Review and photos by Paul Carter, edited by Suspsy
Corythosaurus, the “helmet lizard,” is one of the best-known “duck billed” dinosaurs. Discovered in 1914 in North America by Barnum Brown, it is a lambeosaurine hadrosaur and, like its more famous cousin Parasaurolophus, had a crest that possibly served as a sound chamber that gave the animal a distinctive call. Corythosaurus was around 9 metres (30 ft) in length and is known from at least 30 skulls and several complete skeletons. Some even including scaly skin impressions.
As a toy, Corythosaurus is, like most hadrosaurs, a rare sight. Much to the disappointment of collectors, ornithopods generally are not all that popular with toy makers, as their body plan is fairly similar between species. Parasaurolophus, with its long crest, tends to be the ornithopod of choice for most toy makers, but every once in a while we get something different. This Corythosaurus figure was released by Toyway as an exclusive for the Natural History Museum in London, UK. I don’t know the release year, but it has since been retired. You can still find it for a reasonable price online, however.
The figure is in the popular 1:40th scale, and is roughly on par with its Carnegie counterpart. On comparing the two, it seems as if the Toyway figure hasn’t been eating enough. The head and neck are very thin (shrink-wrapped?), but still nicely detailed. The limbs and tail also seem a bit thin. When compared with modern reconstructions of hadrosaurids, which are quite bulky, this figure looks malnourished. However, it’s not really fair to to judge this model by modern standards.
The texture of this figure is very nice considering the scale, with visible wrinkles, skin folds, scales, and muscle tone in the limbs, neck, and tail. The feet are surprisingly small and unpainted, but the animal is nicely painted overall with a tan body, a red crest with black stripes, and streaks of brown, yellow, and red running from nose to tail tip. The mouth is open and painted in the standard pink, and the tiny eyes are glossy black.
Overall, this is not a bad figure at all. Considering the relative rarity of hadrosaur toys in general (not to mention this one’s exclusive nature), I think its a worthy addition to any 1:40th scale collection.
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Is it just me or does the colour scheme on this bad boy look really familiar? Very reminiscent of this Parasaurolophus: http://www.rareresource.com/photos/dinosaur-gallery/parasaurolophus35bis.jpg
For me it’s my favorite corythosaurus along with Carnegie’s, I honestly like it more than Carnegie’s corythosaurus.
It is perhaps together with the iguanodon of the same brand one of the best figures in the Museum of Natural History by Toyway.
Despite this not being incredibly old, it has a weird vintage charm about it. Yes, the poor thing is starving, but I’m strangely drawn to the colours and face.
I personally don’t view this figure so charitably. The Carnegie figure by Safari was released in 1993, a full 13 years before the Toyway version, and it got the forelimbs and the overall body posture much closer to correct. If you took the head off the Toyway version, it would be hard to even be sure you were looking at an ornithopod. And just in passing, this figure wasn’t exclusive to the NHM, although it did bear its branding (similar to Carnegie figures, which were always pretty easy to get even without going to Pittsburgh).