When designing a figure, it is a chance for a designer to be creative, come up with new ideas of what they could have looked like, using the fossil evidence and their imagination. Or you could simply plagiarise, which seems to often be Geoworld’s choice. This review looks to one of their figures from the second expedition, Camarasaurus, a Sauropod from the late Jurassic.
First, as ever, I look at the fact card, as this is often a cause of strife due to plagiarism. While at first, this seem like a stylised version of the figure, something they would do for the third expedition. However, the design still seems reminiscent of various designs online, something I will get more into on the main figure. Suffice to say, this may not be wholly original,
Onto the figure! This figure is in 1:75 scale, with a height of 5″ and length of 8.3″. The colour scheme is beige, orange and brown, not exactly exciting, but given Geoworld’s habit of extreme colours, this is a blessing. Not necessarily original though, as similar schemes can be seen on several art pieces and model kits. Speaking of being unoriginal, a lot of the design choices seem eerily similar to the piece by Dmitry Bogdanov, especially the spines/filaments near the head. The pose itself is pretty bland, maybe going to eat from a tree. I will say that the plastic quality feels better than others in the line.
Now to accuracy, and this one isn’t the worst out there. The major issues here are the legs being slightly off size wise, the head not quite being rounded enough, too long toes and the neck being too upright. Many of the others are fine, good length tail, bulky body and a reasonably sized skull. The main issue are the spines/filaments on the skull. I feel this was only added as it was popular among palaeoartists, but they are too uniform with no altering size, nor an explanation of what they are.
While this isn’t the worst of Geoworld’s menagerie, it isn’t that brilliant either, bit of a mixed bag in many regards. This will be better for kids than adults, as it is a good size and not too many sharp or pointed edges. If you want it, get it, but you won’t miss anything by skipping it.
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Interesting, the CollectA Ampelosaurus also appears to have been based on Bogdanov’s Wikipedia image: http://dinotoyblog.com/2011/04/02/ampelosaurus-collecta/
Perhaps because he has released the images under free licenses, these companies thought they were fair game?
Could perhaps be interesting to make an overview article about toys based on identifiable palaeoart…