Tyrannosaurus (Monster In My Pocket by Matchbox, Series 6)

Monster In My Pocket was a toy franchise that released waves of, you guessed it, pocket sized plastic-monsters throughout the 90s. Several of the series included dinosaurs or near-dinosaurs, and some of the later series consisted almost solely of dinosaurs. The figures all seem to have come in at least three colour-variants, and included cards.

Series 1 already included a single dinosaur in 1990, a bizarre Tyrannosaurus with the unlikely physique of a bodybuilder, including massive arms, in a series that otherwise consisted of fictional or legendary monsters. The genus returned in Series 6 in 1993, which consisted entirely of prehistoric animals, in a somewhat more recognisable form. And that’s probably the best that can be said about it!

As should be obvious from the above photo, this poor dinosaur appears to be a double hunchback, or at least has a built-in saddle for whoever wants to ride it, kind of like camel-humps. While already considered unlikely by 1993, it’s in the classic tripodal pose, balancing its upright body on a kangaroo-like tail. The belly is lined with crocodile-like scutes, which I guess can’t be entirely ruled out it had.

The head is kind of small and gracile for a Tyrannosaurus, and almost looks how I would imagine those All Yesterdays restorations of extant animals would look if applied to a horse’s skull… But what does after all make this recognisable as Tyrannosaurus are the small, two-fingered hands, though with surprisingly distinct and broad shoulders, perhaps inherited from its bulky Series 1 ancestor?

Its head is twisted to the side, as if looking in that direction or behind, and overall its posture just looks painful, like it woke up with a stiff neck, combined with a bad case of scoliosis. With its level of inaccuracy, it feels almost pointless to point out the feet are lacking their dewclaws (not to mention its feet are plantigrade), but here we are… There are some interesting scales and wrinkles here and there that at least give its surface some believability.

The figure stands about 6 cm tall, and is about 5 cm long from the tail tip to the front of the vertical chest. The plastic my figure is made of is a pale orange overall, with the belly-scutes painted teal, which is at least a nice contrast, seemingly also loved by film studios that colour-grade everything orange-teal, including Jurassic World, so extremely that it looks artificial. But that critique was perhaps out of (Monsters In My) pocket here…

The eyes are completely black, and their shape gives the dinosaur a smug look. The teeth are painted red for some reason, which makes it look like it has recently gored some unfortunate herbivore. It seems like a strange choice of colour, until one sees that another variant had black teeth, so I’ll take this one any day… As can be seen from the photos, its awkward posture makes the figure a bit hard to photograph, but it’s not like it’s very pretty either way.

All that being said, it’s a kind of fun figure, and reflects the overall wackiness of the MIMP series. The other Series 6 figures have a similar level of (in)accuracy, and together, they make an interesting and colourful motley 90s crew. So I hope others who have more of these figures will review them so we can get them all collected on the blog, nudge nudge.