Utahraptor (Kenner, Jurassic Park series 2)

Reviewed by Cordylus

If you you are looking for an up-to-date, scientifically accurate dinosaur, this guy isn’t for you. However, if you like cool, vicious-looking, fun to play with dinosaurs, this figure is perfect. 

If you want to look at the Kenner Utahraptor with a scientist’s eye, there are very many problems; The short and bendy tail, the wrong positioning of the hands, the huge feet, the lack of feathers, and the over-sized claws.  Regardless, I like to think of it as a mutated “park” animal, that would be stalking in the jungles of Isla Sorna (Jurassic park site B). 

There are many things I like about this “raptor”. The big teeth, the huge claws, the tiger-like paint scheme. The sculpt has very nice detail, I especially like the little scales on the fingers and toes. It is about 15 inches long, and made of a very soft rubber. There is a button underneath his tail “skin”, when you press it his legs kick forward, his mouth opens up a bit, and he lets out a terrifying “scream” (it sounds like a halloween doormat).

When Jurassic Park was being made, they made the “velociraptors” about the size of utahraptors, although utahraptors hadn’t been discovered yet. Not long after Jurassic Park was made, utahraptor was discovered, and it fit almost perfectly to the body shape of the Jurassic Park velociraptors. In kenner’s toyline, there were already Utahraptor-sized velociraptors in scale with the humans, so when they did make a toy utahraptor, it was way oversized compared to the humans. In real life, the “raptor” would have been about thirteen feet tall, and about 25-26 feet long- much larger than a normal Utahraptor.

All in all, this is a pretty nice toy- Although it is unsatisfactory when it comes to accuracy. This toy is out of production and therefore pretty hard to find and expensive nowadays, I was lucky to get mine for $20. MIB (mint in box) samples of this toy have gone as high as $80 – it is occasionally available on Ebay with other vintage Jurassic Park figures.

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Images from JPToys.com (used with permission) – a great site for Jurassic park merchandise information!

Xenacanthus (DinoTales series 6 by Kaiyodo)

Parallel to the ‘cephalopod’ series, I now inagurate the ‘fish’ series, which hopefully will be as extensive as the other one.

The Xenacanthus was a Permian shark that lived mainly in the swamps where the Dimetrodon roamed (Bakker has speculated that Dimetrodon actually fed on this freshwater fish; there is no direct evidence but to me it makes sense, since Dimetrodon was huge). From what I’ve heard though, it could also live in the sea. This shark appeared during the Carboniferous and became extinct during the Triassic (a long time when you think of it!). So although this shark may not have been at the top of the foodchain, it must have been a well-adapted predator (it was a fearsome creature, some specimens were 4 meters long). Its most distinct characteristic is the long spine protruding from its head (some say that this spiny projection could have been poisonous, which would make it a nice defense, but we don’t really know why it was there).

The toy doesn’t require assembly (it’s one single piece, no base). The material is as always very brittle, so one must be careful with that spine. For those not familiar with the Kaiyodo line, this is rather smallish (10 cm approx.) but would go perfectly with a Dimetrodon like the Carnegie one. The paint job is lively: two shades of shiny green paint (at parts almost metallic) with black and yellow stripes on top, belly completely white. What really caught my attention was the almost geometric feel of the head, something not seen on other figures from the same series.

The rendition is very faithful: good proportions, all the fins in the correct places; also notice the caudal fin, different from the forked tails of other sharks, which is called heterocercal; the caudal fin of this shark was straight and most likely there was membranous tissue on it, which is reflected on our replica of today, since the elegantly undulating tail has transparent brownish ridges. The spine is also transparent. The head is close enough to the fossil remains to be considered accurate (maybe just small details, like the position of the eyes and the spine, but nothing significant).

On the other hand, the designers chose to cover with skin the curious leaf-like structure of the pectoral fins (you can see a good illustration of what the radiated fin should have looked like here; we see a smooth fin on the Kaiyodo Xenacanthus instead).

It is also curious that they put the 2 appendages near the genital aperture (which is also nicely sculpted by the way!) not paired but in a row. Perhaps paired appendages would be more useful during mating?

This one is out of production but most Kaiyodos can still be found on Ebay. The only caveat is that sellers can be very abusive when it comes to pricing the Kaiyodos.

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