Concavenator (Papo)

Times have been very hard lately, and the smallest gestures are worth living for. I would like to thank Happy Hen Toys for providing me with this interesting specimen, so I could pass the time playing with it, photographing it, and helping me to focus on something less painful. You’d be doing a disservice to yourself not checking their store which has excellently priced items all the time, and top-notch service. Click on their banner below to find out more.

Interesting is the right word! Did Papo really make this? It feels so…alien… I have been collecting Papo dinosaurs for as long as this blog has been operational, though I had never reviewed any. My collection is missing several, but every so often I find an opportunity to slip a figure in for free. Many of them have been gifts, and it is nice to continue the trend. But, sheesh, if I was not a completist, I would have had second thoughts about this figure. Why? Allow me, Emperor Dinobot and Happy Hen Toys to give this figure an opportunity to defend itself. I will try to be as objective as I can.

Concavenator corcovatus was a Spanish carcharodontosaurid known by its two sail humps, and for the quill knobs on its forearms, though it is disputed whether these structures existed to hold quill like feathers. It was a bizarre dinosaur at first glance, but tall neural spines are not all that atypical in other carnosaurs (tetanurans, allosaurs, carcharodontosaurs, etc.), and have been observed in Altispinax, Becklespinax (the two are likely synonymous), and of course, Acrocanthosaurus. The hump’s purpose is unknown. Some say it was a muscle attachment site, a fatty deposit area, or that it was used for species recognition and for sexual displays. The figure itself measures 10″ L x 3.8″ H, and it scales well with other Papo dinosaurs such as Dilophosaurus and Carnotaurus (1:19 roughly for a 6m long animal).

I have a large, but incomplete collection of Papos, consisting of the first batch released in 2007, and more. I only get them on very special occasions, or if I see any in the wild. I don’t actively go looking for them in reality. When the opportunity rose to get a sample from Happy Hen, I immediately jumped to the opportunity to get it because I did not think anyone was interested in it enough to review it, and I think I understand why.

Dinosaur toys have been available since pretty much forever. Ugly ones, nice ones, all reflecting the era in paleoart where they were first made. Papo is known to sort of “rip off” Jurassic Park dinosaurs, but their models are very detailed, very well painted, very beautiful despite the fact that all of them are inaccurate in one way or another. This is probably because they were emulating Universal’s Jurassic theme park monster’s aesthetics. That is why I keep them on my Jurassic Park/World shelf. Even non-Jurassic dinosaurs follow the aesthetic with exaggerated action poses that would break even the most flexible animals.

But this…this is different than all the others. Something is not quite right. Something feels off.

Exaggerated tripod pose: Check. Detailed sculpt: Check. Inaccuracies: Check. Nicely hand painted: Check(?)… This is being called “the worst dinosaur figure ever” by some collectors, but I don’t know if the title fits, as I have seen worse. The sculpt is indeed detailed, but it does not feel like a Papo. Yes, it is very obviously Concavenator, and it is trying to be the Jurassic World Fallen Kingdom Concavenator, but it even fails at that. The details are uneven, the paint and wash is different and applied in a sloppier than usual way, and the sculpt itself is sloppy, and horrible. It is deformed. At least the jaw opens and closes. I can’t really say what it is about the details that bothers me. It is just ugly. It does not know whether it wants to be a feathered iguana-like dinosaur, a dinosaur, a theme park monster, a paperweight… And it was very obviously sculpted by a different team than the ones that sculpted Dilophosaurus, Carnotaurus, Allosaurus, etc.

Let us pray. I mean…let us look at the details. Again, it is clearly Concavenator. It has the forearm quills, the hump, the allosaur-like head even though it should look more like a carcharodontosaur at least, or like a proper Concavenator, as we do have a complete skull of the animal. It has quill-like feathers on the back of the head, which actually do look kind of cool, but then they taper off and become armor like scutes running along the back, which end at the hump. Then, the hump becomes feathery all the way to the tail, which has hairy feathers running towards the end. It has more armor like scutes running along both sides of the back and tail, too. There are folds of skin on the neck, which do look like of nice, and it definitely looks like an iguana as I wrote above. The wattle is feathery (why, though? Aren’t they usually fleshy?), but the rest of the neck is scaly. The stomach has molded gastralia looking armor for some reason. The nostrils on each side are NOT in their correct position. They should be closer to the top front of the skull. It’s incredible that they got this wrong.

The details are very inconsistent. It is a hodgepodge of all kinds of scales, quills and feathers. The top of the skull has the same armored scutes that appear on the armored portion of the back. The scaly texture on the top part of the skull is different from the lower jaw’s scales, and the rest of the body has different scaly details, almost as if different people added their own desired details on the figure. This level of inconsistency detracts value from the figure to the point where it becomes annoying to look at. Other Papo dinosaurs, as inaccurate as they are, still manage to be consistent with their details.

Most of the body is painted in a grass green, washed over to make details stand out, so you have various shades of green all over. The feathered hump, quills, wattle and lower sides are orange, with some of the same green wash, but carefully applied on parts like the neck quills, the wattle, and the tail. The scutes are dark forest green. The skull has a lighter green wash so it looks somewhat clearer than the rest of the body. The eyes are black and without a pupil. The mouth and tongue are pink, and the claws are painted black on the hands and feet. Take note, Mattel, take note. Even ugly dinosaurs have painted claws. I think the paint is one of the better aspects of the figure, but like the rest of the figure, it’s different all over the body; so different that it just looks unnatural. The feathers look like creamy paint contrasted against a more realistic wash over the body. The paint is just as inconsistent as the rest of the figure, and again, it looks very different from other Papo releases, most of which have excellent and consistent color details.

Sometimes less is more. Papo’s Concavenator looks like an electrocuted dino-clown next to the Carnegie Concavenator, and the small Safari Ltd. Concavenator. The sculpts and paint for the Safari animals are consistent, which I guess look kind of boring next to Clowncavenator after all is said and done.

Papo’s Concavenator wants to be a better version than the one that appeared in Fallen Kingdom by also trying to look like a real dinosaur, but it fails at that. At least the color palette is correct. I do not have to tell you why the Hammond Collection Concavenator is also superior, you can read the review here. I suppose it is an unfair comparison, since the HC Conca is an action figure.

I am starting to lose steam here. This was more exhausting than it should have been. How could this tiny dinosaur figure go so wrong? I wanted to give it an opportunity to defend itself, but this figure is a collection of strange choices. Something is going on at Papo, and I will be looking further into the matter.

As you can see from the picture above (even though it did not come out very clearly), the figure stands out from the others, but in a bad way. The lack of consistency ruins the display, and I hope whoever sculpted this takes note and humbles themselves, because standing out like this is bad. I am not going to say much against whoever painted this, because I am sure that painting this figure was difficult. Some sculpts lend themselves to different coloration styles, and I understand that. Like I said above, less is more, consistency is good more often than not, and this is coming from someone who loves figures that stand out, figures that break the mold, but this is what gamers call a “tryhard”. I am in no way a conservative dinosaur collector, which is one of the reasons why I still collect Papo, even when the figures are less than good. In my mind, even ugly dinosaurs have rights.

Once again, I want to thank Happy Hen toys for providing me with this figure, and helping me begin this investigation into Papo’s recent incursions into the more questionable aspects of this hobby of ours. You can get your own Concavenator here at Happy Hen Toys. There is something to be said about a 2023 figure that has already been marked down for a “Sale” price. See above for all of that. Recommended for, well, me. I quite like it, but that is probably because it was generously donated to the collection by HHT.