Tapejara (Jurassic World Dino Rivals/Primal Attack Savage Strike by Mattel)

Ever since I, Emperor Dinobot, managed to get most of my Jurassic pterosaurs on the ceiling, I made the reealization that doing so would make it impossible for me to review certain individuals, especially many of the repaints and retools Mattel has released in the last few years.

However, upon reviewing Tupandactylus the other day, I made the realization that nobody had done Mattel’s Tapejara for the blog. Had I known that, I would have taken a picture series before putting it on the ceiling. Luckily, I got one in a trade a week ago, and decided to put some words to the horror. The beast, not the trade, the trade went quite nice.

I was excited when I heard Mattel was going to make a Tapejara figure, but once we got some in-package pics, I was left disappointed. The legs were rotated the wrong way, and every packaged individual Tapejara has this condition. Luckily, the legs were articulated, allowing you to correct this error, which was a breath of fresh air compared to the many other Pteranodon figures available at the time, especially the 6 inch wingspan figures whose size is shared with Tapejara.

I do apologize for the pictures being taken in, well, on top of a box. This figure’s destiny is to go to a different owner, and even though it is clean, I did not want to bring it to the brick background, or to my desk. I have a huge obsession over that. Y’all might see the brick backgrounds more often for my reviews, in fact, as I am going to reclaim that area for personal use only from now on. Anyways, sorry for droning off…

The colors are very nice on this figure, “typical” if you may since we have seen Tapejara done in similar colors before, whether it is in books or in other figures. The body and wings are cast in a brown that is between sepia and ochre, the wings, beak and crest are painted orange, with some dark blue spots running along the wing membrane, and two semi-circles on the crest. The base of the crest is blue, as is the antorbital fenestra. The underside of the wings are not painted, as usual, but the facts app code can be found there.

Pushing the button makes it flap the wings, and the legs are articulated so you can rotate them to the correct position. The neck moves 380 degrees.

The sculpting details are nice, stylized in what one would now expect by Mattel, but it’s all a bit shrink-wrapped, and no pycnofibers to be found. The number of digits on each foot is wrong, too. It should have 4 toes and one dew toe.

As I said before with the Tupandactylus, we all know Tapejara did not have teeth, and having them gives the figure 0 benefits. Kids know it did not have them. Why put them in, then? Artistic license is one thing, pterosaurs made by InGen is another thing, but those two are very bad excuses. If the Jurassic World Pteranodon had teeth, why should the Tapejara have them as well? They are different species, and for the Jurassic purists that will say that “maybe Tapejara needed a different set of dna to stabilize it….who knows”. That’s not even how bad science works.

From what I have seen so far, Dsungaripterus has been the better Mattel pterosaur so far. It had teeth, and there’s teeth molded into its mouth. And as I’ve said with my other pterosaurs, the jaws can be kept shut so nobody has to look at the teeth.

You don’t even need teeth for eating bananas.

Maybe this is the look they were going for. It’s definitely getting a very low score, and the funny thing is, this figure is considered rare. I rarely saw it in the wild when it was out, but I got the Dino Rivals version, which also has a highly sought after collector card. Being released in the Dino Rivals line and later in Primal Attack is problematic for those who are obsessive about the facts app, as if you buy it secondhand, you’re more likely to get the Dino Rivals version than the Primal Attack one. Both figures are identical except for the Primal Attack one not having the card included, and chances are that the scan code will be the same for the Dino Rivals figure, leaving the facts app list incomplete. I have had 6 cross my hands since it was released, and they all scanned for the Dino Rivals listing. Sorry. Mattel should clean up the old lists anyways, because God knows that stuff bothers me almost as much as the thing with the teeth.