Tyrannosaurus rex (2019)(Electronic Deluxe by Chap Mei)

Review and photos by Bernie Brontosaurus, edited by Suspsy

Hello, my DTB handle is Bernie Brontosaurus and although I have been a fan of the site for years, this is the first time I have ever submitted a review. There are so many awesome regular reviewers for this site, I didn’t think I would be needed! But I finally found a toy in my collection that doesn’t have a review yet so here it is, the 2019 Chap Mei electronic Tyrannosaurus rex!

T. rex is my all time favourite dinosaur. Sure there are other big meat eaters like Giganotosaurus and Spinosaurus that are also really cool, but none of them can ever come close to T. rex in my opinion. And even though those other two are longer, we know from the Sue and Scotty specimens that T. rex was much heavier, weighing up to 10 tons or more! And, of course, its teeth and jaws were way more powerful than any other dinosaur’s. So it is still the king of all dinosaurs in my book and always will be. 

I think I will also talk a little bit about what Chap Mei means to me. I grew up loving the first two Jurassic Park movies and the toys from Kenner. Kenner did a really amazing job, but for the third movie, Hasbro took over the license and for some strange reason, they did a bad job overall (kind of like how JP3 was bad overall!). It was strange because they’ve always done great with their other big licenses Star Wars and Transformers. Anyway, I didn’t buy any of the JP3 stuff, so I was starved for new dinosaur toys for a long time. And then I discovered the Chap Mei dinosaur line, which was sold at Toys R Us and KayBee Toys. Even though the dinosaurs didn’t look exactly like the Kenner ones and were sometimes really weird and even silly looking, they blended in very nicely overall. I have been a huge Chap Mei dinosaur fan ever since and I am always on the lookout for new ones. And I really love that there are Chap Mei reviews on the Dinosaur Toy Blog. 

And that brings me to this T. rex here. It started showing up in stores in 2019 as part of the Animal Planet line, and you can see right away that it is a totally different toy from the other electronic one that Chap Mei released years before. First off, it is coloured yellowish brown with dark brown markings and red spikes on its back. The three big spikes, which I will talk about more in a bit, have green triangles painted on them. The eyes and tongue are translucent red and the teeth are white. It looks okay for a T. rex, but like most Chap Mei toys, the inside of the mouth and the other side of the teeth are not painted. The claws are not painted either, but neither are the ones on the Mattel Jurassic World toys. 

The T. rex’s skin is covered in many different types of scales ranging from small ones on the head to big ones on the body and limbs. The body also features pointed osteoderms almost like those on an ankylosaur. But there are many things far more inaccurate than that, sadly. The head should be wider and the eyes should face forward more. The arms and feet are way too big, although I suppose it helps the toy to stand up. The body is too narrow and the tail is too short. And worst of all, there are eight visible screw holes on the left side of the toy, just like on all those Jurassic World toys from Hasbro. 

The T. rex’s arms and hips rotate for play. It measures 34 cm/13.38” long and is about 15 cm/6” tall when standing horizontally. But it can rear back like Godzilla to a maximum height of 20 cm/7.8.” And speaking of Godzilla, let’s look at those big spikes I mentioned earlier. Pushing down on them causes the T. rex’s lower jaw to close, the eyes and tongue to light up, and a Godzilla-like roar to emanate from the body! 

While this Chap Mei T. rex will never be in the same category as the ones from Papo, Safari, PNSO, and CollectA, I think it is still a very fun and affordable toy that many tyrant king fans will like. I know I would have really loved playing with this when I was a kid. You can find it wherever Chap Mei toys are sold. Thank you for reading and I hope to be back here again!