Collectors of extant animals are no doubt familiar with Yowie Group, who have been producing animal figurines for U.S. markets since 2014 and for Australia since 2017. Yowie Group is a relaunch of Cadbury Yowie, which produced toy animals and chocolate in the late 90’s and early 2000’s, before Cadbury and Yowie parted ways. There are quite a few Yowie toy reviews on the blog, but they’re all from Yowie’s early years. Since their most recent products have been extant animals, they have no presence here, but there are some over on the Animal Toy Blog. Their extant animal offerings have been met with high praise. For small figurines, equivalent to something like Safari TOOB figures, they’re remarkably well made and often depict obscure animals that were previously non-existent in our hobby. The latest series is the Ultimate Dinosaurs series, Yowie’s first foray into pre-history since their relaunch.
The Ultimate Dinosaurs series consists of 17 figurines, including Yowie’s weird monster mascots that are always disappointing to find. The lineup has its highs and lows and some of their more interesting figures include Kosmoceratops, Atopodentatus, and Cryptoclidus, but most are sub-par figures of your usual prehistoric critters. Tyrannosaurus, Triceratops, Stegosaurus, and the subject of today’s review, Pteranodon. Yawn! Yowie really missed an opportunity to showcase some interesting prehistoric genera and when compared to their various extant animal series this one comes across as the least remarkable, lowest quality, and laziest.
Despite being a disappointment, I still had to buy a couple of Yowies the last time I came across them. I was curious about the toys, my wife likes the chocolate, and my daughter likes both the toys and chocolate. Oh yeah, in case you didn’t know, these blind bag toys come packaged in plastic eggs that are encased in chocolate. This time I ended up with the Pteranodon and Iguanodon.
The Pteranodon is marketed as a pterodactyl, so there’s a red flag right there. It is basically a small version of the Papo Pteranodon. In fact, the picture on the information booklet is of the Papo Pteranodon and Yowie used the Papo Pteranodon and Tyrannosaurus in their broader marketing for this series. Yowie didn’t just get lazy with the toys, but with the advertising too.
The figure is posed like Papo’s Pteranodon but in such a way that it can stand on its feet, and it does stand well on its own. The figure is pretty generic all around though. It’s detailed with a naked body and cracked leathery wings. I’m surprised it doesn’t have teeth and bat wings. The toy has a wingspan of 2.75″ (6.9 cm) while Pteranodon had an estimated wingspan of 18″ (5.6 meters). This puts the toy at about 1/80 in scale.
The only thing that might make it stand out is the paintjob, which is decent for a toy of this size and also rather unique. The body is chocolate brown with cream-colored wings. The propatagium and uropropatagium are the same color as the body. The beak and crest are red and orange, and the eyes are black.
The Yowie Pteranodon is a mediocre toy of a pterosaur that has been done to death. Although it should get a pass for being a $3 kid’s toy, Yowie has set a high standard in past series that it makes it difficult to judge this one positively. That said, it’s not an awful little figure, just boring. I do like the colors though, so I’m not disappointed that I got it. The Yowie Ultimate Dinosaur series is currently available in the United States at Walmart and a range of other grocery stores and pharmacies. You can probably expect a few more reviews of these from me in the future.
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