Sinopterus (Günther)

More than 100 genera of pterosaurs are known from sufficient remains to make a good guess at their appearance. Nevertheless, only about 10 genera have been made into decent figures by major toy companies. Here’s one that hasn’t: a wind-up flying Sinopterus by German toy company Günther. Here it is in its package, which is bedecked with an uncredited illustration of Regaliceratops by Julius Csotonyi.

The back of the package features warnings in several languages, as well as instructions in a slightly smaller number of languages. You can see from this photo that this toy also comes in green. I chose the red one because the green version’s wings looked too batlike for my taste.

Needless to say, this toy isn’t intended as a lifelike replica of Sinopterus. It’s a flying novelty toy vaguely modeled on a pterosaur and it seems the makers chose a pterosaur more or less at random to name it. Because Sinopterus is in fact beautifully preserved and well-understood, I’m going to briefly touch on some ways that this toy doesn’t resemble it, and then we’ll see how well it actually flies.

Sinopterus was related to animals like Tupuxuara and Tupandactylus, and had crests along the top of the head and probably also on the lower jaw. It didn’t have a Pteranodon-style crest restricted to the back of the head. It also didn’t have teeth! Finally, its face was probably not scaly, and its body would have been covered in hairlike integument (pycnofibers) rather than scales. This really looks more like a pointy-headed dragon than anything else.

There are feet tucked up on the side of the fuselage, unconnected from the tail. In pterosaurs, of course, the feet help control the wing membrane. There are also feet painted on the trailing corners of the tail flap. So this thing has six limbs, I guess, probably the result of combining parts from a flying dragon toy and a flying bird toy. You can see a little crank sticking out of the back. You use that to wind up a rubber band housed in the body, which flaps the wings as it unwinds.

It’s a good sized toy, a little bigger than your standard paper airplane. But does it fly as well as a paper airplane glides?

I did some test flights at work. If you crank it up and just let it go, it glides very poorly, crashing after only a couple of meters. But as you can see, if you give it a decent push as you pull the crank release, it not only flies well, it gains altitude! Mine actually scraped against the ceiling even though it was launched from a height of less than two meters.

This is obviously not a great Sinopterus. But it is a fun toy! Buy it if you want a goofy novelty that flies surprisingly well. It’s available all over Germany, although I got mine from a US artist supply shop. Don’t buy it if you’re trying to complete a realistic pterosaur collection, since Günther is a maker of kites and flying toys, not of prehistoric animals. But maybe write your favorite figurine manufacturer and ask them to make a Sinopterus, and send them some nice reconstructions from the likes of John Conway or Julio Lacerda for reference.