As Waylay bursts out from concealment, the big male champsosaur that was basking placidly on a sandbank immediately slides into the water.* However the swimming pools in these marshlands are half a metre deep at most and Waylay merely wades in and seizes the fleeing reptile’s tail in her jaws. Her sufferer flails and twists and snaps its slim jaws frantically as she drags it again onto dry land, however all to no avail. Waylay vegetation her foot on prime of its again, releases her grip on the tail, after which chomps down decisively on the again of its neck. The champsosaur dies immediately and Waylay squats right down to take pleasure in her first contemporary meal in days . . .
A most blissful because of Completely happy Hen Toys for this overview pattern of the “Lu Zhi Sheng” Daspletosaurus by Haolonggood (the opposite model being “Wu Song”)! This frightful lizard is sculpted with the left foot planted down and the correct foot within the midst of being raised. The arms are bent on the elbows with the palms dealing with down, the top is turned barely to the left, and the tail can be swinging to the left. Good as both an orambulating, searching, or pursuing pose. Fairly secure too, fortunately. And with a peak of 9.5 cm and a size of 29.5 cm, it’s one of many largest Daspletosaurus toys to this point, significantly bigger than the Wild Safari version and dwarfing the CollectA one. I name her Waylay.
Waylay’s base color is a shade of medium brown with a lighter brown for her underbelly and black for her claws. Her head options darkish brown over the premaxilla and maxilla areas, orange on the highest of her snout and her forehead ridges, shiny blue eyes, and boring pink on her mandible. The within of her mouth is darkish pink with off white enamel. The again of her neck and the area over her shoulders is splashed with extra boring pink and her hip area and thighs are splashed with darkish brown. A mottled maroon sample adorns her neck and shoulders. The remainder of her torso is roofed in the identical sample, however in very darkish brown. And at last, her tail is speckled with the identical shade of very darkish brown. It’s a really elaborate, distinctive, and believable color scheme, and I fairly prefer it. Mine sadly has a black blemish on the mouth tissue on both aspect, however it’s not sufficiently big to spoil the toy for me.
Waylay, like different Haolonggood theropods, contains a hinged decrease jaw that opens to 30 levels. The enamel inside her mouth are sharp and well-defined, as are her tongue and her palette. The enamel of Daspletosaurus, together with these of Tyrannosaurus rex, had been utilized in a 2023 research study which famously concluded that theropods did certainly possess lizard-like lips that lined their enamel when their mouths had been shut. Accordingly, Waylay has been sculpted with lips, though her mouth doesn’t fairly shut all the best way shut. The areas round her mouth are lined with massive scales, similar to on the T. rexes from Beasts of the Mesozoic, Eofauna, and PNSO. That is additionally consistent with the most recent science. And naturally, this wouldn’t be a correct Daspletosaurus with out the signature triangular hornlets on its head. Sadly, Waylay’s have been positioned instantly above her orbits after they should be in entrance of them.
Waylay’s arms, nevertheless, are undoubtedly right: proportionally massive for a tyrannosaurid and with non-pronated wrists, in fact. Her disguise has a nice small pebbled scale sample throughout, together with an ample however not overwhelming quantity of wrinkles to provide her an much more life like look. No sculpted feathers in any respect, however as with the BotM T. rex, one can all the time fake that they’re just too miniscule to see at this scale. A cloaca is seen on the underside of her tail and her fingers and toes are lined in these acquainted rows of scutellate scales. Curiously, whereas she is larger than the Safari Daspletosaurus, her pointed toe claws are the truth is smaller. As together with her enamel, this is perhaps as a result of Haolonggood isn’t as involved with making their merchandise child-friendly as Safari is.
Seen beneath Waylay’s scaly pores and skin are huge muscle groups. Her neck, her shoulders, her legs, and her tail are all positively bulging, making her appear like a real drive to be reckoned with. Which is barely becoming on condition that Daspletosaurus torosus, the species which I’m fairly certain this toy is meant to characterize, was the most important identified predatory dinosaur of its time, outsizing its modern Gorgosaurus. Most Daspletosaurus specimens are round 9 metres lengthy and 2-3 tons in weight, however there’s one jumbo specimen, CMC VP 15826, AKA “Pete III,” that seems to have been 11 metres lengthy and 5 tons in weight, which is nearer to the likes of Tarbosaurus and Zhuchengtyrannus. And actually, we shouldn’t be stunned by that, as one more recent study has concluded that Daspletosaurus was indeed the ancestor of Tyrannosaurus rex itself.
Now, if you happen to’re curious as as to if I think about Waylay right here to be higher or inferior to the Safari Daspletosaurus that retains getting talked about, effectively, that’s a troublesome query and I actually don’t have a agency and decisive reply. They each characterize D. torosus, they’re each fantastically sculpted, they each stand effectively with out the necessity for further help (but), and so they’re each very correct. Waylay has these further massive scales round her mouth, however the Safari model has accurately positioned hornlets.
Waylay is way larger, in fact, and to be trustworthy, I believe she scales higher with the Eofauna T. rex, the PNSO Gorgosaurus, and the Safari Albertosaurus seen beneath, particularly given the existence of “Pete III.” One can all the time fake that the Safari Daspletosaurus represents D. wilsoni, which lived earlier and was ancestral to D. torosus. However one also needs to needless to say Haolonggood merchandise are considerably pricier than Safari ones, and are actually not meant for collectors underneath the age of 14. So no, I’m not going to say which is the higher purchase. All of it relies on what precisely you’re in search of.
Oh, and a further promoting level is that Waylay, similar to the PNSO Gorgosaurus, will be pitted in opposition to any variety of ankylosaurs, ceratopsians, and hadrosaurs in your assortment which hail from both the Oldman Formation of Alberta or the Judith River Formation of Montana.
Total, the Haolonggood Daspletosaurus is a stable theropod toy, one effectively value buying. The one actual challenge are the misplaced hornlets, however as with the blemishes on the mouth tissue, I’m not overly perturbed by them. Strongly really helpful all the identical. Hopefully Haolonggood has extra tyrannosaur toys deliberate for the longer term, though personally, I’d drastically favor it if we acquired the likes of Bistahieversor, Dynamoterror, and Teratophoneus versus the extra well-known members of the dynasty, as none of these genera at the moment have toys on the 1/35 scale. Right here’s hoping.
*Classic paleoart by Ely Kish.
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