Pteranodon (hatchling)(Jurassic Park by Kenner)

Sam Neill passed away about two weeks ago as I’m writing this, and I think it’s safe to say that everyone reading this or writing for this blog has been affected by his role as Dr. Alan Grant in the Jurassic Park films, as well as many other roles (I’m partial to his incredible performance in Possession, for example). Judged on the reactions to his death, his real-life persona had also made a positive impression, making it an even harder loss. So this review is written as a tribute to him (while I’m listening to the soundtrack of the first Jurassic Park), though technically it’s about the hatchling Pteranodon that came with the original Kenner Alan Grant action figure in 1993. Right after a review of a Kenner Triceratops toy, Alan Grant’s favourite dinosaur, no less.

All the human figures in the line came with baby dinosaur figurines (referred to as “hatchlings”, though they all seem a bit too large for that), and some of the pairs seemed to make sense in relation to the film, as the characters shared screen time with the respective animals, for example a buff Dennis Nedry with a hatchling Dilophosaurus (time for revenge?). The Alan Grant figure was paired with a baby Pteranodon, which seems arbitrary since that genus wasn’t even featured in the film. Why not pair him with a hatchling Velociraptor, as it’s the only actual hatchling shown in the film (yet didn’t even have a hatchling figure)? There was of course also an adult Pteranodon in the first toy line, and we’ll return to that.

The human figures did not exactly look like their actor counterparts, though the Alan Grant one is probably one of the closest. It appears the toys were designed before the actors were cast, and even before their costumes were designed. The Alan Grant figure seems a lot more buff than its on-screen counterpart (no offense to Neill, of course), and its face is a bit generically square-chinned, but hey, it’s an action figure after all. He came with an “aerial net trap”, which I of course can’t find anymore, and a “nuclear smart bomb”?! For what? I’d go more into how the costume design differs from that of the film, but since this is the DinoToyBlog, I’ll just say that I don’t think Grant wore a skin-tight t-shirt to accentuate his pecs in the film. The colours roughly check out, though, and most importantly, the hat is there.

Back to the baby Pteranodon (our thinly veiled excuse to talk about Alan Grant): it has a wingspan of about 10 cm and is 5 cm from the top of the head to the toes (compared to Grant’s 11.5 cm in height), and a dynamic flying pose, with the head turned to its left. As it has no counterpart in the first film, it can’t really be evaluated on how movie-accurate it is, but it can be compared to the adult of the line and how the genus appeared in the subsequent films. While, as noted in the review of that figure, the adult seems somewhat grotesque with its coarse scales and wrinkled, leathery wings, the hatchling looks a bit more modern and streamlined, with striations along the wings. They share an overly demarcated spine, but otherwise they don’t seem like close relatives from the details of the sculpts. The adult also has crooked grasping toes that look like ape-feet, whereas the baby’s feet are more delicate, closer to the actual animal. Both are toothless, unlike later incarnations of the genus in the franchise. The illustrations on the collector’s cards by Brian Franzcak that came with the figures were more accurate in having hair-like pycnofibres, so one wonders why the figure’s didn’t, when even the older Dino-Riders toys got that right.

The hatchling’s colouration matches the adult’s, with a light blue head and upper neck, dark grey upper side, and light underside (grey for the adult, creamy white for the hatchling). Their main differences are that the baby has black eyes while those of the adult are red, the baby’s legs are light on the underside, whereas the adult’s are entirely dark, and the baby’s hands match its upper and undersides, whereas they’re blue in the adult. Another notable difference is that the JP logo is light and on the upper side of the hatchling’s wing, but dark and on the underside of the adult’s wing. It’s worth noting that the The Lost World Kenner line also had a Pteranodon with an entirely different design, a retooling of the earlier JP Quetzalcoatlus with a new head. By seeming coincidence, it also had a light blue head and neck (and body), though probably because the early concept art for the TLW Pteranodon had that colouration.

For whatever reason, Pteranodon was depicted very differently in TLW than in the concept art, being brown (as well as a different species, the familiar P. longiceps instead of P. sternbergi), making the old Kenner toy’s colouration obsolete, but retaining the slender P. longiceps crest. A variation of this design, though more robust and now with inaccurate teeth, was featured in Jurassic Park III, which also included babies of the genus, finally giving us something in the films to compare this figure with. Both baby designs show shorter crests than the adults, while the one of the toy is proportionally longest. Already in 1992 and 1994, palaeontologist Christopher Bennett demonstrated that subadult and female Pteranodon had very small, rounded crests, with the very long crests only present in males. The original Kenner hatchling was of course designed roughly the same time as these studies were published, so can be excused (though Franczak’s card actually seems to show the small, rounded crests), and it scores points for being toothless. Presumably the adult crests shown in Jurassic World and onward are small due to the animals being female?

That should be enough sidetracking and speculation for now, bottom line is that if you like Sam Neill’s Alan Grant character, this set is a must-have, and the Pteranodon hatchling is a nice bonus. While not matching what we later got on-screen, it and its adult form give an interesting view into how animals that would later be featured in the franchise were originally designed, seemingly without any film concept art to base them on. This is also the case of the Stegosaurus which was also represented as a toy in the original Kenner line, but with a design dramatically different from what would eventually end up in the films. Since the colouration of the adult and hatchling Pteranodon were so well-coordinated, one wonders if they were inspired by some early design for the film that was scrapped for whatever reason, since there of course is a pterosaur scene in the book. I must admit I like this colour scheme for Pteranodon better than what showed up in the films. It kind of matches Alan Grant’s wardrobe, which makes them look rather cute together.