Titanis (Jurassic/Primal Clash!)

The idea of humans riding on the backs of prehistoric creatures is certainly an appealing one. Indeed, the Dino Riders line of Tyco made this a success, by not only having people and aliens ride them, but use them in battle (note: I do not condone weaponizing animals in any way). Since then, other companies have repeated this. Today, we investigate the Jurassic Clash (also called Primal Clash in some countries) line, starting with the Terror Bird, Titanis. Found in Florida and Texas, it shows that the South American species did as well travelling north as species like Smilodon did travelling south.

The set comes with the figure, a human with many guns and a saddle for the human to sit in. This, and the backstory on the packaging, feels like a 90’s EXTREME audience, where it’s all about muscles and guns, yet this was brought out in 2018. The animals suffer from this, resulting in the monstrous looking Trimetrodon and other creatures. Let’s move on to look at the figure itself.

The figure looks like it should be well articulated, like the old Dino riders figures, but it only has one, the beak. While this adds a little bit of variety, but otherwise, the pose is a tad dull. It’s a decently sized figure, at 4.8″ high and 5.2″ long, from beak to tail feathers. The colours are pretty good, the mix of browns, reds and grey looking surprisingly naturalistic for an ambush predator.

Now to where this figure suffers most: accuracy. As a figure made to carry something on it’s back, it’s feet are massively oversized, a common issue in theropod dinosaurs. There is also the problem of the first metatarsal, the backwards hallux. The nail is huge here, possibly to help balance the figure. While the hallux of Titanis is long and should touch the ground, it’s more that the toes are longer rather than the nail. More troublesome are the front limbs, the wings. It features two fingers and very reptilian arms, more like a raptor arms than bird wings. It’s not something that could be easily rectified either. A pity, as the main body is actually pretty good, with an accurate skull, neck and bulky body. An unfortunate mixed bag: what works works, but the flaws are too obvious.

While this figure has some severe issues, I still like it a lot. There is a charm to it that I just can’t deny. It’s one of the best of the deluxe figures of this line (not saying much), and figures of Titanis are very rare. They are fairly cheap to find on Amazon and eBay. I recommend it in spite of it’s fault.