When Jurassic World opened in 2015, anticipation was sky-high for the first new Jurassic film in over a decade. Fans expected Hasbro, then holder of the Jurassic toy license, to deliver a mainline as iconic as Kenner’s earlier efforts. Instead, one of the ranges that received the most attention from Hasbro’s toys wasn’t the main dinosaur assortment at all, but the Jurassic World Hero Mashers.
The Hero Mashers were not created specifically for Jurassic World. They were part of a broader Hasbro brand that crossed multiple properties, including Marvel, Transformers, and Star Wars. The concept was straightforward: figures made with detachable limbs, tails, and heads so kids could swap parts and create their own “mashed-up” characters. In the Jurassic World branch, that meant dinosaurs with oversized joints and blocky designs, deliberately engineered for disassembly and recombination.
For Jurassic, the line arrived at a telling moment. The film itself centered on genetic engineering and the dangers of hybridization, embodied by the Indominus Rex. The Hero Mashers fit neatly into that theme, allowing children to construct their own hybrids by mixing a Velociraptor with a Triceratops head, a Tyrannosaurus rex body, and perhaps a Stegosaurus tail. Although visually far from screen-accurate, the toys captured the spirit of experimentation and customization that defined the Jurassic World era.
What puzzled many collectors, however, was Hasbro’s emphasis on the line. The traditional action figure and dinosaur ranges for Jurassic World were comparatively limited in scope and quality, often criticized for their lack of detail and articulation. By contrast, Hero Mashers were widely distributed, promoted, and positioned almost as the centerpiece of the toy rollout. It seemed as though Hasbro placed more faith in this generic, cross-brand concept than in the core dinosaurs that fans were eager to see.
Looking back, the Hero Mashers reflect both the strengths and weaknesses of Hasbro’s strategy. On one hand, they encouraged creativity and aligned with the hybrid storyline of the film, giving children freedom to design their own creatures. On the other hand, their generic styling and detachment from the cinematic look left many fans cold. Unlike Kenner’s richly detailed sculpts of the 1990s or Mattel’s more faithful modern figures, the Hero Mashers felt more like a cross selling experiment than a celebration of the franchise.
Today, the line stands as a fascinating time capsule of Jurassic collecting. The Hero Mashers embody Hasbro’s broader toy philosophy of the mid-2010s, when mix-and-match play was prioritized over accuracy or authenticity. For completists, they remain a quirky side branch of the brand, hybrids not just in form, but in identity, caught between being Jurassic toys and a one-size-fits-all Hasbro idea.
See all the Hero Mashers that are in our collection here.
