Review and photographs by Strawberry Crocodile, edited by Suspsy
Adventure Force, from what I can gather, is a Walmart brand that mostly sells repackaged knockoff NERF guns, so I didn’t expect much quality from their toys. The other Adventure Force animals I saw alongside this one were generic 80s-style tripodal dinosaur models that they’ve apparently acquired the rights to, and a tube that I couldn’t get a good look into but appeared to mostly be unique contents, if somewhat simple. This toy also appears to be a unique model, but borrows heavily from the Papo Allosaurus. The pose is different enough to be distinct, but the coloring is a dead giveaway that this was not a particularly inspired imagining of the animal.
It’s pretty large for a toy, being about a foot long, 12 1/2 inches to be exact, and pretty solidly built out of a semi-hard plastic. From my knocking, it appears to be hollow, but thick. There are three points of articulation: the jaw, and the two shoulders. The jaw has a very small range of motion, from almost closed to a little more open than that, as you can see below. I can force it a few centimeters more or less closed, but doing so makes a loud plastic squeak which tells me it’s not intended use.
The arms, on the other hand, have a full 360 degree of motion, although it looks like it’s not intended to bend that far. I might have stretched the joint in the left arm by getting that shot.
The colors don’t impress me very much. It’s very clearly a rip on the red and blue Papo Allosaurus, which is already colored in a very uninteresting way that really looks more like a “cool” movie monster than an animal that lived in and interacted with an environment. The cheaper painting process does no favors to what was already a bad color scheme. It’s a shame; the sculpt seems to be a much higher quality than the paintjob, which really brings the look of the toy down a bit.
You may also have noticed mine has a black marking on the bottom of its tail that seems incongruent with the paint job. It was the only copy of the toy on the shelf, so I don’t know if that’s a standard or if it was marked by someone else. It also has paint worn off on the front of the upper lip, which I assume that happened during transport or on the shelf.
Accuracy-wise, it’s decent. The skull, while extra large and shrinkwrapped, is honestly better than that of the Papo toy it’s copying; it’s very clearly and recognizably an Allosaurus, which is more than I can say for many of the genus’ toys. The teeth are snaggled and not all straight; I think it’s rather charming. Unfortunately, the arms have none of that accuracy or charm, instead possessing the same bad pronation as Papo’s model. Allosaurus‘ deadly hands are one of my favorite parts of the animal, and it’s disappointing to see it given these very generic Jurassic Park-style arms. The spines are also clearly inspired by Papo, and while they’re certainly less extravagant and silly, they still aren’t something I’ve seen evidence for on Allosaurus.
Still, the toy was priced at $8.88, and for that I’d say it’s a solid bargain. The articulation is enough to allow for some play without being unstable or fragile, and it’s just a pretty big piece of plastic for less than ten dollars.
While it’s probably not of much interest to collectors (except for those with a particular fondness for Allosaurus), I do think it serves its purpose as a children’s toy very well, and I’m glad that lower income families have access to a large, solid, and decently sculpted toy like this, although it would be nice if it wasn’t a store exclusive.
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As part of both the NERF hobby and dinosaur collecting, Adventure Force’s *blasters* (we’re trying desperately to distance ourselves from actual firearms) are rebranded blasters from 3 main brands that all work under Prime Time Toys; X-Shot, Buzzbee, and Dart Zone. All three of those, despite poorer plastic quality, happen to hit harder than NERF brand and aren’t knockoffs per-se and the latter happens to be taking huge strides towards the more adult-inclined audience. Thought it’d be helpful lol. Anywho, the sculptor of this seems really good. Let’s see if we can get him to look at, yknow, an accurate reconstruction?
The crests look really odd, even a spike behind the eye like Dilophosaurus (was once thought to have) had?
I considered mentioning it but I guess it slipped my mind, oops! They are indeed pretty large- I assume it’s possible allosaurus may have had some skin or keratin on the horns that extended it beyond just the bone, but I also assume the choice was made to make it look more intimidating and “cool”