Without much fanfare, late 2023 saw the release of a whole new line of Jurassic World products from Mattel. Dubbed Bite Club (Get it? Like Fight Club?), these figures are sculpted in the chibi style that is common in anime and manga. The chibi art style originates in Japan. Things made in this style tend to have exaggerated features including chubby bodies, large heads, stubby limbs, and minimal detail. Mattel has other lines that fit this description, like the discontinued Snap Squad, and Funko Pop! is probably the most familiar western company to adopt the chibi look.
Three figures were released in the first wave of Bite Club figures: Blue the Velociraptor, Tyrannosaurus, and the Triceratops we’re looking at today. Truth be told, these figures had little appeal to me. Sure, they’re cute, but I wasn’t interested in collecting them. My wife on the other hand fell in love with them and in a strange twist of fate she ended up receiving more dinosaurs for Christmas than I did. Since their announcement I’ve heard little talk about these figures, and I wonder how well they’ve been selling. I never saw them in stores and ended up getting them online. As of this writing no new Bite Club figures have been announced.
We’re starting with the Triceratops but it’s my plan to get through all three of them in short order. Like all Bite Club figures the toy comes packaged in an attractive box with a clear window on the front. If it were me collecting these, I would keep them in the boxes, but my wife wanted them loose, and they do belong to her after all. She did keep the boxes though, which is handy for this review.
This chunky Trike is presented with a cantankerous demeanor. She’s looking over her right shoulder while kicking some sand over one of her dino-droppings. Her brows are furrowed, and her right eye is looking behind her while the left eye is looking forward. Her face looks strained and agitated, as though she were in the process of pushing out a dropping, rather than the relieved expression she should probably have after passing one.
Every feature of the toy is short, plump, and round. The torso is basically a ball, the tail not much more than a nub, and the limbs are so short her rotund belly almost drags on the ground. The head is exceptionally large and since the right hindfoot doesn’t touch the ground it makes her forward heavy, making her prone to tipping forward.
Detail work is limited, as is the style, but she does have the large dark brown feature scales of the Jurassic Park Triceratops. Large scales can be seen on the frill and on the brow and faint grooves are etched into her horns. Saggy skin folds are present around the extremities.
The pile of poop that comes with the toy is detailed with lifelike coils and a little tip leaning over on the top. The kicked-up sand is nicely sculpted, spraying up and over the turd in a realistic fashion. Look at that, it only took 260 reviews for me to finally review dinosaur scat on here. The figure is painted brown with tan horns, gray toenails, and yellow eyes with black pupils. The paint application is quite good and better than that on a lot of the Funko Pop! toys I’ve seen.
The Bite Club Triceratops won’t appeal to every collector but if you have a fondness for the whimsical or cute then you might want to consider them. The Bite Club figures are still available online and can be found on Amazon for $9.99 apiece. Hopefully these figures do well, it would be interesting to see how Mattel would make other dinosaurs in this style. I can only imagine what a Dilophosaurus, Pachycephalosaurus, or Dimetrodon might look like in this style.
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