The fact that I am reviewing a 2025 Jurassic World: Rebirth toy nearly halfway through 2026 is a troubling sign. Indeed, it means that I’m a struggling to find any new releases in my local retail stores, where a meager selection of last year’s toys are gathering dust on the shelves. After months of frustrated searching for early 2026 releases like the Ferrodraco, and more recent ones like the Scelidosaurus and Deinonychus, I got tired of coming home empty handed and decided to buy a toy I originally had little interest in, the Zuniceratops. I didn’t have a Zuniceratops in my collection and this one still needed a blog review, so that gave me enough reason to buy it.
Zuniceratops is a small, late Cretaceous ceratopsian, discovered in New Mexico by the then 8-year-old son of paleontologist Douglas G. Wolfe. It was described in 1998 by Wolfe and Kirkland. It lived in what is now known as the Moreno Hill Formation alongside Nothronychus and Suskityrannus. Zuniceratops is significant in being the oldest known ceratopsian to possess brow horns. Zuniceratops appeared in 2001’s When Dinosaurs Roamed America. Aired only a few years after its discovery, this documentary is no doubt how many of us first heard of the genus.
The Mattel Zuniceratops measures 7.25” (18.42 cm) long while the actual Zuniceratops is estimated to have reached 7.2-11.5’ (2.2–3.5 meters). This puts the toy at 1/11-1/19 in scale, meaning it scales well with Mattel’s 1/18 scale humans, vehicles, and many of their dinosaurs.
This toy is not Mattel’s first Zuniceratops. They released one in 2021 that got a repaint and rerelease in 2023, but this one is a completely new toy. Occasionally, Mattel remakes dinosaurs they’ve already done. Other examples of this include Monolophosaurus and Herrerasaurus. This Zuniceratops has a more stocky build than the first, with a higher degree of detailing, and a fun action feature for the kiddos. The action feature here is a butting head that’s operated via the tail. A simple gimmick but the best one for a ceratopsian toy. The limbs can also rotate.
In terms of accuracy it’s decent enough for a Mattel toy. It has the generic elephantine limbs of every other Mattel ceratopsian, but they do look better than those on its predecessor. It has two brow horns, but they look more like Triceratops horns than the upward curving horns of the actual Zuniceratops. In this respect the older one is better. It correctly lacks a nasal horn and there are no epoccipitals along the frill edge, but there are evenly spaced feature scales on the outward surface of the frill. The posture has a somewhat outdated look to it, thanks largely to the low slung tail.
The figure is covered in fine, pebbly scales that give the toy a fun texture. Large osteoderms run along the back and tail and a line of spikes run over the hips and down the tail. Scattered feature scales are sculpted over the shoulders and thighs. The limbs are thick and muscular with creases and skin folds along the joints. This is a chunky little fellow.
The toy is graphite gray colored with dull brown stripes along the back and an entirely brown tail, which is kind of weird looking. The frill is black with a jagged red pattern over it and the brow horns are bone colored. The eyes are lime green and the pupils are not painted; they are the same gray as the rest of the head. I like the somber gray colors combined with the flashy colors on the frill but I’m not a fan of the jagged, straight edged pattern of the red.
The revamped Mattel Zuniceratops is marginally better than their previous effort, but I feel like the older one had a more accurate head sculpt and posture whereas this one just comes across as a small, somewhat retro Triceratops without a nasal horn. This is not a toy that was initially on my radar but for $12 it added this important genus to my collection and gave me a slight dopamine hit on what would have otherwise been a disappointing stroll through the toy aisle.
All articles on the Dinosaur Toy Blog are written without the use of 'AI'
i prefer the earlier release as well…it’s more representative of zuni, with its lithe build. This one looks like a chubby small triceratops wannabe.