Review and photographs by Sketchy, edited by Suspsy
As many of you know, Jurassic Park: Chaos Effect was a short-lived toy line famous for its hybrids. While most fans remember the Velocirapteryx, there was one other raptor hybrid created: the Paradeinonychus, a cross between a Parasaurolophus and a Deinonychus.
The Paradeinonychus has the body of a Deinonychus, including sickle claws and a partially bitten tail with some blood at the end. Most likely this wound comes from a confrontation with another dinosaur, which could potentially correlate with the scars on one side of its neck and its leg. Its arms are really weird due to the fact that they have sharp claws and are webbed, a trait that neither Deinonychus nor Parasaurolophus possess. It’s pretty unnecessary, but things do get better with the head. This is where most of the Parasaurolophus traits shine forth with the long crest and the overall head shape.
The teeth are the only Deinonychus trait, being very big and sharp. I quite like this balance of traits because I’m quite a lover of crests on most dinosaurs. As a quick speculation, I feel this creature behaves more like a Deinonychus since the crest could be for communication or something during the mating season, but this is all speculation. The figure is 9.5 inches long and 6 inches tall from head to toe.
One thing Kenner did very well was to make the Velocirapteryx and Paradeinonychus super different from one another despite both being raptor hybrids. The Paradeinonychus’ body is coloured a nice starburst yellow with bright purple on the back outlined by black stripes. On the face, the body is black and yellow with sharp blue markings over the eyes. Like the other Chaos Effect figures, it is a very split argument on whether such bright and flashy colors are good or not. While they make it look aimed mainly at children than collectors, I’m always a sucker for such memorable bright and interesting paint schemes, so I quite like it.
However, one thing that is not that well executed is the action feature. On its own, its an okay concept where you pull the tail backward and it causes the Paradeinonychus to open its mouth and lift its arms. Now, the thing I like about this figure is that, thanks to the neck being made of super tough rubberised plastic, you can use the tail to make the dinosaur’s head move left and right. It’s a great little feature, but unfortunately, the raising of the arms causes a big problem as they are positioned right below the face. As a result, when the arms raise up, they keep the jaws shut unless you move the head out of the way. This makes the action feature hard to execute and very limiting.
In summation, the colors on the Paradeinonychus are super flashy and memorable like most other figures in the Chaos Effect line. However, the issues with the action feature brings it down in my opinion. If you want to buy this figure, eBay is your best hope, as it can offer this figure for $20-40 US in varying conditions out of the box. But for mint-in-box, it will easily cost over $100.
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I wonder if this somehow influenced the similar Chap Mei mini Parasaurolophus… Strange coincidence this was reviewed right after I reviewed that one, and even mentioned Paradeinonychus: http://dinotoyblog.com/2019/11/01/parasaurolophus-minichap-mei/