The Tyrannosaurus Rex is damn cool. Dinosaurs are already cool, and there is no cooler dinosaur than the T-Rex, the Tyrant Lizard King! Which is why the T-Rex is all over pop culture, from comics to cartoons to the big screen. I even modeled the villain of my new Gamer Girl & Vixen comic after a Tyrannosaur!

That’s right, I was able to tie this week’s List of Six back into my ongoing Kickstarter campaign! Such is the way of things. But Tyrannosaurus Regina is not yet a household name, so I had to put this list together out of known T-Rex characters in pop culture. The meanest, toughest, coolest and nicest Tyrannosaurs in pop culture even!

Join me after the jump for some pretty great Tyrannosaur characters!

6. Genghis Rex

It’s entirely possible that nobody but me remembers the cartoon show Dinosaucers, one of a bajillion little shows that came at the tail-end of the 80s toy commercial cartoon craze. Were there ever Dinosaucer toys? I don’t know. It was about aliens who came to Earth and were humanoid dinosaurs, but they had the ability to transform back into regular dinosaurs. Genghis Rex was the leader of the bad guys, and each team had a diverse array of dinosaurs. Man, that show was pretty neat.

5. Sharptooth (and Chomper)

Is there a more terrifying T-Rex in pop culture than the villain of A Land Before Time? That movie was my everything when I was a very young child, and the Tyrannosaur constantly hunting the main characters was truly monstrous! Unlike all the kid dinosaurs, the T-Rex didn’t talk and wasn’t anthropomorphized. It was just a hardcore monster out to eat some babies!

Then in the sequel, we did get the anthropomorphized T-Rex with Chomper, the cute T-Rex baby that joined the core crew. But I never saw those millions of sequels. Original or bust!

4. Devil Dinosaur

Devil Dinosaur is probably more popular than ever these days, what with his co-starring role in an actual cartoon show based off Moongirl and Devil Dinosaur. I haven’t watched the show, but it seems to be pretty well-liked, with more than just a single season. He’s a big, red dinosaur that’s had a lot of ups and downs at Marvel Comics. But at least now he’s found his place.

3. Rex

Did you know they’re making a new Toy Story? I don’t know if we know the actual story yet, but one hopes that Rex will be back. He started out as a scaredy cat and rose to be a real leader among dinosaur toys. Good for him. He’s probably the most famous cartoon T-Rex out there, and that has to count for something.

2. Grimlock

Transformers are just plain cool. Action toys combined with vehicle toys? Perfect! So whoever then had the bright idea to add dinosaur toys to the mix was a sheer genius! Grimlock is a Transformer that turns into a T-Rex, and that is cool as all heck. He’s had a long career in the cartoons and comics, and even made it to the big screen, long after those movies really mattered. He’s eternal at this point.

Megatron tried to ride his coattails in the Beast Wars cartoon, but that one didn’t matter as much.

1. The T-Rex from Jurassic Park

There is no more famous Tyrannosaur than the one in Jurassic Park. And I do believe it’s supposed to be the same T-Rex in all the movies, right? Like, the dino in Jurassic Park is the same dino in Jurassic World. And no matter what stupid new dinosaur they pit against her, Rexy defeats them all! She don’t need no invisibility or back fin. She’s all power, all awesomeness, and no feathers! Just the way we like them!

——————–