Indominus Rex (Electronic Chomping Version)(Jurassic World by Hasbro)

Review and photos by stargatedalek. Figure available from Amazon.com here and Amazon.co.uk here.

I’ve never done one but recently there has been a craze with “un-boxing videos”, so I decided to give it a shot (minus the video!). From what I can tell this is the first of this sort of review on the blog so first time all around. “Indominus Rex“ from Jurassic World has been a source of some degree of controversy among JP and general dinosaur fans, and this extends unto the JW toy line as well. This is the only JW figure I’ve bought and while it probably won’t be the last, it is the only one that I’m particularly taken with, and I believe it’s well deserving of praise.

The box art is fairly simple, but I find its aesthetically pleasing nonetheless. The box displays “Indominus“ very well, the tail is packaged as a separate piece to save shelf space and packing materials. This is a choice which I am personally rather pleased with, since it saves materials and allows for “Indominus’“ tail to be sculpted relatively straight as opposed to twisting it up like the JP3 dinosaurs did. But be warned, the packaging somewhat deceptively manages to cover her screw holes. The box is straight forward to open and assembly is incredibly simple, I imagine kids wouldn’t need a great deal of assistance with assembly.

Three concerns I’ve noted from the community were the seams on the neck and tail, the thickness of the rubber on the head, and the screw holes. I am very pleased with the seams, they are very well hidden even on the neck with the movement feature, hopefully my bad close-ups will suffice. The rubber was a concern that I had when buying it, but I’ve found it to be surprisingly thick. It also has lots of extra loose rubber to ensure that there is never much strain on it, even when fully extended. The screw holes definitely take away from the piece, and there really is no way to justify their even being present in the first place. That being said, they are definitely less obvious than on most of the smaller figures, and they are actually largely ignorable, could have been much much worse.

The action works very well and is somewhat inventive (compared to the other JW figures, most of which are heavily underwhelming). It reminds me very much of the action feature of the Chaos Effect “Paradeinonychus.“ Pulling down on either of the arms will cause “I. rex“ to open its jaws and lean forward, simultaneously activating one of several sounds and lights. There are several sounds which play on a loop, I would assume they are from the new movie because they aren’t stock dinosaur SFX that I recognize nor are they reused from the other JP dinosaur figures. When you activate the feature the lights initially appear in a yellow orange colour, and then they fade to red after a few seconds and then turn off.

Overall I’m pleased with it. I can’t say anything as to scientific accuracy (even if it wasn’t a fictional dinosaur I wouldn’t with it being a Jurassic Park/World figure), but I felt the lack of pronation on its hands was noteworthy. The head is a little bit enlarged to accommodate the action feature but its not a big distraction, neither are the screw holes in my opinion. The only issue I’ve had with it is that it has some difficulty balancing, but even this is fairly minor. If you are going to get any JW figure I recommend you get this one, a solid 8/10 from me!

Figure available from Amazon.com here and Amazon.co.uk here.