Stegosaurus has always been a staple dinosaur. It’s featured prominently in museums, the media, museum toylines, chinasaur bins, and it’s been heavily researched. Many renditions of this animal have been done in toy form (just about every dinosaur toy collection has one!) so we’ll look at the attempt by Papo for now.
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The detail on this Stegosaurus is really insane. Each individual scale is sculpted, and the plates/spikes/nails are all very lifelike. There are nice skin sags on the tail, belly and legs, and there are even traces of ribs showing in the torso. Unfortunately, for such a detailed figure, it has a lot of inaccuracies.
First off, the head (while very nicely sculpted) is far too large; Stegosaurus is known for having a tiny head relative to its body size. The tail spikes, again, while nicely sculpted, are too curved upwards and they look very cracked (in real life they would have been smoother). The tail itself is tiny! It surely won’t be swatting away any Papo Allosaurs with it. The plates look like they are covered in skin, while in real life they were probably covered in keratin. Also, the plate size is too small; Stegosaurus had very large plates. The back feet have one claw too many, I’m pretty sure Stegosaurus had only two claws on its back feet (do correct me if I’m wrong in the comment box below). There seems to be an absence of nostrils too which is very strange.
The coloration is very nice and is very similar to that of Jurassic Park Stegosaurus. It’s a lime green on top with darker green drybrushed over it, which fades into a creamy grey belly. The outward-facing sides of the plates are brown with a green blotch in the center with a white blotch within it, while the sides facing in are strangely the same color as the rest of the body. The claws and the tail spikes are the same grey as in the splotches on the plates. The eyes are yellow with dotted pupils – this was a diurnal animal!
All in all, If you want a Stegosaurus replica that is true to the real animal, I would recommend Kinto or Wild Safari. All in all – If you are a fan of Stegosaurus (well really, who isn’t?) this is one worth picking up.
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No ears, or throat armor, either.
Also I wonder about that “wind-swept” appearance of the plates, as well as their number. Opinions seem to vary between 17 and 19, with the latter being more recent. Hard to tell from the photos, but it looks like more than 20 plates on this beastie.
Comments on the detailing vs accuracy of Papo in general kind of remind me of election bullshit–where detailed lies carry more weight than plain sad truths. Once upon a time someone wiser than me observed that to make the great silliness of a comic book’s over-all premise more palatable, one needed to fill it with many smaller, more palatable possibilities. I think this is Papo’s philosophy.
It’s a really well detailed model but if you look at it from above, you can tell that they recycled the tail of the Triceratops and just added spikes and plates onto it. That worked well in the case of their Pachyrhinosaurus recycling parts from the Styracosaurus, but not here. It’s like giving a peacock the tail of a finch and attempting to pass it off as one.
Nice review, very direct. However, I love the retro Invicta model, so whatever inaccuracies this Stegosaurus has, the excellent details and natural paint job eclipsed all that. This plated dinosaur is my Fave dino. It’s so distinctive and unique. There nothing like it in the world, past and present. And Papo’s version is one of its best representation. No walnut brains here.
could care less is it doesn’t resemble a real stegosaurus to a T….this toy is worth the money along with the others…i got most of the jurassic park line up and papo just killed it with the detail…great job on all the dinosaurs…
I got this one a while back, the lack of nostrils is a little baffling, and I agree that the plates are too small, as well as the tail, but the great detail makes up for this. It may not be the best scientific portrayal, but it’s still a beautiful sculpt. And, as with all the Papos I own, it is so tactile and textured and great to hold! Very nice.
I love this model, it’s so beautifully sculpted and painted. One of my top favourites of Papo.
Está muy detallado este Stegosaurus sin duda alguna. Otras empresas como Collecta le han tímidamente imitado sin embargo estoy de acuerdo con sus patas y su cabeza el Stegosaurus de Invicta es de una exactitud a pesar de la antigüedad de la empresa absoluta.
Me quedó sin embargo con el Stegosaurus de Safari, aparte como ya he comentado con el de Invicta Plastics
Papo dinosaurs are the most detailed and as long as you don’t care about accuracy, they are the best I suppose. HOWEVER With regards to scientific accuracy there is no getting around it that Safari and Kinto are better.
Us reviewers always put a little personal opinion in what we wright (at least I know I do). Whether or not you buy it is still your choice though. Everybody has opinions.
“What we wright”….shome mishtake shurely, Griff?
Its too tedious for me to edit these things. Just go with it.
I agree with David’s comments above, espically the last bit.
Well, even we (the authors) don’t have uniform opinions! And all comments are welcome of course. I for one laugh at the idea that the Favorite Stego is the “worst” rendition of it…
It’s always good when reviews get people commenting, it means we’re doing our job of making them interesting.
first of all, sorry for my poor english, I’m from Italy.
i’ve read this site many times and i liked it very much…but now I can’t deserve from talking about some ridicoulus aspects.Kinto’s stegosaur is better????????? ahahah i can only laugh at this!after reading some of your review, on papo’s toys expecially, I can finally say that you are absolutely not pro-papo!but kinto’s stegosaurs omg!maybe the worth sculpture of this guy!his head is bigger than papo’s one!…and can we speak about spinosaurs? papo’s one in your opinion is 8/10, ok I can accept this! but you said lot of good things about Schleich spinosaur than the papo’s one! Schleich spinosaur is cute as my dog!! In my opinion you dislike jurassic park-like sculptures…yes, they couldn’t be accurated as a resin reproduction, but imho most of your review aren’t fair,sometimes are ridiculous.
Kinto’s stegosaurus IS better than this. At least it, well, resembles the actual skeletons of stegosaurus.
I recommend you read my papo pachyrhino review, see how “not pro-papo” I really am. 😉
The schleich spinosaur sculpt was edited before it was posted to the blog, back before I was an “official” blogger.
And the papo spinosaurus doesn’t resemble the real thing at allllll. I’m not going to excuse it’s flaws just because it’s detailed 😉
I like every bit of OFFICIAL jurassic park merchandise there is.
And another thing – just because you don’t care about weather or not the toy actual resembles the real thing shouldn’t make me a bad reviewer 😉
But as long as we don’t see a pack of Allosaurs we know the Stegosaurus is safe as well as technologically and agriculturally astute.
One thing that we all need to remember is that these are Dinosaur TOYS, not paleontologic reproductions. And in many cases, art. The real question is do they work and play well with others? I think that this Papo Stego not only does that, it tends to dominate the herd.
(As for the tail being a bit short it seems to be right in the ballpark compared to the Carnegie or Wild Safari Stegs.)
The tails on the WS and carnegie are also a bit short though. If you look at an actual skeleton of the animal, you can see it should be longer.
moo?
You can also see part of a wireless keyboard, a bamboo tablet, and an iMac!
As with most Papos the excellent scuplt makes up for all the inacuracies.
There’s a cow trying to steal the limelight in the background 😀
You were wrong stegosaurus did have three toes on its back feet!
Wow. You are correct about that nostril thing. I missed it completely.
http://www.dinosaur-toys-collectors-guide.com/papo-stegosaurus-dinosaur.html