Herrerasaurus (Attack Pack)(Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom by Mattel)

One of the earliest known dinosaurs is Herrerasaurus, a denizen of Triassic South America more than 230 million years ago. Although it was clearly a carnivore, there has been much debate over which family of archosaurs it should be placed in. For now, it appears to be a very primitive member of the theropod clan. With a mouthful of savage teeth, sharp claws, and a maximum size of six meters in length and 350 kg in mass, it would have been able to give any raptor short of Achillobator, Dakotaraptor, and Utahraptor a run for its money!

As I noted last year in my Ceratosaurus review, Mattel’s terrific handling of the Jurassic World license really has put Hasbro to utter shame. Not only have they produced impressive toys of the main movie dinosaurs, they’ve made sure to do some more obscure species like Minmi, Monolophosaurus, and this Herrerasaurus. I’ll readily admit that I’ve largely ignored the JW:FK line due to limited collection space and limited funds that I’d much rather spend on CollectA, PNSO, and Safari products, but having never reviewed or even owned a Herrerasaurus toy before, I figured I’d snap this one up.

At slightly over 17 cm in length, this toy is at the smaller end of the Mattel range. Its main colour is dark red with dull purple markings on the back, orange eyes, a magenta tongue, and white teeth. As with most JW dinosaurs, the claws have been left unpainted. It also would’ve been nice if the underbelly had some colour to it, but on the whole, this isn’t a bad look. Certainly gives this animal a menacing appearance.

The Herrerasaurus is sculpted with its right leg forward and its tail curled to the left. The jaws open wide, the head raises and lowers, the arms and legs rotate, and the tail rotates too, although there’s really no point to doing so, as it looks pretty bad. Despite the fact that the figure leans to the left, it can be posed rearing up or crouched down as well as in the standard horizontal pose. The skin consists mostly of pebbled scales, with bulging muscles in the limbs and a few wrinkles here and there. There are also a few osteoderms on the neck, back, and tail. The head is fairly well fleshed out, although the orbits are sunken. The soles of the feet feature the sculpted JW logo and the JW Facts app.

Accuracy-wise, this Herrerasaurus‘ strongest points are its correctly positioned hands and its head, which is a pretty good representation of the real thing, albeit shrink-wrapped. The teeth aren’t quite on par, but I’m going to chalk that up to Mattel meeting safety standards. Unfortunately, the rest of the toy scores pretty low. The neck and tail are way too short. More glaringly, the hands have four fingers and the oversized feet have three toes each. A real Herrerasaurus hand would have five fingers, although the fourth and fifth ones were so small that you would barely notice them. Similarly, its foot would have three large weight-bearing toes plus two small outer ones. See Scott Hartman’s superb skeletal reconstruction or this illustration of the hand and foot.

Clearly, this toy is far from a Safari slam dunk. That said, I have trouble envisioning a child who wouldn’t enjoy its ferocious appearance, decent articulation, and overall durability. Another important factor to consider is that Herrerasaurus is one of the most important dinosaurs of all in terms of understanding just how they evolved in the first place, yet it barely ever shows up in toy form. Mattel definitely deserves credit for producing not just one, but two versions, the other being the Battle Damage Herrerasaurus. There’s also a green version slated for release this year as part of the Dino Rivals series. In the mean time, you can find the red one wherever JW toys are sold.