Tylosaurus (Recur)

Goodness, but it’s been quite awhile since the last time I did a Recur review. The company still appears to be struggling to break out of the Asian market, as their products are not available at any of the most popular online stores like EverythingDinosaur or MiniZoo or Dan’s Dinosaurs. They have, however, been showing up on Amazon, which is where I acquired this Tylosaurus for my son’s prehistoric collection.

Tylosaurus has been described in detail in previous reviews, so I’ll just get right down to business. First off, this is quite a large toy, about the same size as the Mosasaurus at 37 cm long and 12 cm wide at the tips of its front flippers. Indeed, I reckon that makes it the largest toy this genus has received to date. It is sculpted with its mouth open and its long body in an S-shape, undulating through the Cretaceous sea in search of prey.

The colour scheme on this toy is fairly unique. The dorsal side is a dull shade of mauve while the ventral side is white. Faint grey spots cover the dorsal side, along with beady yellow eyes, black nostrils, a dark salmon mouth lined with yellowish teeth, and black claws. I’ll touch more on that last feature later on, but for now I’ll say that I like these colours. Plenty of prehistoric sea reptile toys have white or pale underbellies, but any shade of purple is pretty darned rare! Unfortunately, however, the teeth have only been painted on one side, which diminishes the toy’s overall appearance.

Mosasaurs were the largest known squamates (the order consisting of lizards and snakes), and this Tylosaurus‘ skin appropriately combines both wrinkles and scales for a fairly realistic appearance. The teeth are reasonably sharp and scary-looking in spite of their aforementioned bad paint job. And thanks to its soft PVC composition, this mosasaur can take vastly more punishment from being played with by a toddler than any Safari or CollectA or Papo product. It’s also much safer.

And now let us cover the inaccuracies. First off, those claws. While it is possible that certain mosasaurs may have possessed claws, quite a number of Tylosaurus specimens have been discovered over the decades, and none of them have shown any evidence whatsoever of them. And then there’s the tail. As with the Mosasaurus, this Tylosaurus has but a tiny triangular fluke on its tail. No direct fossil evidence of a large, shark-like tail fluke has yet been found for this species, and there is speculation that it may have possessed more of a paddle-shaped tail, but when it comes down to it, I just think it would have looked a whole lot cooler with a tail like that on the Wild Safari version pictured above.

The Recur Tylosaurus may never win a prize for sculpting or detailing or scientific accuracy, but there’s no question that it’s a fun and durable toy for children. For certain it’s racked up a good many hours with my son in the bathtub and at his grandparents’ swimming pool. If you’re looking to acquire one for yourself or for your child, then Amazon appears to be the best bet for now.