Jurassic Park III: Military Diver & Spinosaurus

Year of release: 2002

Accessories:

-Spinosaurus figure

-Missile launcher (with missile)

Description: this figure wears an all black suit, including black flippers, with a yellow vest over it, as well as several blue belts and dark grey highlights. On his right leg he wears a yellow knife holder with a knife in it (non removable). On his left upper arm an American flag (or something like it) is found, so this guy is part of the US military alright. His face is partially covered with breathing equipment, though he’s got nothing covering his eyes. He’s got a black air tank with more dark grey detailing on his back. He shows signs of a dinosaur attack on his left leg and right arm, showing skin. His weapon appears to be some sort of missile launcher. It’s coloured in a slightly metallic dark grey paint job, with a yellow missile sticking out of it on both sides. Pushing the end of the missile sort of launches it, though it doesn’t work very well.

The Spinosaurus is positioned in a crouching move, possibly stalking potential prey. Its left arm is raised upwards and its mouth is opened wide. The figure sports a grey paint job, with some shiny blue stripes on every part of its body, including the sail. A large red stripe, also in a shiny paint job, runs from its snout all the way to the end of its tail, including all over the sail. Its claws are painted black, its eyes are yellow and a black JP III logo is located on its left leg.

Analysis: this is a fairly decent figure. The diver sure looks like a diver, though not necessarily military, were it not for the flag on his arm. The figure stands in a rather neutral pose, except for his left leg, which is positioned in a forward move. The paint job is pretty good, with a fair amount of details. I’m not an expert on diving equipment, so I don’t know whether his gear is realistic, but it looks good enough to me.

The same can’t be said for the weapon. Once again Hasbro uses its own launching mechanism, with the push-the-end-of-the-missile system. It’s a rather lousy system anyway, but in this case it just doesn’t work right. The missile hardly flies in a straight line to its target but gets off course easily. It also does little damage if it hits anything at all, it just lacks the necessary impact force. That, and the fact it has a lame paint job, makes it a very disappointing gun.

The Spinosaurus is better by comparison, but nothing great in itself. It sits in a bit of an odd position and tends to fall over because it’s slightly out of balance with its left arm raised like that. The paint job is quite original, but doesn’t remind us of the colours the Spino in JP III had (though it is similar to the paint job of the Aqua Attack Spinosaurus of this toy line). It’s not the best JP III Spino figure by far, but decently enough.

Playability: not great. The diver’s limbs are all poseable, and the more or less neutral pose also helps. The weapon however is a lost cause, and one of the lamest weapons of all the Hasbro JP figures. The Spino is not poseable in any way and also doesn’t take on a neutral pose, so it doesn’t help the playability much.

Realism: there was no Military Diver in JP III. There were marines and military craft, but no divers. Hasbro just made the figure up. I think it would have been better if they had made soldiers like seen in the movie: instead they just made something up, but the result in this case is adequate enough. The weapon also wasn’t featured in the movie, and thank heaven for that!

The Spino certainly is recognizable as such, with its crocodilian jaws, sail and long arms, but other than that it doesn’t resemble the Spino from JP III much: the most noticeable difference is the odd paint job this figure sports which is in no way reminiscent of the colours Spino sported in the movie.

Repaint: no. However, the Diver and his weapon would be repainted for JP Dinosaurs 2 (Dimetrodon & Military Diver) and JP 2009 (while the repainted weapon was also found on the big Deluxe Electronic T-Rex set, paired with a repaint of the Military General instead).The Spinosaurus would be repainted four times, once for JP Camo-Xtreme, once more for JP Dinosaurs 2, and twice for JP 2009.

Overall rating: 6/10. The figure is okay, though the weapon sucks. The dinosaur is decent enough, but nothing too special. This set is not very hard to find in the USA, so if you want one you could probably get it relatively cheap and not have much trouble finding it. It’s a bit harder to get your hands on in some other territories, but still far from impossible to find.