What Happened to Xtractaurs?

There’s something so joyful and nostalgic about coming across a toy you once obsessed over and have since mostly forgetten about. Recently, we’ve been thinking about Xtractaurs, which seem super retro now but only 12 years ago were fresh on the scene. A combo of online gaming and physical dinosaur sets, this STEM toy was leagues above the rest of its contemporaries in terms of comprehensiveness and learning potential. Here’s an ad that Mattel ran at that time, which makes me feel incredibly old. Check out more on the Wiki page here, and there’s also pretty great documentation on the Xtractaurs on PGP:

Evil Megavores are taking over the world! It’s up to you to stop them with Xtractaurs – the dinosaur figures that unlock exciting battles online! These articulated, aggressively styled 5″ dinosaurs are more than just awesome figures – kids can extract each figure’s unique DNA with the Extraction Gun in the Starter Kit (sold separately) and unlock a world of online play!

And lastly, in this semi-recent video on YouTube, Ian Benoit takes a quick look back at the history of Xtractaurs.

In this video, we take a look at Mattel’s dinosaur toyline called Xtractaurs: What they were, why they came about, and what happened to them.

Read more.