Review and photos by suspsy
Although only scant remains of Therizinosaurus have been uncovered, careful study of its more complete relatives Alxasaurus, Nothronychus, and Falcarius have given us a reasonable idea of how it looked and lived. We also know for a fact that it possessed the largest claws of any dinosaur.
At around 21 cm tall, this 1:40 scale model towers most of the other dinosaurs in my collection. It has all the weird and wonderful features of the therizinosaur family: a small head on a long neck, powerful arms ending in massive curved claws, a sizeable pot belly, wide hips, stout legs, and a stumpy tail. My girlfriend, who is not a dinosaur nut like me, thinks this figure is absolutely creepy and horrifying. No amount of reassurance that it was a peaceful plant eater that only used its great claws for feeding and the occasional defence will change her mind.
The colours and detail on this Therizinosaurus are striking. The hands, underbelly, shins, and feet are dull beige with scales, but the rest of the animal is decked out in shaggy khaki and dark green feathers. Blue accents are used for its handsome mohawk and the small tuft on top of its shoulders. Even more striking are the small wings on its forearms, which are blue with white stripes. The tiny eyes are yellow, the inside of the mouth is pink, and the small hind claws are white. Oh, there’s airbrushed brown around its cloaca. Eww.
The Therizinosaurus is sculpted in a erect pose with its mouth wide open and its arms raised. Is it defending itself against a hungry tyrannosaur? Is it trying to intimidate a rival or impress a potential mate? Or is it simply slicing through its meal of leaves and branches? The choice is yours. The figure stands well on its own, although a small nudge is enough to knock it back on its tail.
Like other Deluxe CollectA dinosaurs, this one comes with a small beige human figure for scale. This one is decked out like a field researcher complete with sun hat, binoculars, backpack, and pickaxe. If we assume that the human is meant to be six feet tall, this would make the Therizinosaurus around 30 feet tall, which is far greater than any size estimates I’ve seen. Still, given how few actual bones of this dinosaur have been found, who is to say for certain how big it could grow?
Therizinosaurus has long been one of my favourite dinosaurs and this model doesn’t disappoint. With excellent sculpting, attractive colours, solid play value, and arguably the most bizarre proportions of any dinosaur, it’s guaranteed to shine on your shelf.
Special thanks to FaunaFigures.com for this and many other great dinosaur toys!
Also available from Amazon.com here.
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[…] thought. If you combine the main body form of a theropod, add in the large arms and claws of Therizinosaurus (a contemporary), the hump of a camel, and finally, the head of a duckbill dinosaur, then you have […]
[…] CollectA’s 2009 Gigantoraptor figure is very small, measuring slightly under 14 cm long and just over 7 cm tall. Indeed, were it not for the name on its belly, one could easily mistake this for a representation of a smaller oviraptorosaurid. It is coloured dusty yellow with orange on the head and the small tail fan, blue on the back of the neck, orange and blue on the wings, brown at the tips of the fingers and toes, blue eyes, and a red mouth. Quite the contrast from the brighter and sharper colour schemes of CollectA’s more recent feathered dinosaurs. […]
Like the Deinocheirus, this model was also beautifully painted and detailed. Good size, too. It’s almost as big as Papo standing T-Rex. Only difference with t-Rex is that it doesn’t need a tail to help it stand. No tripod pose for this girl.
Therizinosaurus stands perfectly well balanced on its normal sized feet. Another cool addition to any collection of dinosaurs.
Good and accurate review from what little we know of this beast, but the remark that it was a “peaceful plant eater” is speculative at best. I understand that plant eating hippos kill more people in Africa than carnivorous crocodiles! It is also highly probable that T. was a true omnivore, and therefore probably a holy terror to any small animal within its reach, including young dinosaurs. I can imagine those big claws raking the underbrush, and then the long neck darting out to snap up any small creature that moved. Omnivorous ground birds still seek out and relish insects and small animals that have far more protein than an equivalent weight of plant matter. Ground birds today, like turkeys, and gigantic ground ‘birds’ like Therizinosaurus and Deinocheirus are arguably the deadliest land predators on the planet both then and now, in that they might consume over 1000 individual respectively small creatures in a single day. Our small mammalian ancestors had far more to fear from these hulking omnivorous ‘eating machines’ than T-Rexes or other great Theropod predators that would ignore such small fare. Even an adult human would likely be fair game for them if they were still around.
Hard to imagine something with a (relatively) sizable beak/mouth devouring large quantities (one must suppose) of leaves and twigs not occasionally getting the odd lizard, rodent, nestling or insect at the very least, and then (quite possibly) developing a taste for these things, at least as condiments. And that only for a start…
No?
First of all, thank you plesiosauria for that great review! Please keep em coming!
I had high hopes when I bought this figure for my son. He already had the not-to-scale Therizinosaurus figure from Collecta and loved it. I figured that the deluxe version would be even better and would work well with the older model as a adult and juvenile pair. Unfortunately, this figured ended up being a big disappointment. I actually liked the sculpting a lot. But the paint job just ruins it for me.
As “Epic” mentioned, there’s no paint on the hand claws. The hands and claws just seem to blend together. This makes the figure look unfinished. Interestingly, the toe claws are painted off white and this does make the feet look nicer. I may try to paint the hand claws myself to see if it helps.
Another problem is with the paint on the back. The paint was splotched on so thick that the texture of the feathers was almost completely lost. It’s hard to explain but when I look at the splotchy paint, it’s a little unnerving. I get the feeling that that the animal is diseased. I think there may be some kind of “uncanny valley” effect going on (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncanny_valley).
The last issue I had with the figure was the white stripes on the wings. From the pictures I saw on the Collecta web site, the stripes looked fine. But when I got the actual model, the stripes looked unnatural. I went back and looked at the Collect web site again and noticed that the stripes are slightly different. In the official pictures, the stripes are rounded to match the curvature of the wing and delicately blended with the blue feathers. In the actual toy, the stripes are perfectly straight, as if someone got a big paint brush and made a straight line. It’s weird but that little bit of sloppiness makes a world of difference.
My son has had the deluxe Therizinosaurus for about half a year now. A few days ago, he was looking for a Therizinosaurus to play with and he told me that he wanted the small one. He said the small one was way better and the big one isn’t too good. He didn’t offer any explanation why, but I definitely agree with him.
First, great review Suspsy. Second, I agree that the paint job really let this toy down
It’s a great rendition of the Therizinosaurus, too bad the feet have only three weight-bearing toes instead of four (as it is visible in the previous not-to-scale model from Collecta).
I wasn’t too impressed by the advertising pictures of this figure in the Collecta catalogue, but your photos really seem to bring it to life as an imposing and dynamic figure. Thanks for a great review!
One thing that does bother me a bit about the Collecta 1:40 figures is the tendency you mention here of being over-scale. This is a bummer if you want to display your dinosaurs authentically in a constant scale beside each other on the shelf. I’m annoyed by Carnegie’s decision to more-or-less abandon the 1:40 constant scale for the same reason!
It’s a great figure of a great dinosaur, but the lack of painting on the claws really bothers me for some reason. Other than that, I’d be proud to display one of these.
Es ist nicht umsonst, aber die Farben Federn Therizinosaurus in Pfoten Ellbogen erinnern mich an der schottischen Flagge.
I personally prefer Collecta’s previous Therizinosaurus. It’s feathers are much more natural looking, even if I would’ve made them a little shaggier.
Same here.
Unfortunately I do not have much idea precisely (if not all) about dinosaurs I am fond. But I think a very good figure. What I honestly seems a bit exaggerated feathers are raised in the figure, but that’s one of my assertion. Moreover although the figure is speculative understand that they have a belly or belly too bulky. But yet in my humble opinion it is an excellent and worthy figure to take collection.