Genetically Mutated Dinos Gone Bad™! That was the tagline for Kenner’s 1997 toyline Jurassic Park: Chaos Effect, which was named after a quote attributed to chaotician Ian Malcolm on the box: “Whenever man interferes with nature, chaos will occur.” In 1993’s Jurassic Park, adapted from Michael Crichton’s 1990 best-selling novel, Malcolm argued that dinosaurs “had their shot, and nature selected them for extinction,” criticizing John Hammond’s InGen scientists for resurrecting a species that they patented, packaged and slapped on a lunch box (or in this case, action figures).
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“Your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could, they didn’t stop to think if they should,” Malcolm said, a line that became the genesis for Chaos Effect.
Jurassic Park: Chaos Effect
The Hasbro-released toyline was meant to tie in with a Jurassic Park animated series that, uh, never found a way to television screens in the 1990s or the early 2000s, which would have unleashed a new breed of predator: genetically-engineered mutant dinosaur hybrids.
Here’s how Hasbro described Jurassic Park: Chaos Effect on the back of action figures like “Chaos Specialist” Ian Malcolm, who traded his black leather jacket for a banana-yellow bodysuit and Dino-Mech Armor Claw:
“Scientific tampering with dinosaur genetics has created a dangerous new breed of predator. Struggling to piece together the lost genetic puzzle that brought the original dinosaurs of Jurassic Park to life, scientists began experimenting with the DNA of dinosaurs, mixing their genes with those of other dinosaur species and even modern-day animals. The result: Ultra ferocious, hybrid dinosaurs – the most aggressive predators ever – wreaking chaos on an unsuspecting world! Never before has human-kind been in such peril. A new breed walks the earth… Jurassic Park: Chaos Effect!”
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The toyline birthed such bizarre breeds as the saber-toothed Tyrannonops (with its “Chaos Genesis” described as an amalgamation of Tyrannosaurus rex and Lycaenops), the winged Ankyloranodon (Pteranodon + Ankylosaurus), the snake-like Tanaconda (Tanystropheus + Anaconda), and Alpha Raptor (a nocturnal, purebred Velociraptor developed specifically with night camouflage).
The original Jurassic Park explained how InGen extracted paleo-DNA from fossilized tree sap, then mutated the dinosaurs’ genetic code when scientists blended it with frog DNA in order to fill in gene sequence gaps in their cloned dinosaurs. In 2015’s Jurassic World, the concept of “de-extinction” took the next step, and InGen’s gene-splicing evolved to create the company’s first genetically modified hybrid: the Indominus rex.
Evolution
Designed — not bred — to be bigger and badder than the T-rex, Dr. Henry Wu (BD Wong) acknowledged that modified animals like the Indominus are known to be unpredictable. And unpredictability, as Dr. Malcolm would say, is the essence of chaos.
The I-rex was spliced with Cuttlefish genes to account for an accelerated growth rate, giving the Indominus rex the ability to camouflage (like the Chaos Effect Alpha Raptor). InGen made dinosaurs “bigger,” “louder,” “scarier,” “cooler,” with “more teeth” — and more dangerous than ever before.
“You can’t have an animal with exaggerated predator features without the corresponding behavioral traits,” Wu explained, only for even deadlier dinosaurs — like the Indoraptor (Indominus rex + Velociraptor hybrid) in 2018’s Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom, and the Giganotosaurus in 2022’s Jurassic World Dominion — to wreak chaos across the globe.
Mutation
New movie Jurassic World Rebirth takes the concept of man-made mutant dinosaurs to the extreme. The Gareth Edwards-directed seventh installment is written by Jurassic Park and The Lost World: Jurassic Park scribe David Koepp, who says Rebirth‘s mutated dinosaurs like the winged Mutadons (a cross between a Velociraptor and a Pterosaur) and the Distortus rex (a deformed, six-limbed, mutant Tyrannosaurus rex) “came from my strange mind.”
“We saw in some of the previous Jurassic World movies that their experiments made dinosaurs bigger, meaner, scarier,” Koepp told Empire Magazine. “It occurred to me and [executive producer Steven Spielberg] that those can’t all have gone well. This is genetic experimentation. Things are not going to work out sometimes.”
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Koepp went on to say that an encounter with a bat inspired the Mutadons, while Edwards has cited the Xenomorphs from Alien and the Rancor from Star Wars as influences on the deformed D-rex: one of the mutated dinosaurs engineered in a since-abandoned InGen facility 17 years earlier.
On Reddit, fans noticed that the Mutadons — with their raptor heads and Pteranodon-esque bodies — resemble the Chaos Effect Velocirapteryx, a cross between Velociraptor and Archaeopteryx (a feathered dinosaur that is, essentially, a precursor to birds). As for the new breed of T-Rex in Rebirth that replaces the now-retired “Rexy” from the original Jurassic Park and Jurassic World trilogies, it appears to resemble the “Bull T-rex” toy from Kenner’s 1997 The Lost World toyline. (Edwards has likened the T-rex’s look to one of Ray Harryhausen’s stop-motion creations from the 1969 film The Valley of Gwangi.)
Extinction
The toy line was also set to release the Ultimasaurus, an ultimately cancelled hybrid mish-mash of the Tyrannosaurus rex, Velociraptor, Triceratops, and Ankylosaurus as the ultimate dinosaur.
According to Jurassic Park: Chaos Effect designer Tim Bradley, who was hired by Hasbro to create “weird hybrid dinosaurs” for the potential animated series, he “exaggerate[d] the physical characteristics of the creatures” intended for animation. Despite dino-mania, the toyline didn’t sell, and Chaos Effect was cancelled alongside a second wave titled Night Hunters.
“For Chaos Effect, I know that the aim was to create an animated JP-related series. I think the concept may have been developed in-house at Hasbro,” Bradley told the website JP Toys in a 2011 interview. Bradley added that development on the Chaos Effect animated series “went pretty far—up to meetings that included Steven Spielberg, I believe.”
“I’m not sure why the decision was made to ultimately not produce the series, but Hasbro had already started work on the toys, and they decided to continue on ahead,” he said of the toyline. “I understand why [the cancellation] was done — those types of decisions are usually marketing-driven — but it really would have been fun to see how far the line could have expanded.”
Rebirth
In Jurassic World Rebirth, an extraction team — covert operations expert Zora Bennett (Scarlett Johansson) and trusted team member Duncan Kincaid (Mahershala Ali), with paleontologist Dr. Henry Loomis (Jonathan Bailey) — are contracted to embark on a top-secret mission to a forbidden island research facility for the original Jurassic Park. In order to obtain the genetic material from living dinosaurs that hold in their DNA the key to a drug that would bring miraculous life-saving benefits to humankind, the team must survive the most dangerous place on Earth — where the worst of the worst were left behind.
Because life finds a way, a new line of mutated dinosaur toys will be released as part of the Jurassic World Rebirth toyline exclusively revealed by ComicBook. Tickets are now on sale for Jurassic World Rebirth, which roars into theaters July 2.
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Image courtesy of Warner
