Despite a few issues in design due to its small size, this figurine is an impressive downscaling of the 1:6 predecessor that will display beautifully with its larger contemporaries.
While preparing for his ambitious tyrannosaur series campaign, sculptor/designer David Silva revealed a new side expansion to his highly successful Beasts of the Mesozoic toy line: a small set of 1/18-scaled figures based on select genera previously featured at larger scale in the main raptor and ceratopsian series.
“This one was always my favorite when I was a kid. And now I’ve seen one, it’s the most beautiful thing I ever saw.”
Those words from Alan Grant resonated with me upon my first viewing of Jurassic Park, because like Alan Grant, Triceratops was my childhood favorite too.
Although we aren’t short on good-quality Giganotosaurus toys these days, Favorite’s new take is a worthwhile rendition with a few unique traits of its own.
Giganotosaurus (Giant Southern Lizard) might not stand within the most famous ring of dinosaur genera, but I’d say it’s hardly obscure by this point in history.
In this review, I wanted to give you something different. Today, I wanted to share with you not only the figure I got but also the entire experience of how I ended up chasing after a mystery egg! Before we start, I want to give a bit of a background on who the artist is.
Alas, nodosaurids will probably never be as famous and popular as their cousins the ankylosaurids, undoubtedly due to their narrower, less intimidating heads and their lack of bone-breaking tail clubs. Still, almost all of the major dinosaur toy companies have produced at least one nodosaurid over the years, and these have generally ranged from being pretty good to truly magnificent.
Well, I’ve shown you the worst of this line, let’s waste no time and get straight on to the best of them!
Starting off the top half is everyone’s favourite three horned herbivore Triceratops. This features one of the best poses of the lot (something I haven’t talked at length about as most the figures are in a generic standing pose), an aggressive fight pose, all the better when you have two to joust with.
These six little dinos, sculpted by the Carnegie Collection’s own Forest Rogers, may look pretty dated today; but they manage to blend old and new aspects of science to produce a charming set as a whole.
Safari ltd. stands as one of the giants of educational, scientifically accurate dinosaur & animal toys today; but it’s easy to forget the company didn’t start out this way.
Does Mattel release too many repaints? Yes. Is there value in these repaints? Also, yes. Case in point, this Styracosaurus. This figure is the 3rd release of this toy. The first two times it was released I ignored it. I was disappointed by how much smaller it was compared to Mattel’s other ceratopsians.
The Jurassic Park/World has had it’s fair share of miniature dino models, from the original metal ones to hard plastic. Now Jurassic World Dominion brings hard (ish) rubber, safer for siblings, and we see one and two packs of minis, giving plenty of material to review.
By now, I think it truly is safe and reasonable to say that Mattel has done better with the Jurassic Park license than any other company. Granted, outshining Hasbro was hardly difficult given what a substandard job they did, but what about Kenner?
Next year will mark the 30th anniversary of the release of Jurassic Park and in those past 30 years we’ve seen a plethora of movies, books, video games, toys, and other merchandise come along to capitalize on a film that has now become a timeless classic and a part of the pop culture zeitgeist.
Review and photos by PrimevalRaptor, edited by Suspsy
Since obtaining the Jurassic World license, Mattel has been pumping out a lot of figures in their toyline for the series, bringing a fresh wind into the dinosaur toy market especially over here in Germany where shelves usually are dominated by Schleich models.
