For my money’s worth, one genuinely good thing Jurassic Park III gave us was a terrific array of new dinosaur designs, some of which are among the best-looking dinos in the whole franchise. It also brought back Sam Neil as the beloved Dr. Alan Grant from the first film, which was a nice treat for longtime fans even if the character was stuck being miserable for most of the runtime. Dr. Grant would get more than his fair share of new dinosaur encounters in the film, the most notable of which being several face-to-face encounters with the native Velociraptors, more colorful, birdlike, and cunning than ever seen before.
Mattel has delivered an incredible range of prehistoric beasts across their Jurassic World extended toy lines; but their representation of dinosaurs actually featured on screen is sometimes inconsistent. Representation for Jurassic Park III has been particularly spotty, so fans were quite pleased to see the striking dual raptors finally get the Hammond Collection treatment in 2023. while the male raptor was released in a standard, stand-alone package, the black-and-white female raptor was released in a set, part of a package deal with a new variant of the Alan Grant figurine released previously. The specific name of the set is poorly defined across websites and shops, so for the sake of this review, I’ll be referring to the set as the “Isla Sorna Encounter Pack”, as it’s listed on the box itself.
To start the official review, I should point out said box as being an unusual one for the Hammond Collection. Instead of the standard minimalist design, with black backgrounds and amber highlights, the box exterior has a much more rudimentary cardboard appearance, decorated only with some background topography lines, a few large brand stamps, and a plethora of official/legal product descriptors. Only once one opens and unfolds what looks like a shipping box does one discover the expected Hammond Collection artwork, decorating the underside of the lid and serving as a slipcover for the plastic shell containing the main items. It’s a peculiar package overall, one that seems better suited for storage for display. I don’t recommend throwing this package out entirely, though! There’s more to the product within to consider.
Inside the plastic shell are the two primary figurines – the female Velociraptor, and Dr. Grant, both reflecting their JPIII likenesses – and a few accessories to reenact select moments from the film. The accessories include a backpack, a side bag, two eggs, and a swappable pair of Grant hands. Although a few plastic bands hold the items down, the various items fit snugly enough In the shell itself to keep from jostling about. The side bag can be opened to fit the eggs inside for transport by Grant, and Grant’s alternate hands are fairly easily swapped via peg system. The raptor’s tail is also attached via insertion to the main body, which is necessary as the tail does not come packaged assembled with the rest of the figurine.
The detached tail is something I feel compelled to discuss in greater length. Ever since the Hammond Collection began, Mattel’s approach to the tails has frustrated me immensly. It’s standard procedure for Mattel’s dinosaurs to have one-time attachable tails, and in most cases that’s fine – these are kids’ toys, at the end of the day, meant to be torn out of the cardboard packaging and played with, ideally without any extra pieces to lose or break. The Hammond Collection is different, however. Mattel markets the Hammond Collection as a collector’s line, a series of toys for “true fans”. Your mileage may very as a dedicated collector, but in my experience many collectors value the full presentation of a product, packaging included. A collectors’ figure should be attractive in and out of the box, and – at least in my opinion – should be able to fit BACK in the box when necessary. There’s only so much storage space in our homes, after all. To design these figures in a way that becomes incompatible with the boxes after assembly strikes me as a very foolish choice that turns half of the presentable product into wasteful empty space. I’ve ended up throwing out most of my Hammond boxes because they become worthless without their practicality, and to me that defeats part of the purpose in a “collectors’ product”.
Thankfully, in the case of the Isla Sorna set, I was successfully able to make a work-around: the Velociraptor’s tail is narrow and flexible enough that, after cutting a small hole in the side of the plastic tray, it can fit inside and around the tray and be returned to storage, much like how Mattel designed the packaging for the larger Amber Collection raptors just a few years prior. I’m almost inclined to say Mattel should have designed this shell such a way in the first place and ditched the one-time assembly step altogether. Again, it’s senseless to design the main figure of the product to be permanently separate from the rest of the items after opening. There are too many parts to the set to simply discard the box.
Once assembled, the full raptor figure measures about 20 cm (8 in) long. The Velociraptors featured in Jurassic Park III are officially documented as reaching up to 4 meters (13 ft) long, which puts the Mattel toy at 1:20 scale; one can adjust to 1:18 scale to represent a 3.6-meter individual. Most of the toy reuses the sculpt seen in the first Hammond Collection Velociraptor, representing the dinosaurs seen in the first film. This would be fine if not for the fact that the first HC raptor still had some issues of its own. There are, of course, the ridiculously large feet that overcompensate for figure balance, but there’s also the torso, which has a shallow belly and an oddly sunken-looking back, and the legs, which are scrawny and make the feet appear even more cartoonish. More recent HC raptors have had revised sculpts which improve these issues, and in broader strokes, the anatomical proportions of the female raptor are still faithful to the film creatures. The detailing of skin texture is also pretty good, with noticeable muscles, wrinkles, and feature scales in select regions of the figure. The head, most notably, is newly sculpted to reflect the pointier noggin and ridged nasals seen in the evolving movie creatures. Additional rows of enlarged scales are also present along the head and traveling down the back of the neck; they’re difficult to see at this scale, but are clearly noticeable when running a finger across the figure’s surface.
There are 14 main points of articulation to the female raptor, same as previous raptors in the Hammond collection. Most of the joints in the limbs, neck, etc, are swivel-hinges, and generally speaking they allow a good range of poseability and personality from the figurine. The head can be twisted and turned in pretty much any position one likes. The arms have good reach, and the palms can be rotated to stay in functional position for most poses. The legs are a weaker point, due to the default posture being sculpted in a way that hinders the range of motion a little more than I like; nevertheless they still have a decent range. The tail is attached via ball-and-socket, and its length is supported by bendy rod. While getting some crazier poses out of the toy might take some work, even at a more conservative level the female raptor comes pretty close to the action quality once seen in the larger Amber Collection raptors.
Collectors had long been waiting for more screen-accurate JPIII raptors from Mattel, and while the Isla Sorna Encounter set has some quirks to its presentation, overall both the raptor and the additional pieces make for a solid set to display and handle. With companies like Nanmu having entered the articulation market, the bar is obviously getting set higher for JP action figures; but for the price and content, the Isla Sorna encounter set is a respectable release – more so than the actual film was, depending on who you ask.
Although Hammond Collection figures have a habit of selling out unpleasantly quickly, you can probably still find the Encounter Set for close to retail price on Amazon as of this writing.
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