Spinosaurus (Jurassic Hunters by Geoworld)

Buy on

Buy on

Review and photos by Takama, edited by Suspsy

Time for another Geoworld review. This time, it’s their take on the infamous Spinosaurus. Spinosaurus, as many of you know, has proven to be a conundrum for scientists. Everyone has been arguing over what the animal looked like because of a paper published in 2014 that ultimately altered the way we generally depict this creature. That being said, the subject of today’s review was a figure that was made a year before the paper was published, so we all know that it will not have the short legs that many restorations have been trying to incorporate in this day and age. Unfortunately, rather than take after the fossils known at the time, Geoworld opted to rip off the one from Jurassic Park 3 instead, giving us a highly inaccurate version of the animal.

​To start things off, I wish to talk about the head. To put it bluntly, it is way too robust. We all know what the skull of Spinosaurus looks like by now, but Geoworld opted to ignore it in favour of making their model look more like the one that appeared in JP3. To be fair, they did get the tooth notch in the upper jaw, but that’s about as far as it goes. As for the rest of the model, it’s your very typical theropod body. The legs are long, the high sail is made of skin and bone as opposed to being a hump, and the arms are nice and long. About the only things that’s missing are the fish hook foreclaws that spinosaurs are known for.

​Due to a request from an member on the Dinosaur Toy Forum, I will be including scans of the cards that come with these figures from now on. As you can see, the artwork on the card includes an image of a black Spinosaurus whose origins I cannot identify (if you recognize the source of the drawing, then please say so in a comment). There is also a little image of artist Raul Lunia’s Spinosaurus in the lower right hand corner which, thankfully, is public domain. The back of the card has information regarding Spinosaurus that many of us are well aware of, however, I can’t help but wonder if the grammar could be a little off due to the fact that these products were designed in Italy and the translation process was messed up. Also, in the upper left hand corner of the sheet, you can see an image whose origin I cannot determine. Once again, if you know who the original artist is, please say so in the comments.

The colours on this figure are pretty bright for a dinosaur toy. The main colour is orange with a light yellow line going down the length of the figure’s underside. The sail is blue in the middle and light yellow at the top, while the teeth are white and the claws are black. In terms of detailing, there is not much to talk about. The figure is decked out with a buck of large bumps that I assume are supposed to be osteoderms, but other than that, it just has wrinkles on the majority of its body. The Spinosaurus is posed in a fashion that’s become something of a cliche for theropod figures, with the tail raised in the air and the front half of the body lowered to the ground.

​

Overall, the Geoworld Spinosaurus not worth your money in the end, as I’m sure that most toys coming out in this day and age can blow it out of the water.