Kong: Skull Island is hoping to get a jump on the summer movie rush when it releases on March 10, 2017. Anticipation has been building for the fantasy/adventure epic via the release of some pulse-pounding trailers that tease not only Kong himself but the other terrifying monsters that inhabit Skull Island.

So far we’ve gotten only small, tantalizing glimpses of the menagerie of strange prehistoric creatures that call Skull Island home. Now thanks to a rather extensive set of merchandise images, we’ve gotten a better look at the monsters that will be tearing up the screen, and menacing the likes of Tom Hiddleston and Brie Larson, come March.

Idle Hands (via Heroic Hollywood) has a bunch of images showing what the tie-in toys from Kong: Skull Island will look like. Among the most intriguing of the monsters we get to see via the toy images is the Skullcrawler, the horror-movie-looking beasts briefly glimpsed in the trailers. The Skullcrawler comes with the “Creature Contact Set - Dino Monster with Shack and Figure” and looks pretty freaky even in its miniaturized plastic form. The Skull Island toy line also includes helicopter, boat and jeep sets that all come with monsters and human figures. And of course there’s a giant Kong toy as well that comes with a tiny (very brave) human with a rocket launcher.

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The Skullcrawler name doesn’t appear to be official, if in fact the “Dino Monster” moniker shared by Idle Hands is accurate. Skullcrawler however is a very appropriate name for the creature in question, since it’s basically a two-legged crawling dinosaur with a bizarre skull-head. The Skullcrawler is nothing like any of the monsters we saw in Peter Jackson’s King Kong remake, and that bodes well for Skull Island being stranger and scarier than anything Jackson dreamed up.

Kong: Skull Island will not only have to overcome comparisons to Jackson’s King Kong (a movie that many people like despite its somewhat kitschy elements), it will also have to battle those accusing it of being little more than a Jurassic World clone. The glimpses we’ve seen of Skull Island suggest the movie will be quite a bit darker and more intense than either Jackson’s Kong or Jurassic World, so perhaps those comparisons will prove to be altogether unfounded.

The bizarre sight of the Skullcrawler and some of the other toys, including the giant spider, might make some people wish that Guillermo del Toro had taken on Skull Island as Peter Jackson originally wanted. Imagine the many varieties of hair-raising freakiness del Toro and his insane imagination could have unleashed. Taking nothing away from Jordan Vogt-Roberts, the director of Skull Island, who by all indications has created a visually stunning adventure film. We’ll see if Kong: Skull Island succeeds well enough to launch a whole new bankable cinematic universe.

Source: Idle Hands (via Heroic Hollywood)

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