Carnotaurus (Wow World by NKOK)

Once in a while, Emperor Dinobot, who is me, will go to discount stores such as TJ Maxx, Marshall’s, Ross and others to find stuff to eat, like veggie chips and so forth. Sometimes, some bargains are too cheap to leave behind, and that is…what this review is all about.

i must admit that I know next to nothing about these toys. I see them when I go to Marshall’s, and have seen quite a few of them. They seem to have this “make it look like xyz dinosaur owned by a franchise, or a different brand, but different enough to not get in trouble” aesthetic going, much like the Action Force figures from Walmart. I have seen many dinosaurs from Chap Mei’s golden era have NKOK analogues, and, well, they certainly are some of the dinosaurs of all time.

The packaging is open on both sides, as you can see, there are other dinosaurs listed on the back, and under it there is pertinent information, the bar code and instructions on how to replace the batteries, each one costing more than what I paid for this toy.

Cheap does not always translate to easy. In fact, my mom has a saying: “Lo barato sale caro”, which translates to “cheap things come out more expensive”, and boy is she right. I had to unscrew this figure out of its inner cardboard insert (which is nice, by the way, with the footprints on the bottom and the forest background). I mean, something had to hold it in, right? I am sure both screws were more than what I paid anyways, so it’s all good.

This is obviously based on the Carnotaur from Disney’s “Dinosaur”(2000). They weren’t kidding about the detail. It’s pretty nice, the colors, the wash, I mean it feels and looks cheap, but it looks pretty good…somehow. I do not know if it looks realistic. I am torn about it, in a way. There’s some burgundy red on the legs, the tummy, the neck and head, the dark gray covers the body with some white wash that highlights some of the details, but the eyes and teeth are sloppily painted. At least the claws are painted. Mattel should be writing that part down.

Maybe they should have tried harder on the paint details around the head. That breaks up the entire aesthetic in my opinion. Anyways, pulling the right arm causes the figure to do the Godzilla roar quickly 3 times, and the wound glows red, as does the mouth. The jaw opens and closes manually, and it is not connected to the action feature.

Here is where things get bad. The figure has articulated legs, but when I moved my dino’s right leg forward, it popped right off. I do not know if it shows well on the picture, but the socket has some stress fractures. Truly, a shame, but I guess I got what I paid for.

This Carnotaurus is in good 1/18 scale, so it works well with Jurassic humans, Star Wars, Joes, and the Dollar Tree Final Faction figures, like this one. There is a Dollar Store right next to the Marshall’s store, so I got myself another cheapo action figure to go with it. I thought things were going pretty good despite the setbacks I mentioned earlier…

…but the Carnotaurus was hungry and, well, guy’s gotta eat.

I realize I never mentioned how much it cost to own this uh…beauty. $4.00! It was on clearance. $5.00 if you count the Final Faction fellow. I cannot talk too much trash about this bundle because for $5.00 these were pretty fun. I thought the Carnotaurus was on clearance because someone had returned it, as it came broken, but it was not a return.

As I mentioned above, I do not know much about these Wow World figures, but apparently this is a different version or release of this same figure. I had seen them before, but never once thought about even owning one, or one of the boxed gift sets that sometimes include articulated dinosaurs based on the Kid Galaxy figures, or non-articulated, bright dinosaur models. Should you get this? Only if you need more dinosaurs in your life, like I do.