Card of the Day - 2024-11-25

La Vache Qui Rit Jurassic Park The Lost World
Bel Fromageries [trade : cheese : O/S - France] "Le Monde Perdu - Jurassic Park" / "Jurassic Park - The Lost World" (1997) Un/??

Question 3: 
Are Turkeys descended from T-Rex?

And the answer is... yes, and no.

Turkeys are indeed descended from dinosaurs, and specifically a group of carnivorous creatures called theropods, who have hollow bones and only three toes on each limb. And the most famous of the theropod group is indeed the Tyrannosaurus Rex, but they are much too big to have turned into turkeys; it would have to have been one of the smaller species of the group. However there is no denying that they share those hollow bones - and that although turkeys have four toes, three facing forward, and one, a much smaller spur, like a dog`s dewclaw, at the back of their leg, modern research has shown that theropods did too, it was just overlooked by early discoverers because they did not connect the positioning with it being a toe.

This card is also apt because the logo of Jurassic Park is a Tyrannosaurus Rex.

A quick tour of Jurassic Park, for the uninitiated, will start by saying it was a book, more or less science fiction, by Michael Crichton, and it was not even published before it had been bought as a future movie. The basic story is about a theme park, whose stars are real dinosaurs, cloned from DNA, and, of course, it all goes awry. 

The original film, called Jurassic Park, was released in 1993; it was directed by Steven Spielberg, and there were cards - a set of eighty-eight cards, and eleven stickers,  issued by Topps, also called "Jurassic Park" Each packet contained eight cards and one sticker, with a random chance of getting one of four hologram cards. Now there seems to have been two series, at least of the stickers, because they are series one (the reverse puzzle having red borders) and series two (the reverse puzzle having yellow borders). Other cards were issued in 1993 too, by Dynamic Marketing, Kelloggs, Kenner, and Weston. And I am also told by Mr. John Levitt, that there were other cartophilic commemorations, by Weetabix, and by Trebor Bassett, whose packets also contained dinosaur images on the slides; plus, slightly later on, there was also a set by Chupa Chups.

In 1994, a follow-up novel appeared, this was called "The Lost World" and it is that film for which our cards were released - the confusion, if any, over the date is because the film of this second book, also directed by Steven Spielberg, was not made until 1997.

And in that year we get more cards by Topps, a set of seventy two cards, entitled "The Lost World - Jurassic Park". However, these packets only contained six cards and one sticker, there were no holograms.

We also get our set, issued in France. There seem to be more than one card of each dinosaur, one with flesh on its bones, one just as bones or as a skeleton, and one which is luminous - and two cards which has the logo of the fictional theme park, one of which is darker and more skeletal.

The cards do not seem to be numbered, but by the look of it the dinosaurs available are : 

  • Brachiosaure (x 1)
  • Parasauro (x 1)
  • Pteranodon (x 1)
  • Stegosaurus (x 2) 
  • T-Rex (x 4)
  • Triceratops (x 4)
  • Velociraptor (x 3)

This was the final book written by Michael Crichton, but there was a third film, "Jurassic Park III", released in 2001. By this time Inkworks had taken over and they released a base set of seventy-two 3D cards, with a lot of special additional spin offs. 

However, the later trilogy, "Jurassic World "(2015), "Jurassic World : Fallen Kingdom" (2018) and "Jurassic World : Dominion" (2022), do not seem to have any cards associated with them. What we did get, though, was a set of Panini stickers, issued in 2023 - to mark the thirtieth anniversary of the original film.

As for the next film, "Jurassic World : Rebirth", which is scheduled to open in 2025, stay tuned, in the hope that this will be recorded on cards.