Before we begin the review I would first like to thank the generous folks over at ToyMonster, for sending me a large selection of Captivz figures for me to share with the blog.
Pyroraptor olympius is a species of dromaeosaur that lived in what is now southern France during the late Cretaceous. Although it had a starring role in the 2003 documentary Dinosaur Planet and Jurassic World: Dominion it’s not a dinosaur worth getting too excited about. All we have from the holotype is the second claw of the left foot. Additional material attributed to Pyroraptor amounts to nothing more than a couple of teeth, a handful of leg and arm bones, and a couple vertebrae. Certainly not enough to confidently reconstruct the animal. I imagine the only reason it was included in Jurassic World: Dominion is because its name sounded cool. Pyroraptor means “fire thief” and it got that name because it was found after a forest fire.
This is the first Pyroraptor review for the blog and I imagine that’s because the Mattel mainline Pyroraptor was absolutely abysmal and none of the reviewers wanted to buy it. Recently Mattel released one in the Hammond Collection that does the movie design justice, but I think the best Pyroraptor available is the one we’re looking at today, by ToyMonster. This toy has been released in other Captivz sets but the one I’m reviewing is the first one I’ve been able to get my hands on.
In typical Jurassic World fashion, the animal in the film was much larger than the actual Pyroraptor, measuring 7.9’ (2.4 meters) long in the film. The Captivz toy measures about 3.75” (9.5 cm) when you include the upward curve in the tail and stands 2” (5.08 cm) tall. This puts the toy at 1/25 in scale when scaled down from the movie’s Pyroraptor. The actual Pyroraptor probably measured about 5’ (1.5 meters). When scaled down from that length the toy is about 1/16 in scale, which means it scales well with the Mattel Jurassic World humans if you want it to be scientifically accurate.
Although I was happy to see feathered dinosaurs finally appear in the Jurassic World franchise, I wasn’t thrilled with the designs of some of the animals that sported the feathers. I found the Pyroraptor to be particularly grotesque, a throwback to the early 00’s when feathered dinosaurs looked like lizards in chicken costumes, a time when artists didn’t know how to feather a dinosaur and the notion of observing birds apparently didn’t occur to them.
Thankfully, with a figure as small as this Captivz one a lot of the uglier features are hard to discern or get completely lost. The head is still a bit shrink wrapped and the teeth extend past the maxilla but it’s not a big deal with a lot of the uglier facial features smoothed out. Inaccuracies like the wrist-wings and bare skinned underside vanish at this scale as well.
I don’t really like the positioning of the wings, but it does afford the model some stability. I almost always prefer folded wings on figures, even with extant birds. With them open like they are it does make it easier to admire the feather detail, and it should be appreciated that these are proper, decently sized wings. There’s a crest of feathers coming off the back of the head and feathers along the tail, with some larger display feathers on the tip.
This figure has come with a few different paint jobs, depending on the set it comes with. This one is part of the Dino-Tracker’s set which assigns its dinosaurs to a particular biome and tries to match its color with it. This Pyroraptor comes from a snow/mountain biome and is mostly white with blue highlights. I like this more than what we see in the movie, and it makes more sense for an animal associated with cold environments. The face and feet are gray, eyes black, and inside of the mouth is pink.
The Captivz Pyroraptor manages to highlight the strengths of Jurassic World’s design while smoothing out its faults. The result is a surprisingly decent feathered dromaeosaur that scales well with other static dinosaur toys. I think this is another fine example of a Captivz toy that should have broad appeal outside of the Jurassic World fandom, especially among dromaeosaur enthusiasts.
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