Tyrannosaurus rex (Bendable by UKRD)

Review and photos by Funk, edited by Suspsy

Yet another Tyrannosaurus toy review you say? Well, this one is unlike most others, and is rather baffling in some of its design choices, so there should be enough novel things to say about it. It’s the UKRD bendable Tyrannosaurus, part of a 1992 line that seemed to be rubbery versions of the UKRD dinosaurs that existed in more standard versions of roughly the same size, but in rigid poses of harder plastic. These dinosaurs appear to have had a “skeleton” of metal wires inside, which, in theory, should make them poseable, but I can’t say this was really successful. 

The limbs and tails could be posed, but the plastic is just about hard enough that I could never manage to pose the necks or heads, if that was ever even supposed to be possible. The limbs were only really poseable by the joints that attach to the bodies, not really much beyond that point, and to make matters worse, they could only easily be bent away from the body, as opposed to toward the front or back, which would seem more natural. And even then, the dinosaurs chosen for the line mostly didn’t even have limbs long enough for this bending to make much of a difference. What’s the point in bending the very tubby legs of the line’s Triceratops?

The bipedal dinosaurs, like this Tyrannosaurus, fared slightly better, but the only pose beside a stiff standing pose that could be applied was a useless “spread eagle” pose. You may wonder why I’m writing much of this in past tense, but that’s because all my figures from this line seem to have become even less mobile than they originally were, as it seems the metal wires inside have broken. This is possibly due to age, or even due to rough playing, but it has left many of them permanently in these aforementioned, helpless spread eagle poses, which doesn’t really add to playability. I wonder if others with these toys have the same problem, if so, leave a comment!

So in this case, the Tyrannosaurus, the legs and tail are long enough to at least give it a stiff, tripodal standing pose that it doesn’t tip over from, and it actually stands pretty solidly. I attempted to give it a more modern, horizontal pose by arching the tail down, but it couldn’t really be bent enough to make much difference. But if even a figure like Velociraptor, with the longest arms of the line, can’t pose them properly, what did they expect by making Tyrannosaurus arms, notorious for their puniness, poseable? The bendable feature is basically useless in this case.

My only explanation is that these toys were not necessarily meant to be posable, but just flexible enough that the rubber could give in so that the limbs and tail could be moved while playing, without having to stay in place in a different pose. One thing they all have in common are paired holes that seem to be placed near the main joints where they would presumably be bent while playing. Perhaps this was to make the plastic more flexible? That’s not so noticeable compared to the huge gaps in the inner thighs and armpits (for lack of a better word), which probably help with mobility, but look rather ridiculous.

Moving away from the bendable features, the figure itself is recognizable as an equivalent of the line’s standard Tyrannosaurus of almost the same size, but it also has some peculiarities of its own, mainly in colouration. The bendable toy stands about 11 cm tall and is about 17 cm long, whereas the standard toy is “only” about 9.5 cm tall and 15 cm long. The sculpt of the bendable figure is clearly modelled after the smaller toy, but with somewhat rougher details, perhaps due to the softer rubber. Like many of the smaller UKRD toys, they seem to have taken cues from John Sibbick’s art for the 1985 Encyclopaedia of Dinosaurs, but not as closely as some of the others.

The skin is very wrinkly, almost saggy-looking, with sculpted scales only on the head and back of the neck. The head seems too small, but I think that might be because the Sibbick illustration shows Tyrannosaurus from almost a frog’s perspective, with the head high up in the air due to the tripod pose, and because it is pulling off meat from a carcass below. The sculptor of these toys may have interpreted that as the actual proportions, though it’s a result of perspective. Both toys have their halluxes poking out directly behind their feet, but in the bendable one, one leg is even worse off, where the dewclaw on one foot is almost on its way to the outer side of the leg.

The colouration is dramatically different between the two toys; the standard Tyrannosaurus is blue with a red back, grey underside, and orange eyes with black pupils, but the bendable version is a bright green with darker green, sporadic stripes, a cream coloured underside, and demonic red eyes without pupils. I find the latter colour scheme far more interesting, and probably also more fitting for a large predator (perhaps apart from the entirely red eyes). Both figures have an odd grin where only the front teeth are visible, and this is accentuated by their white paint, which is much more sloppily applied in the bendable figure, which also makes it look a bit goofier. It also has very white claws, whereas it is unclear if the claws were painted in the standard version. Or maybe the paint has just worn off.

Okay, that was an awful lot about a figure that probably isn’t remembered fondly by anyone, if even remembered at all, but it’s at least part of an interesting idea that wasn’t really executed well as far as I’m concerned. I can’t really recommend it for its main selling point, its bendability, but the colour scheme is pretty cool, which kind of makes up for it. If most other toys of this line have fared like mine, you’ll probably not be able to find copies with intact metal wires, and you might end up with a poor spread eagled dinosaur, so be sure to ask the seller about this if you for some reason want to obtain them anyway.