required Kenner to go back to the negotiating table too. They had to renew their agreement with Amblin Entertainment specifically to produce a Lost World line, bringing back Ian Malcolm alongside new characters like Roland Tembo, Sarah Harding and Peter Ludlow. Most of the dinosaurs in this wave, though, were the same sculpts from 1993 and 1994 wearing new paint jobs, with only a handful of genuinely new dinosaurs added to the lineup.
None of that should take away from how big a deal Kenner was at this point. This is the same company that landed the Star Wars toy license back in 1976 after Mego turned it down, and went on to invent the 3.75 inch action figure format that the entire industry still builds around today. A cancelled dinosaur, a company already owned by its biggest rival, and a hastily renewed movie deal, and it still turned into one of the most collected toy lines of the decade.
Subscribe to Game Forest GF for retro gaming content every single day.
#jurassicpark #lostworldjurassicpark #kenner #hasbro #dinosaurtoys #actionfigures #trex #90skids #vintagetoys #retrotoys #90snostalgia #toycollecting #starwars #1997 #gameforestgf #youtubeshorts
