Mattel's "Jurassic World" Roarivores Review:
Part of Mattel's inaugural "Jurassic World" releases is an assortment known as "Roarivores" which feature large articulated dinosaurs with button activated electronic roaring and action features. These dinosaurs come in open boxed packaging allowing customers to try out the action features and hear the roars.
The initial assortment contains 3 theropods and a Triceratops. As I already have plenty of Triceratops in many different sizes and colors I passed on that one and picked up the 3 theropods. The three theropods are each of a different species- Baryonyx, Allosaurus and Metriacanthosaurus. Aside from the Allosaurus, these species have not gotten much if any representation on toy store shelves before. It is always nice to get new, unique species to add to my menagerie.
All three of the theropods share the same articulation- ball hinged shoulders, ball hinged hips (very shallow lateral movement but they do allow for some different poses) and hinged jaws (tied to the action feature and activated by the well disguised button on the dinosaurs' backs). Each dinosaur has a great sculpt with lots of bumps, scales and wrinkles covering the entire creature. The paint apps are neat and clean. The Baryonyx even has some cool metallic blue deco on its hide.
The button activated action feature is well designed and the sounds are unique to each species (probably lifted from the film). There is one oddity to this feature though- the mouth is constantly open until the button is depressed. The mouth then closes and rapidly opens and the creature roars. Most dinosaurs with this kind of feature do it the other way with the mouth being closed until the feature is activated and then opening along with the roar. The Triceratops features a variant of this feature as it does not feature a hinged jaw. Instead, the Dinosaur rears its head back while roaring.
The dinosaurs in this assortment are quite a good buy for their $14.99 price. They are large, well articulated and deco'd, and have a fun action feature that does not interfere with the regular posability of the toy. There are at least 3 more dinosaurs coming in this assortment in the near future and I plan on picking up all three!
