Qianzhousaurus (Wild Safari by Safari Ltd.)

Review and photographs by Loon, edited by Suspsy

For a long time, long-snouted tyrannosaurids like Alioramus weren’t considered a true group. After all, a long snout isn’t uncommon for tyrannosaurs, at least in juveniles, which all known specimens of Alioramus were. This all changed in 2014 with a paper by Lü et al. that described Qianzhousaurus sinensis. Known from a well-preserved portion of its skeleton, this 20-foot long tyrannosaurid lived during the Late Cretaceous in what is now southern China. The long snout was very similar to Alioramus, however, the bones were fused, meaning this animal was an adult. Establishing the long-snouted tyrannosaurs as their own group, the alioramini, they were also widely dispersed across Asia.

Safari’s 2020 Qianzhousaurus is a decent- sized figure, measuring about 9.5 inches (24 cm) long from the snout tip to tail tip. This makes it roughly 1:35 scale. The pose is pretty basic, but still nice. Amazingly, it stands on its tiny toes without any assistance. Also, surprisingly, this is the only new Safari figure this year with an open mouth. 

The figure is well detailed for its size, with plenty of skin folds and a scaly texture all over the body. In some spots, however, the scale texture can be very, very smooth, giving the toy a bit of an unfinished look. 

Like Safari’s recent Concavenator, this figure’s paint job was noticeably different in hand from what the promo pictures promised. What we ended up with is a mushy soup of orange and green, that, while more naturalistic, isn’t too appealing to the eye. Brown stripes cover most of the back and thighs, but they don’t help much. They look very artificial and don’t blend well with the rest of the figure.

On the bright side, this is a modern Safari figure, so the scientific accuracy is second to none. It is a scaly tyrannosaur, and while I would have liked to see some feathering, this one is playing it safe.  Appropriately, the body is not as deep as its larger, more famous tyrannosaur cousins and the legs are long too. At first, I thought they might have been too long, but no, they’re correct.

Given its significance, I feel the figure’s head is deserving of its own section. First and foremost, the shape is perfect, featuring the long, thin snout that earned this animal the nickname “Pinocchio Rex”. The horns and bumps on top of the head are present and picked out with grey paint. The mouth is probably the most interesting and controversial part of this figure, aside from the color scheme. In something of a first, the jaw muscles are covered in skin. This is a speculative feature, of course, but it looks plausible.

The lips also have been a point of contention for some people. I don’t have an issue with them, accuracy-wise, as no one’s sure whether theropods had lips or not. Where I take issue with them is the fact that they cover up the teeth far too much. Qianzhousaurus had really long teeth, and the lips almost completely obscure them here, making it look somewhat toothless.

Overall, this is a nice figure with a decent sculpt that’s ultimately obscured by its paint job, making it one of the weaker Safari figures this year. I’d still recommend it, though, because it still does a good job portraying one of the more interesting new dinosaurs of the past decade.