Stegosaurus (Animal Adventure/ANIA by Takara Tomy)

3.5 (6 votes)

Takara’s figure is a pleasant little rendition of the roofed reptile and a compliment to its fellow dinosaurs from the same line. It’s no surprise that Takara Tomy opted to include the “roofed reptile” as the third prehistoric entry to their Animal Adventure (sometimes branded ANIA) toy line. Stegosaurus remains one of the most recognizable dinosaurs today; its size and double rows of plates are unique even among other stegosaurids.

Standing just 2.5″ tall and stretching 5″ long, the Stegosaurus fits nicely into its Tomy box, which illustrates the animal nicely with additional factoids. Tomy’s dinosaurs can be rather hit-or-miss, but I’m happy to say this one leans toward the former. Rather than plain brown coloration like the T. rex or Triceratops, the Stegosaurus is colored in black graduating to light green, with highlights of red and orange on the face and plates, plus additional green and blue. The toes are painted clay-gray, and the tail spikes are a woody brown. The overall effect is a color scheme that is eye-catching, but not gaudy.

Anatomically speaking, Takara Tomy’s rendition isn’t perfect in proportions (the head is a bit large and the plates a bit small), but overall it’s acceptably accurate to skeletal reconstructions of the “Dinosaur Renaissance” era (the description of specimen “Sophie” in 2018 kind of upended all that). The animal is posed upright with its tail off the ground as any decent dinosaur model today should be, and the “thagomizer” spikes stick out to the sides more than straight up. Interestingly, the back appears less sloped than typically depicted, so in this regard the figure stands in a middle ground between former reconstructions and Sophie-based reconstructions. One detail that is missing outright is the presence of small armored scutes over the animal’s throat, although the skin generally has a cracked, scaly appearance.

There are two points of articulation in the tail for play. While initially arranged to swing up and down, the hinged joints can easily be adjusted to swing side-to-side instead.

Takara Tomy’s Stegosaurus is a pleasant little figure that displays well on a shelf, compliments its fellow ANIA figures nicely, and should offer decent playability too. You can get the figure relatively inexpensively from HobbyLink Japan or possibly Tomy’s own site; otherwise you can always check Amazon and eBay.

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