Following up on the Pachycephalosaurus theme started in the last blog entry, here’s a review of a quite different version of this dome-headed dinosaur. Both the review and photos are by Griffin8891
Now before we all start pelting poor Jurassic park toys with “that’s inaccurate!” and “not scientific!” let’s make one thing very clear. These toys are not meant to be 100% true to science. The JP franchise has focused on being entertaining and appealing to kids and is leaving this ‘scientifically accurate’ business to museum line companies like Safari and such (who themselves mess up sometimes anyway). So please, don’t criticize something for not being something it frankly isn’t trying to be!
This particular figure is one of my favorites from the JP toy line. Like many of the JP dinosaurs it is articulated. This one’s arms and legs can be moved and its tail can also be twisted. The action feature is super fun too. On the left thigh, there is a button that when pressed, sends the head in a jerky downward motion. The thing I find very interesting about this is how this motion of the head is now viewed to be more plausible than the traditional straight forward ramming behavior that the animal is depicted practicing so often. In a way, this toy is scientifically accurate about this particular action feature entirely by accident.
The colors on this guy are perhaps my favorite aspect of all (To some its blasphemy to put such a loud color scheme on a dinosaur but let’s remember this is meant to appeal to kids, not scientists). Its base color is red with a white underbelly. The eyes are bright orange with vertical slit pupils (something that doesn’t seem fitting for this particular animal but let’s move on shall we?) and are surrounded by black patches which gives the face a sinister bandit-mask look. The same black is used for the blotchy almost striped pattern down the back and on the legs. Finally the domed skull is painted yellow as if the rest of the colors weren’t bold enough. This figure would later be released again in The Lost World toyline in an ugly repaint of green blue and red.
Being a huge fan of the Jurassic Park toy lines, this pachycephalosaurus is definitely a winner in my book. If you want to take a break from the museum models and are looking for a real dinosaur toy, then Jurassic Park is king. Since it was last available in toy stores during the early to mid nineties, ebay would probably be the best bet for someone looking to obtain one of these monsters.
Frequently available in both colour versions on Ebay here
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Oh, I missed this one. A broken image here, too. (There are some even earlier but I didn’t think to point those out before. Perhaps next time when going through the archives)
[…] base. I specifically wanted to obtain the red version though because if reminded me of another Pachycephalosaurus figure from my childhood that is very near and dear to my heart. The other color […]
[…] readers may note that this blog has looked at a Jurassic Park Pachycephalosaurus before, alongside a number of other renditions of the genus. The aforementioned toy was re-released […]
Yeah it would be interesting to compare it to the big TLW pachy but I never had that particular figure unfortunately.
I have the TLW version of this figure.
I used to have the Lost World version (JPS2 not making it to the UK), and seem to remember it having round pupils(although the paint scheme on this one is better). It would also be interesting to compare this with the Lost World ‘giant’ Pachycephalosaurus, which would appear to be hugely oversized when compared with the human figures.