Plateosaurus (Jurassic Hunters by Geoworld)

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Review and photos by Takama, edited by Suspsy

If there is one group of dinosaurs that toy companies seem to dislike more than ornithopods (due to the fact that they are thought to be poor sellers) then it would be the prosauropods, or sauropodomorphs as they’re now called. When a modern company makes a line of dinosaur figures, they almost always neglect this family of dinosaurs, with the sole exception of one species. And that species is Plateosaurus.

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Plateosaurus is the most common sauropodomorph genus made for the dinosaur toy market. And whenever a company decides to make just one representative of the family, it usually always ends up being this one, despite the fact that there are other distinct species in the family like Melanorosaurus and Thecodontosaurus. And once they do make a Plateosaurus for the line, it almost always remains the only sauropodomorph to ever grace the entire line.

This brings me to the Plateosaurus model made by Geoworld for their Jurassic Hunters line. It remains to this day the only sauropodomorph figure in the entire 96 figure (soon to be 102) collection of prehistoric animals. With so many known species, you would think that at least one of them would be another sauropodomorph, but nope. Poor old Plateosaurus remains to be the only one of his kind in a collection of more popular species, like Velociraptor, and obscure prehistoric genera such as the cave bear.
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Since Geoworld is a hit-or-miss company with a bad reputation, you might be wondering how bad this Plateosaurus model is. Well, for starters, my model cannot stand up no matter how many times I try to fix his legs with a hair dryer (hence the small piece of pipe cleaner in the pictures). Geoworld is known for giving most of their bipedal models a base, because they know that they would not be able to stand without one, but this Plateosaurus remains to be the only model that really needs a base despite not having one.

​In terms of accuracy, this model is pretty much a dud. It’s in a tripod position that makes it look like it was from the mid 20th century, similar to the Carnegie Collection model. The tail is in an upward curve, which would be impossible to do on the real animal without breaking the vertebrae. Also, the tail might be too short. The head of this figure seems decent, although it looks a little cartoonish. About the only thing Geoworld seemed to get right on this model is the number of digits on the hands. Unfortunately, the fingers are not the correct length, making them more uniform when Plateosaurus is known for having some weirdly shaped hands (for a model that gets this right, see the CollectA version reviewed by Gwangi). The colors on this figure are mostly a dark sky color blue with some orange stripes painted on. The claws are painted black and the midsection of the bottom half of the figure is colored in a light tan. The eyes are yellow and the teeth are white.

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Overall, this is another miss from Geoworld. I can’t recommend it to those who like realistic replicas. If this model is based off of a piece of artwork, then I’m not aware of it, although I would not be surprised if it is. If you want one, you can buy it cheaply from www.dejankins.com.