2011 Canceled Jurassic Park Mercenary GI Joe
Little secret: I actually still like 25th Anniversary style sculpts. Not more than vintage, but many of the post-’09 sculpts are nice enough, and fun to pose and fiddle around with. You don’t see them here very often though, because A: Most of those toys aren’t very interesting and B: None of my readers really want to see them all that badly. Still, I think it’s worth documenting an interesting unreleased toy, and a toy that represents another example of Hasbro using GI Joe molds to represent whatever other brand.
Sometime a little after 2010, an ample supply of mysterious, canceled Jurassic Park figures made from recent GI Joe sculpts showed up on eBay. As I recall it, it wasn’t even known for a while that some of these figures were intended for a Jurassic Park line. Most of the toys intended for this line used tooling from the GI Joe Resolute figures, with the only notable exception being a guy with Zanzibar’s head, and some soldiers using Firefly’s head. Vehicles were to be sold with these figures, which included the umpteenth AWE Striker repaints, and a newly sculpted helicopter and hummer. A handful of newly sculpted dinosaurs would’ve also accompanied these figures.
Just before Hasbro lost the Jurassic Park license, some version of this line was seemingly salvaged, with two 2013 releases, although, those were a little different than the 2011 canceled figures that appeared earlier. And notably missing was this odd tattooed guy with a Duke head. For a long time you could get these cheap, just like with the Elite Ice Viper and the old stories about various other midnight-run figures from the 2000‘s. There’s never really been a name put to this figure, as far as I know, but he’s generally identified as a mercenary, so I’ll just be referring to him as Mercenary beyond this point, for the sake on convenience.
I thought the GI Joe Resolute toys were pretty nice overall, and seemed to mark the point at which the Anniversary-era moved towards sculpts that were at least mostly functional. Sadly though, the figures were plagued with some Spy-Troops tier bad proportions, typically huge heads and tiny baby-feet. Mercenary here is made from Resolute Duke’s huge head on Resolute Roadblock’s body, which oddly enough, balances out. Pretty much everything else here is just Resolute Roadblock, including the vest and his accessories.
It’s a fairly nice looking toy, with unique colors and some highly detailed tattoos over his face and arm. He’s able to pose decently with a wide range of motion in his joints, and he’s balanced nicely too, which was a rarity for figures from this period. Truth be told, I like how he looks a bit better than either of the figures he’s made from, although that’s not to say those were bad. The only real gripe I can find is that Duke’s head is kind of ugly, but it’s an otherwise fine figure.
His accessories are… not great. He comes with most of the parts seen with Resolute Roadblock which includes a vest, LMG, ammo belt, rocket(?) and a pickax. Frankly, these are some really bizarre parts. I’m not sure how he’s supposed to use the rocket. The pick axe has a massive backpack-peg on it, and it’s sort of blunt, making it look more like a hoe. The LMG is his only nice part, and it’s dumb too. It has these square-holes in the bottom of it, almost like it’s missing something (Roadblock’s is the same, so it’s not because this is a prerelease figure.). You can thread his ammo belt all the way through the gun… Which gives it unfired rounds on both sides of the feed. At the very least he can pose decently with it, but it’s a pretty nonsensical gun.
Want to know something incredible? This figure isn’t worth all that much… Someone scored one on eBay a while back for a shocking $5, and most offers trend around $40. For a toy that’s eleven years old and was never actually released at retail, that’s surprising, especially when figures that exist in countless amounts, like Funskool Tripwire, can run an easy $100. I think it says something interesting about the on-going collecting bubble, when a figure like this really has no value, but toys that were common just a few years back are holding huge premiums (low-information buyers).
2011 Canceled Jurassic Park Mercenary Links:
A figure so common from Chinese sellers that I even considered getting one. But never did because I’m not really into modern. $40…ahahahaha. Oh, boy. No. As someone said “people act like they are selling gold.” It’s a plastic plaything. Stop all this insanity.
The Resolute/Pursuit Of COBRA era of the modern releases was actually kind of fun. The figures weren’t just rehashes of the vintage line, and they were all unique enough that it wasn’t the sea of black and grey that was the first movie line.
This figure is kind of interesting, because like you said the combo of parts evens out the size issues. I want to say there was another one of these JP mercenaries using Red Dog parts or something, that looked like he would go well with this one, but then again I could’ve dreamt that up.
I kind of like the idea of some mercenaries in the Joe world, that don’t fall directly under COBRA, but it winds up being a little too Avant Garde for G.I. Joe.