Review and photographs by Dilopho, edited by Suspsy
Hello, DinoToyBlog readers! Back in 2018, I took a look at the then brand-new Extreme Chompin’ Tyrannosaurus rex from Mattel. Now, six years later, I return with a look at one of its now numerous variants. There have been over 20 different T. rex toys produced by Mattel in the time between, many of them featured here on this blog!
This particular T. rex is the Extreme Damage version from 2022’s Jurassic World: Dominion line. How different is this figure to the original version? Is it an improvement? Let’s take a look!
The overall sculpt is the same as the Extreme Chompin’ one, but let’s take a minute to appreciate it once more, as it’s a quite lean and agile looking Tyrannosaurus. It’s been posed taking a step forward with its left leg, with the body and tail curving to match the motion of the step, and it’s very fluid looking. No matter how you look at it, it looks like it’s in motion, bringing a rather lifelike quality to it. It measures 19 inches long and stands 7 inches tall.
The neck and head are articulated, allowing you to have the T. rex looking around in quite a few different ways, but I find that the “striding forwards” pose of the figure tends to always give it the feeling of looking around and scoping its environment out. It looks curious about the world around it. Is our T. rex picking up a scent?
In recent times, Mattel have took it upon themselves to give their dinosaurs and other species more accurately proportioned feet, such as the new Hammond Collection Carnotaurus and Giganotosaurus and the mainline Poposaurus. It’s a little hard to go back to figures like this Tyrannosaurus, which have enormous, cartoonish feet. Sure, it gives them some nice stability, but they really do look ridiculous.
The limbs all move with basic articulation. The arms swivel and hinge, so you can almost get them into a non-pronated look, but they are sculpted in a “reaching out” position. The legs move on a ratchet joint, with an outwards hinge. What’s unfortunate about this figure is that the leg joints seem extremely resistant; mine makes an awful squealing, T. rex-claws-on-a-shipping-container-wall noise when they’re moved, and they really feel quite fragile. My original Extreme Chompin’ toy doesn’t do this, even though it has aged by six years and developed a squeak to the neck. It’s not a good sound for a children’s toy to make (or any toy, for that matter) and makes me wonder how many of them have broken from forceful handling. And speaking of the Extreme Chompin’ T. rex, let’s bring it in for a comparison:
One difference is immediately apparent: the colour scheme! This one is a lovely dark brown, with black striping running from the head to the back, unfortunately stopping before the tail. It’s a more lore-accurate look for a Jurassic Park Tyrannosaurus. The eyes are facing outwards, which might seem sloppy, but it’s surprisingly accurate to both the movie animal and the real thing. Although the paint only goes halfway down the figure, there’s an additional element here to help fill the rest out which is sort of a “Marmite” amongst Mattel fans in the sense that you tend to either love it or hate it. That feature is the coloured swirls added into the plastic of the figure. Personally, I’m on Team “Love It.” It not only adds some colour detail, but it makes every toy that has it unique. You might end up with a dinosaur who has a coloured patch on their face, or their thigh, or their tail, and you’ll never find two exactly the same! Other people, however, have found these patches to look more like stress marks on the plastic, and find it garish and cheap-looking. I guess it’s all down to your own tastes.
Ironically enough, though, there are actual stress points in the plastic. There are even a few shallow holes in the plastic. That’s not good. I think that this plastic seems a tad fragile, so you shouldn’t go, say, throwing it down the stairs.
One part of the figure that really is different to the original in two ways is the head sculpt. Firstly, the detail is actually rejuvenated, with the scales looking even more crisp than the original’s. This is very welcome! It’s common to see a sculpt become smoother and more worn down over time, so it’s nice to see they’ve refreshed the face and brought those scales out.
And that’s not all. It’s a little subtle, but T. rex-eyed readers might be able to spy another sculpting difference. There are scars on the neck, just behind the head! It’s a small touch that adds a lot, and they’re not the same scars as seen on the Thrash and Throw T. rex. This may be a different individual to “Rexy” after all! They are definitely the three-clawed wounds dealt by a theropod’s hand, though. More on that subject in just a minute.
The mechanism of the mouth is different; it’s been “de-gimmicked” and now articulates normally. There’s no obnoxious tongue, either. Instead, the tongue of the original Extreme Chompin’ toy makes it so that the figure can’t truly bite down on or hold other figures in its mouth without some careful manipulating.
Having the jaw be just articulated normally and not tied to a button feels really liberating. It’s something way more of the Mattel figures should do. Both the lower jaw and (rather strangely) the upper jaw articulate separately, so it can open super wide, and the head is just big enough to hold a whole human figure- with the limbs dangling out of the sides. That’s a game changer for photography and display. The only drawback to this is that the jaw doesn’t completely close. It gets so close to being fully shut, but can’t quite reach.
Now, let’s talk about the elephant in the room: the titular Extreme Damage of the figure. You can already notice the biggest sculpting difference between the two figures: this one has massive, deep scars on the side, where the ribs lay underneath. They’re just a little bit unsightly, but I don’t think it sticks out too much. The slashes are large, and they really look like claw marks more than anything else. Maybe it has had a run in with the dreaded Therizinosaurus? When you press the button on the back, the purpose of the scars is revealed: they turn into open, red gashes!
The way this mechanism works is really simple and quite genius. The inside of the figure is a rolling barrel! It has four sides: injured, normal, injured, and normal once again, and the button press simply rotates the barrel by 90 degrees, with the open scars acting as a window to the wounds. Designing the various gimmicks and action features of action figures must be a very difficult job, and I’m pretty impressed by this one. It happens almost instantly when you press the button, too. I haven’t had any issues with it yet, like with the barrel stopping halfway between quarters or something.
You can actually use some gentle persuasion to hook the fingers of smaller dinosaurs into the wounds and have them hanging off the T. rex in an attack pose. This would be perfect for a Jurassic Park display, recreating the final dinosaur scene of the movie where a Velociraptor attacks the T. rex in this way.
It also makes for a half-convincing T. rex corpse. But to be specific, it’s only the front half that’s convincing. The back half, not so much because of the way the legs stick out. It’s certainly no CollectA T. rex corpse. If this figure had articulated knees, you’d be able to bring the legs down and have it lay more naturally. There actually was a mainline T. rex figure with articulated knees, too: the 2019 Dino Escape one. Comparing those two figures reveals just how small this sculpt’s body and especially its head are next to the Dino Escape one. I suppose it could make for a convincing adult and subadult pair.
The sticker that used to be adorning the sole of the foot is gone; now it’s located on a pull-out tab on the toy’s back. The tab on mine is weirdly both flimsy and strong in that it takes some ox-like strength to pull it out, but then it keeps sliding back down before I can scan it. It’s kind of a strange system, and the tab is a slightly different colour to the rest of the back, which is pretty distracting, but I’ll take this over the foot sticker any day. Don’t you know how many second hand Mattel figures have their foot stickers worn away by time, water, and sponges?
Scanning this sticker currently allows you to place an approximately life-sized T. rex into any restaurant of your choice:
Overall, I’d say this is a solid improvement over the original Extreme Chompin’ T. rex. The colours are better for a Jurassic Park rex, the straight up articulated jaws are a simple yet huge difference, and the Extreme Damage is pretty interesting. The only thing that the original has it beat in is quality; the super tight and squeaky legs here and fragile-feeling plastic aren’t good. At the end of the day, this is one of the cheaper options for a JP T. rex, and it’s proven to be quite popular with kids. I’ve seen many stop motion videos from them making use of the articulated jaw. It’s also worth noting that there was another, simpler and repainted version of an Extreme Damage Chompin’ T. rex from the original 2018 line. It’s reviewed here on the blog, so take a look. That’s all for now. Thank you all for taking a look at this figure with me, and may you all stay Mildly Undamaged!
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