Tchi – what?!
Here we have a funny dinosaur figure. It´s funny and bizarre for at least six reasons. It´s not only its overall look. It´s also because
1. its manufacturer company is unknown and
2. it was distributed by coffee trading company Tchibo from Germany who
3. called it Velociraptor what it definitely is not but
4. rather a quite cool Compsognathus instead
5. who most probably was not even intended to become one because
6. more probably some Chinese sculptors randomly took some theropod attributes (including a popular name) and blended them together, in this case the hands would of course be those of Tyrannosaurus.
The two – fingered forelimbs and the lack of a sickle claw show: It´s a Compsognathus
Tchibo released a set of six dinosaurs in March 2009, but it wasn´t until last week that I came to know about that.
Besides this little Compy I very much like the “Ankylosaurus” (which seems to be a Scelidosaurus), too.
And now for the facts: This little fellow is 10 cm tall and 20 cm long. It´s painted in five colours: Green with darker green stripes for the body, white for the eyeballs, black for the claws and the pupil and red for tongue and the jaw flaps. At its belly it only has the European “CE” – sign that doesn´t say anything at all – only that it fits “European security standards”. No clue about the categories “security” relates to.
Its limbs, head (neck) and tail are moveable. This makes our Compy a good candidate for a diorama story (I could for example imagine it looking after a flying insect as seen on the picture or erecting on its legs, stretching for a lizard on a tree (much like on Currie´s and Padian´s “Encyclopedia of Dinosauris” cover ).
Its mien is friendly and curious, it reminds me of that wise librarian Dinotopia Struthiomimus. It could go well for a 1:2 Compsognathus. It were not Compys like this one who annoyed (killed?) that guy in one of the Jurassic Park Movies. Okay, one could as well say this is one of the randomly labelled Chinasaurs flooding the market, but this simply wouldn´t do it justice.
I like this guy because it is so friendly, has a Tyco feel to it and yet looks vivid. Also – as most of my reviewed figures – it has a bizarre background.
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Compsognathus had a good honest basal-coelurosaur three fingers on each hand, but it was reckoned to have two back in the day, so this model probably is meant to be one.