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In 1986 Tyco decided to launch its first action-figure line,
Dino-Riders. As they had not done such a project before, they contacted
Jay Garfinkel, formerly of Marvel, to help them develop a backstory and
get a TV animation deal. Jay contacted Larry Hama, a Marvel editor and
comic writer who had developed the storyline and characters for GI Joe.
Larry didn't feel he could take on the project and recommended me. I
was an old friend of Larry's and had previously helped develop Mego
Corp's "Eagle Force." Since then I been working for Welsh Publications,
writing and drawing comic features for their line of magazines devoted
to popular toy lines, such as the Masters of the Universe, Go-Bots, GI
Joe, ThunderCats, etc.

At my first meeting with Tyco executives, including Jim Alley, Woody
Browne, Neil Werde, and others, I was shown the Dino-Riders project as
it had been developed so far. Tyco's enthusiasm for the project was
obvious. The major ideas had already been worked out as far as the
dinosaurs, time travel, good guys/bad guys, the brain box, etc. My job
was to flesh out the story and develop some characters and themes that
would lend themselves to an ongoing drama.

This was before I even had a computer, but I soon found I needed one as
I worked through a series of drafts and revisions. I began to realize
that part of my value as a freelancer was that I was outside of the
corporate family, and so when I came up with a dumb idea or a wrong
direction everyone felt free to give it a thorough trashing, with no
hard feelings within the company. (I've come to realize that this is
one of the great virtues of the independent contractor.)

Once the basic storyline was laid out I worked mainly with the
marketing director Neil Werde, with whom I developed an excellent
rapport. I kept notes as we brainstormed over the phone and when we
were done I often had to do little more than organize the ideas in a
coherent fashion.

In addition to writing the backstory I wrote package copy and came up
with lists of names. One that was probably a mistake was calling the
Rulon's ship "Dredlok." I knew about the Jamaican hairstyle but I
thought it sounded cool and Tyco went for it. Later, when they realized
the alternate meaning, they changed the name to "Slavelok." I wrote and
drew the two "in-pack" comic books, as well as a number of the
instruction sheets. I drew some design concepts for the spaceships, but
these were redesigned by Marvel Productions when the product was made
into an animated series, and I have to admit their designs were better
than mine. When the TV show began Neil was dissatisfied with the story
lines Marvel was coming up with so he had me write detailed treatments
for each episode. I wrote 5 or 6 of these, as there were only thirteen
episodes in all. I also wrote the full script for the "Ice Age
Adventure."

Tyco always wanted the dinosaurs themselves to accurately represent
current scientific thinking, so they hired paleontologist "Dr. Bob"
Bakker as a consultant. As I recall he got a little discouraged when
for marketing purposes Tyco introduced the Brontosaurus, which is a
species paleontologists no longer recognize.

The most detailed account of the development of the Dino-Riders can be
found in "Toyland: The High-Stakes Game of the Toy Industry" by Sydney
Stern and Ted Schoenhaus.

I had a lot of fun working on this project and it led to a continuing
relationship with Tyco; I later helped develop Spy-Tech and The
Incredible Crash Dummies. Unfortunately for me, Tyco finally decided to
get out of the volatile action figure market.

I hope this is interesting. Feel free to question me about anything
that I may have overlooked,

--Paul Kirchner

When asked about possible unreleased dinosaurs:

I'm sure there were a lot of planned dinos that were never produced.
The trouble is there are only a certain number of basic, interesting
dinosaur types, and after that you get repetition. For example the
Tyrannosaurus and Deinonychus are similar in shape, but one's big and
one's small, so that's okay, but what about all the other dinosaurs
that look similar--are you going to come out with an Allosaurus line?
Kids are interested in the big-name dinosaurs but when they start to
get too obscure it would be hard to market them.

You have to realize that in the toy industry, if you have a line that
lasts even three years, as the Dino-Riders did, you consider that a
major success. A line like GI Joe or Barbie that goes on year after
year is the rare exception.

When asked what is his favourite dinosaur is:

Which one do I like best? Guess I'll have to be unoriginal and say the
T-Rex!

Many thanks to Mr. Kirchner for taking the time so write that up for me. I think it can be agreed that we owe him a lot of thanks for the series turning out as great as it did. Hopefully I will be able to bring you some more great stuff from Paul in the future.