During the Cretaceous, Paralititan and its kin were some of the biggest creatures to ever exist on the planet. Paralititan stromeri or tidal giant lived 95 million years ago in an intertidal mangrove biome. The mangroves were along the southern shore of the Tethy’s sea, which is now modern Egypt. Its size certainly fires up the imagination and curiosity. At an estimated 65-85 feet (26 meters) long, the right humerus is 5.5ft. (1.69m) in length, Paralititan certainly lives up to the title of titan. The Titanosaurs taxon is a waste basket of fossil material and in most cases, there is not a lot of fossil material to know what they looked like in their complete form.
The 2009 CollectA Deluxe version of this amazing animal is smaller than you would expect. At 9.5 inches (24.1cm) long and 4.5 inches (11.4cm) tall, as a deluxe model it fails to dwarf the other sauropods in CollectA’s standard range. On the website CollectA has it at 1:60 scale. Even though the head of Paraltitan is not known, sauropod skulls tend to be small compared to the rest of their body, and I find it interesting just how big the head is on this figure. That is one big noggin for its neck to hold up. Since there is no known skull material for this animal, we can leave the skull shape to the imagination. Even if you try and compare the few known Titanosaur skull material, there is too much variation in skull morphology to really know.
Moving onward, the mouth is closed, but if you look really, really close you can actually see some unpainted teeth in the front of its mouth. The neck is rather robust and certainly a lot thicker than CollectA’s standing diplodocus. The head and neck is listing lazily towards its left side with osteoderms covering the top half, and continuing all the way to the tail, upper part of the legs and the flanks. The legs and hips are in a wide gauge stance, and it is walking with the left leg forward. The tail is shorter than the rest of the body and bends sharply half way down. After the bend the tail goes up and to the right side of its body. The feet have five toes on the front and five on the back feet.
Texturally it is rather smooth, with some skin folds on the upper and lower neck. On the tail, flanks, and legs there are some faint skin fold lines. The legs also show some muscle bulges. The figure has a base color of dull green. Along the neck and front there are medium brown spots, with dark brown along the legs and tails. The osteoderms are a grey blue, which is also dry brushed along the flanks, legs, and tail. The eyes are red with a black vertical slit pupil. The toes are also painted in a strange green.
This is a toy that can be played with and is actually very robust. The colors are dull, but not bad, which means it will not stand out in a crowd. Due to its smaller stature, it might seem to diminish the playability of this toy, but in actuality, most kids have no problem with it. In fact, its height is a very convenient for many predator toys. The tail is flexible and the edges are rounded, so no safety concerns there. I would rate this as an average playable toy.
Overall appraisal: This is definitely from CollectA earlier and darker days. My first look at this toy was in a picture. I thought it didn’t look very appealing, but it is a Deluxe, so it should at least be big. Sometimes first impressions are wrong, but not in this case. It is a rather unattractive fellow that is small in size, and stature. It has a strange expression on its face with a big head. The scale is not very compatible with most other toys, and just doesn’t fit the deluxe identity. Many collectors will probably not want to have this fellow displayed on their shelf or desk, or in a place of prominence among a herd of sauropods.
Of course there are some good things about this figure. Just because it is flawed, that doesn’t mean that it can’t find a place in the toy box, as it is a very robust toy. Despite not having bright or flashy colors, kids will still use it, mainly as lunch for plastic and rubber predators. Another good thing, as far as I know, it is the only Paralititan toy that is out there. I am sure in time that will change, but as of 2015, this is it. That means it could highlight an African dinosaur or lost dinosaurs of Egypt diorama.
If you are interested in acquiring one, you can start your search for the 2009 Paralititan Deluxe here: Amazon, Ebay
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I’m a little scared…I tried to view this page from my school and they blocked it because it contained “pornographic or adult content”! How? It’s a plastic dinosaur!!!
What is said of his remains few bones are known and also belongs to the dark ages of Collecta where did dinosaurs in large quantities and whose quality unfortunately at that time, perhaps because of incompetence or bad company sculptors gave much to be desired.
From my point of view but their remains are speculative to make a real dinosaur is pretty poor recreation of the Titanosaurus far from Deinocheirus that when he knew very little about their appearance (thankfully we now know much, following recent discoveries last year ). It’s actually a very weak figure deluxe Collecta.
Agreed, it is a weak figure.