A year or so ago, Geoworld was preparing to bring out their fourth series, split into a line of six marine reptiles and six ancient crocs/croc-like animal. Then, it all went silent, as the company almost went bust. It was bought out however, and the first half of this fourth expedition began to see sales online. Given that Geoworld made cheap, plagiarised, sloppy messes of their dinosaur figures, but made some improvements with their prehistoric mammal lines, have they learnt to make fewer figures at higher quality? Well, I bought their rendition of Elasmosaurus to see what this new line brings!
As usual, I will begin with the fact card packaged with the figure, as this usually garners the most ire, due to the plagiarised artwork used for them. The third expedition figures did better with this, as they simply based the pictures on their models, but this line seems to have gone back to old habits. While I can’t find an exact match for this picture, I fear this could be another stolen piece.
Onto the figure! This figure has a scale of 1: 60, once more making me beg for consistency among the lines. Each figure in the line features a stand, so that you can make the reptile of choice look more like its swimming in something. A nice touch and helps for creating space on collector shelves. The colouring is mostly blue, dark on top and lighter beneath, which makes sense for an aquatic species. Less sensible is the lack of paint for inside the mouth, as well as the yellow and black spots on the torso, which stop abruptly and are sloppily done. Likewise, the patch of rough skin on the back stops randomly and makes little sense on a species adapted for being a swimmer. An all-over smooth texture would be more sensible in my opinion. The figure is 6.9” long and, due to its pose, 3.5” high. Now, we should address that pose, shouldn’t we.
Despite the fact that it’s been proven for over a decade that the swan pose would not have been possible, owing to the limited flexibility of the neck, this figure goes for the out-of-date look, reminiscent of the old Carnegie model (though with enough changes to not seem out-right plagiarised). Aside from this though, there aren’t many inaccuracies to speak of. The head is suitably small (though rather goofy, as often happens with Geoworld models), the neck has a good length and the body is the right shape. The flippers are close enough and the tail is the right length.
All in all, while this is not the best made model, I feel that there is a place for this in the retro market, though I would still personally take the older model by Carnegie over this. The advantage is that this figure tends to be cheaper than said model, so may sway some. This is definitely more for the playground than the collector’s shelf.
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Nice review of a ……..figure that I am not too high on. It looks generic, cheap and the yellow dots on the flanks looks like emojis.