The Dinosaur Toy Blog

Review and photos by Nathan Morris (‘Takama’)

It’s a well-known fact that CollectA’s prehistoric animal figures vary in quality. Some of them are good and incorporate current palaeontological knowledge, while others are poorly sculpted and sacrifice accuracy. The subject of today’s review belongs to the latter group, but to be fair, the toy was released when CollectA was just venturing into the dinosaur toy business in 2007. The figure is supposed to represent Dilophosaurus, a 20 foot long Early Jurassic theropod notable for two thin crests on top of its skull and a distinctive notch in its jaw-line. However, CollectA’s effort bares almost no resemblance to the real animal. It takes on a cartoonish persona instead, which might appeal more to little kids instead of collectors.

Reviewing this figure and pointing out its flaws is a piece of cake, you will immediately see that this Dilophosaurus is in an outdated tripod position, but then you might also notice that its tail doesn’t actually touch the ground – it is able to stand on its own two feet. This makes the tripod position redundant as it could have been sculpted in a more accurate horizontal position like CollectA’s Eustreptospondylus and standard sized Neovenator (even though they were both bad sculpts as well). The rest of the body also has many flaws. Dilophosaurus was a long slender animal, but this figure is a pot-bellied, short-tailed abomination. And while it has a fat belly, the ankles appear too thin to support its weight if this creature were real. In general appearance the whole body has detailed wrinkles and folds of skin, a common feature of generic dinosaurs in the toy market. The arms should be shorter but at least the hands have the right number of fingers. On the head the bottom jaw is crudely sculpted and dislocated, while its teeth are blunt and pebble-like when they should be sharp and pointed. It also lacks the aforementioned notch in the jaw, so the only character that really distinguishes it from other generic theropod figures is the pair of iconic crests on top of its head.

The colours on this figure work fine in my opinion. A line of black is painted along the back of the figure, while the rest of the body is a dark blue-green with bands of lime green running down the flanks. The hand claws are just little black spots dotted on the edges of the fingers. The head crests are orange and the mouth is sparkling clean with pink gums and a raspberry tongue, when it should probably be rotten and dull from eating all those Anchisaurus.

So that’s it, in terms of accuracy this model is among the worst in CollectA’s ever-growing line of prehistoric figures. But accurate or not, I see this as a happy little fellow to be played with by a happy little child, although I can’t recommend it to anyone who only accepts the most accurate models into their collection. If you’re one of those people, then Safari’s awesome rendition of this genus might be up your street. I bought this figure because I’m a sucker for Dilophosaurus and CollectA’s expanding collection of prehistoric animals. And remember, it could have been worse – at least it lacks a retractable frill! Always available on eBay here.

Review by Nathan, edited by Plesiosauria. Images by Nathan.

Rhoetosaurus brownei was an Australian sauropod that lived around the mid-Jurassic Period and is one of the oldest known sauropods. Little evidence has been found for this dinosaur, only a partial hind leg, some vertebrae, ribs, and pelvic elements are known, yet CollectA decided to release one as part of their standard collection back in 2009. CollectA seem to have a thing for making poorly known dinosaurs known from just partial skeletons. Their toys can be almost entirely speculative and therefore is difficult to conduct a meaningful review!

First impressions? CollectA came out with is a figure that looks like a Saltasaurus as much as anything else – the back is covered in osterderms at least, just like Saltasaurus and other titanosaurs. If CollectA did some research for this animal, maybe they looked up the wrong dinosaur species in the wrong family! The problem is that the classification of Rhoetosaurus in unclear. It is a basal sauropod of uncertain affinity. It has been allied historically with cetiosaurids, a group that had no armour. Some recent studies have also suggested a close relationship with the tail-clubbed Shunosaurus, but no tail club is present on the tail in this figure. The remains of this dinosaur are too incomplete to be sure.

The pose makes this figure seem a bit cutesy to me. The neck reaches upwards as if its feeding on tall trees. It relies on its tail for balance, but some have said that theirs stands without it. You can place the CollectA Rhoetosaurus on all fours, but then it looks goofy with its back legs outstretched in a double back-kick, I’m sure diorama enthusiasts could find a way to hide them though.

The head resembles that of a Diplodocus, purely speculatively, because no head of Rhoetosaurus has ever been found in the fossil record. The color of this figure is mostly amber, with sky blue spots and plum colored lines, while the underside is painted light green. The lips and lower jaw are also plum colored

Overall, the armour makes it looks superficially like a Saltasaurus with the name Rhoetosaurus stamped on its belly, but Rhoetosaurus is so poorly known it’s impossible to assess the accuracy of this toy in any detail. if you’re a collecter of Australian dinosaurs though, this is the only figure to bear the name of this mysterious dinosaur.

Available from eBay stores here

I know I’ve said it before, but Collecta really have upped their game this year, spurred on by what seems like a genuine urge to please us geeks. It’s much appreciated, as it’d be easy for a company to not give a stuff about accuracy/aesthetics as long as the products were selling (they ARE toys, after all). This mature Triceratops Torosaurus is another pretty decent (although not perfect) figure, enhanced greatly by a very lovely paint job.

Our ceratopsian friend is posed mid-stride with its mouth open – an active but still fairly neutral pose, making it good for both display and play (if you’re buying these things for your kids. As if). Overall, the body is pretty nicely proportioned; of particular note is the relatively short tail, which is often made too long in chasmosaurine models (especially Triceratops, although obviously that’s the most common anyway). The legs are about the right length, too, although the pelvis doesn’t appear to be large enough, giving the animal rather skinny thighs – the Favorite resin Triceratops shows how it should be done. The feet are wrong, too, but then ceratopsian feet are hardly ever sculpted correctly – although it possesses the correct number of separated digits, they are all uniform lengths and all (on the hands) have claws, which is inaccurate. Still, not bad for a cheap figure.

The most striking feature of this figure – just as in the real animal – is of course the head. This is helped in no small measure by a stunning colour scheme, which really is worthy of praise. Too often the frills on model ceratopsians seem like a missed opportunity, painted in the same bland green or brown that covers the rest of the body. Papo took a step in the right direction with their Styracosaurus, but Collecta are really ahead of the pack in giving their Torosaurus such a wonderfully vibrant noggin. It really means that, in spite of its fairly small size, this figure stands out a mile when on display among its ceratopsian bretheren. It’s very neatly painted too, and for once the tiny brown eyes haven’t been given those godawful slit pupils that have become a bit of a Collecta trademark.

Unfortunately the head is, again, not quite perfect anatomically. It seems that the sculptor succumbed to the desire to give the animal a very neat, rounded frill, which sadly doesn’t quite match up to how it looked in reality. There’s a distinct lack of epoccipitals, too, although these would be very small at this scale, and the brow horns seem just a tad too long. Most troubling aesthetically is the odd position of the beak, which reminds me of Droopy Dog. You know what? That makes me mad…

Still, this is all rather nitpicky stuff (hey, it’s what we do best here at the Dinosaur Toy Blog), and this is a figure I’m very happy to have received as a graduation gift. It’s a pretty decent Torosaurus greatly enhanced by an absolute stunner of a bizarrely enormous skull outgrowth. For the cheap price it can be picked up for, it’s worth a punt.

Review by Nathan Morris (Takama), photos by Bokisaurus and Simon

Concavenator corcovatus (meaning hunchback hunter from Cuenca). Was a 6-meter long, and primitive carcharodontosaurian that lived 130 milion years ago during the early Cretaceous Period. It was discovered last year [2010] at the Las Hoyas Plateau, and is notable for a hump that pertruded from its back. It’s unsure what this hump was used for, some suggest that it was used to regulate body temperature, other think it was used for communication in courtship. It is also notable for sprouting quil knobs on its arms, as evidenced by quill knobs on its forearm bones, a feature regarded as a connection between early theropods and birds.

CollectA’s Concavenator was revealed as part of their standard-size line for 2011. As it was discovered so recently, this figure is probably the very first of this animal ever to be released. CollectA seemed to have done their research on it as the arms have been sculpted with the quills intact and the shape of the skull is about correct, featuring individually sculpted teeth. It even has a tiny little cloacal opening. The coloring however, is dull in my opinion, it is covered in dark brown with a tan underside and the quills and hump have also been given a showey pinkish red coloring to show off the significant feature of this dinosaur. The eyes are nothing but little black dots and the claws are painted grey on all the limbs.

It is also a small figure that stands only 2 inches tall and 6 inches from head to tail, which is more or less average for CollectAs standard sized dinosaur collection. Overall, I say this is great figure in terms of accuracy, detailing, and obscurity, and I personaly love it.

Now available through eBay stores here