Tyrannosaurus rex (“Cameron” by PNSO)

Review and photos by Paleo Flo, edited by Suspsy

Greetings, dinosaur fans. I’m Paleo Flo. This is my first review of a dinosaur toy ever . . . and I will start BIG!

Before PNSO entered the competition, the companies Safari Ltd., CollectA, Papo, and Schleich (in a way I guess) had been the big players on the market. Then in the late 2010s, PNSO began its rise to fame. It was the year 2020 when they finally conquered the market of dinosaur toys with their high end models of the prehistoric world.

Their 2021 Tyrannosaurus rex “Winter Wilson” blow us all away. It had been the new standard in making dinosaur models. Within the next three years, PNSO improved their skills in many ways, especially in creating real-looking skin with many details. For me personally, their Acrocanthosaurus is an absolute masterpiece. Therefore, it was about time to create another model of the tyrant king with these newest techniques. In 2023 then, PNSO released a new Tyrannosaurus on the market: Cameron.

To the surprise of some, when it had been announced, it was not the homerun heralded with great applause that we expected. Even I had a lukewarm feeling about this. How wrong I had been. So it is time to make things right.

After I received PNSO’s other big masterpiece “Andrea,” the female Tyrannosaurus, I was blown away. I still adore this model a lot. She was something out of this world. My personal term for this feeling is “Jaws of love.” Therefore, I was hooked and researched for PNSO’s other offerings. Soon I ordered Cameron and was very pleased. So it’s time to come to take a closer look.

From the tip of the snout to the end of the tail, this Tyrannosaurus measures 35 cm long and the highest point of the model reaches 12 cm. That puts the model in a 1:35 scale based on the real animal with an average length of 12.2 meters.

The pose of Cameron is not as aggressive as that of Wilson. From the side and with the closed mouth, it looks calm. You may even describe it as curious. This is especially the case when the head is viewed from the left side. It looks a little bit like it is taking a Sunday afternoon walk. When you open the mouth, the appearance changes dramatically. Now it seems to be threatening an opponent or as it is ready to attack. When the model is displayed with the mouth open and it is viewed from the right hand side, it is simply makes you shiver. Here I have my “Jaws of love” moment. The way how the skin folds are executed, plus the look of the open mouth is simply wonderful. It is so tense. Ready to fight off an opponent or to get the meat.

In short, Cameron looks great from every single angle. Even when you look at it from below or behind. It is simply fun to play around with and search for the best angles.

The head is the poster child of every theropod and – no surprise – PNSO truly delivers here. First, I have to say, that you simply don’t know where to look first. There is so much going on. So many shades, skin folds, forms, and details. The V-like postorbital crest is more prominent in this model than on Wilson and is painted with a toffee-like color. It’s unshaded. So some will like it and others not. The eyes are done well too. They seems to focus on a potential prey. In my copy, there is no “chameleon effect” where the eyes are looking in different direction. So, no need to go to the ophthalmologist.

The snout comes with various scales and knobs. These give it a very crispy look, which I like a lot. Some of this crispiness made it into the cheeks. The head attaches to a very thick neck. The various skin folds in combination with the paint job work wonderfully together and create a very powerful neck. No wonder that Tyrannosaurus could tear apart its prey with the pure power of its jaws and its neck musculature.

The exposed teeth feel fitting and are well done. Here and there, the paint job could have been handled better. A wash would have done marvelous things to it. By the way, in my personal opinion, the “Kiss” figure by Rebor has better teeth, which are individually sculpted. That said, “Kiss” was not my cup of tea. Whatever.

Inside the mouth, PNSO spared no expenses. The throat is fleshy and is an absolute highlight. The tongue and the palette are simply magnificent. A paleontological dream and a dentist’s nightmare. The shades, the various fleshy colors, and the overall appearance are simply wonderful and very highly crafted.

One of the key features of Tyrannosaurus are the little hands, which are often the subject of bad jokes. Here PNSO did a great job too. On each hand, the second finger is longer than the first one, which is the right way to present them. The claws are painted with a creamy color, so they are visible even from an distance. The overall structure of the fingers is very bird-like and very fine designed.

Another bird-like feature are, of course, the feet. The claws also have a very creamy color and so they stand out from the toes. To reconstruct the feet right, PNSO added a feature, which originate from research papers on Concavenator and Microraptor: the soft tissue surrounding the foot bones.

These “fat pads” are really big and supported the animal in terms of weight bearing. The details are also out of this world. From bottom to the top, it literally screams “Bird!” at you. The birdy texture and the detailed skin folds are simply awesome.

From the overall appearance, the figure represents the latest studies. This is a robust animal with an almost barrel-like body. It is very bulky with no signs of shrink-wrapping. Its musculature is very believable and fine executed, which is no surprise. Spinosaurus is with no doubt the longest theropod that ever walked the Earth. But Tyrannosaurus is still the one with the greatest mass.

At first sight, Cameron’s coloration is not a surprise to us dinosaur model enthusiasts: his base color is seemingly brown. However, there is more to discover. Overall, I would say it is more red than brown. It gives me some vibes from Kenner’s big Jurassic Park Tyrannosaurus. The dark brown from the belly turns into an overall reddish shade. This countershading, based on paleontological research, may seem to be standard. But it is one of the key factors that make this model shine. The black markings, especially on the back, feel naturally and subjective.

Maybe Rebor does better teeth, but in terms of coloration, no one exceeds PNSO. The paint job fits for a carnivore of that length. It looks so organic and lifelike. The way the wash works in combination with the shades is truly masterful. “To be a painter.”

The elephant in the room could be the lipless look of it. Cullen et al published a paper last year which came to the conclusion that large carnivorous dinosaurs had lips. It can be accepted that PNSO had already finished their works on Cameron when the paper was published. So probably it was just too late to make any changes. That was maybe the biggest reason why Cameron wasn’t the homerun that PNSO may have hoped for.

But I have no dog in this fight. So for me, and probably others, this model is the perfect vision of a lipless Tyrannosaurus. If you are a fan of lips at dinosaurs, you may go with the Eofauna one or you could wait for a lipped vision by PNSO. I think it is save to say that they will produce a lipped Tyrannosaurus in the future because they already produced Saurophaganax and Yangchuanosaurus with lips in the post-Cameron time.

Cameron also comes without any feathers. A few years ago, there was the theory that Tyrannosaurus could be feathered, based on the discovery of Yutyrannus, which is the biggest known carnivorous dinosaur found with fossilized feathers. In recent years, the theory of a fully feathered Tyrannosaurus, as portrayed in the Wild Safari model in 2017, nearly died out. Now it is generally accepted that Tyrannosaurus had partial or no feathering at all. While Cameron is featherless, it could have been interesting if PNSO had added some feathers on the back of the head as on the new Eofauna figure.

As a nice extra, Cameron comes with a replica of the skull from the Tyrannosaurus called Sue that was discovered by Susan Hendrickson back in 1990. With its crushed appearance, it feels like it had been excavated just a few minutes ago. As a plus, it shows what might be signs of avian trichomonosis, a parasitic infection that may have affected tyrannosaurids as well as birds. A really nice piece of paleo history.

The portrayal of dinosaurs has changed significantly in the last ten years and it is not easy for toy companies to keep up. So a model could become outdated right at the moment of its release. Nevertheless, especially in terms of Tyrannosaurus, the models of yesterday could serve as a physical history of the different reconstructions. In my own collection, Tyrannosaurus has the most entries. Despite the fact that Iguanodon is my favorite dinosaur. Tyrannosaurus is just the dinosaur and nothing could ever reach its level of fame. So if I look back to the models of Invicta, Safari, Kenner, Bandai, and others, I see them as an evolutionary line of the various reconstructions.

We have now reached the end of the review. To me personally, Cameron is the perfect Tyrannosaurus portrayed without lips. May someday I will pair it the Eofauna one or will wait for a lipped PNSO one. Until then, it now stand next to the amazing Andrea in my cabinet.

United under the slogan “Jaws of love.”