It’s yet another hot summer day and the last thing that Cameron would care to do is move a single muscle of his ten ton body. That’s because he’s been beating the heat by lounging comfortably in a shallow pool, with his huge head resting on the muddy bank, his titanic trunk half submerged in the cool brown water, and his tremendous tail splayed out on the opposite bank. Only now his stomach is telling him that it’s time once again to find some food. Hunting is never an easy task, even for a king tyrant as potent as him, and hot hunting is even worse. But hello, ambling toward him now from the surrounding brush is a large turtle with a wide, flattened shell. Cameron recalls attempting to tackle just such a reptile back when he was a youngling, but gave up the effort when his jaws could not penetrate the hardened bone. This one is clearly in search of relief from the heat as well, and it does not appear to have noticed him lying right there. Or perhaps it thinks that he is sleeping, or even deceased. Regardless, Cameron continues to remain perfectly still, careful to not even bat an eyelid. He waits until the heedless turtle shuffles right next to his snout, then with a quick flick and a single splintering crunch, reduces it to a shapeless, seeping mass in his jaws.
Methodically, he crunches it into smaller bits and scarfs them all down. The flavour is decidedly delectable, and it’s enough meat to keep his stomach suffonsified for a few more hours, by which time the sun will have gone down and the hunting will be easier. Contented, Cameron sinks his chin back into the mud and closes his eyes. Life may seldom be easy for him, but at this very moment, it is good . . .
Ten years ago, a certain Chinese company calling itself the Peking Natural Science-Art Organization, PNSO for short, exploded onto the scene with a slew of rather impressive prehistoric toys, including, of course, a towering Tyrannosaurus rex that yours truly ended up reviewing here. The first of many. From A’tahsaia (a name of my own choosing) to Wilson III to Cameron I, we’ve seen a steady, progressive evolution in the quality and accuracy of PNSO’s king tyrants. And today I am very pleased and proud to present the latest one, His Majesty King Cameron the Second, No. 01 in the all-new Prehistoric Animal Articulated Toy Series!
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As you’d rightly expect, Cameron is quite the commodious chap. When standing in a horizontal pose with his head and tail held out straight, he measures in at about 37 cm long, 12.5 cm tall, and 5 cm wide at the ribcage. He weighs a good 426 g, whereas Eofauna’s Sue weighs 359 g, Papo’s Roughskull weighs 366 g, and Wild Safari’s Hardbit weighs 460 g. He’d undoubtedly weigh even more were he a regular PNSO toy composed of solid PVC, but he’s still heavier than I anticipated he’d be.
Now, if there is one thing that every single PNSO T. rex has had in common, it’s being painted brown. And prior to Cameron’s reveal, it was widely hoped that he would buck that trend. He did not. On the contrary, his main colours are dark brown on top and very light brown on bottom. His claws are a flat, dull shade of brown. Reddish brown is applied on his flanks and throat and medium brown stripes run down the length of his light brown tail.
Cameron’s head is done up in an array of light and dark brown shades. The ridges and bosses atop his snout and brow are a dark greyish brown and his eyes are light orange. Finally, the inside of his mouth is a glossy light pink and his teeth are an off white.
So yes, this is yet another brown behemoth. But is that really necessarily a bad thing? For starters, Cameron’s colouration is indeed different from that of previous PNSO king tyrants. I especially like how only his tail features stripes, as most theropod toys with stripes or spots have them running down the entirety of the body. All of the paints have been skillfully applied, and the different brown shades go together very smoothly. So while this colour scheme may not be flashy or vivid, it is also neither simple nor flat, and it does look genuinely good. You come to appreciate it more the longer you gaze at it.
And let us also take into consideration the plausibility factor. The largest living land predators tend to have colour schemes that enable them to better hide from their prey, in one manner or another. Polar bears, African lions, and grey wolves have uniform or drab colours for blending in with their backgrounds, while tigers, jaguars, and leopards have disruptive patterns. A brown colour scheme like Cameron’s would very likely suit an adult T. rex on the hunt in either woodland, swampland, or highland. The striped tail could help break up its owner’s silhouette, and also be used for courtship display along with the reddish throat. So while I’ll always enjoy seeing king tyrants creatively done up in vivid or unusual colour schemes like this or that (blue is the most popular colour, after all), I also think that this one right here is far more likely to have been a real thing. Here’s to being beautifully and beneficially brown then!
Right then, let’s turn now to anatomy, starting at the rear end. Cameron’s tail is of proper proportion, accounting for around half his total length. It is also properly powerful, with visible groove lines defining the spinalis, the longissimus, and the bulging caudofemoralis musculature.
Cameron’s torso is also correctly shaped and sized, although naturally, some accommodation had to be made around his pelvic region in order to allow for the leg articulation. His ribcage is satisfyingly wide and his gastralia are bulging outward in a smooth, natural curve as opposed to being forcibly compressed like in a Gregory Paul restoration. Both his tail and his torso are covered in tiny, irregularly shaped scales, with the ones on the underside being arranged in a more orderly fashion. There are also plenty of heavy folds and wrinkles in the skin, particularly around the base of the tail and the legs.
The legs are positively bulging with muscles, from the quadriceps on the thighs to the gastrocnemii on the posterior compartments. The feet are correctly shaped, with the second and fourth digits being the largest and smallest respectively of the three forward-facing toes. The claws are curved, yet blunted at the tips, and the soles of the feet are scaly and calloused. And of course, the top of the feet are covered in rows of keratinous scutes just like on birds. A recent study co-authored by my paleontologist pal Kyle Atkins-Weltman showed that T. rex also walked just like a bird, striking the ground with the front of its feet and taking short, rapid strides, with a top speed of up to 40 km/h.
The arms are quite detailed in spite of their signature small size, with defined musculature and curved claws that are most definitely not blunted at the tips. On that note, the notion that T. rex‘s arms were useless is a stereotype, one that is as inaccurate as it is worn out. Not only have they been shown to be strong, but the digits had a wide range of motion, and there is evidence of stress fractures and torn muscles in multiple specimens. T. rex therefore may well have used its arms to restrain a struggling hadrosaur or ceratopsian while administering a killing bite.
No other known theropod had a neck as thick and powerful as T. rex‘s, and the one on Cameron certainly does measure up to that expectation, with bulging muscles visible beneath the heavy folds of scaly skin. The upper region looms above the back of his skull, which is what should be expected on any king tyrant restoration. Unlike with A’tahsaia, there are no feathers of any kind to be seen on the neck, or anywhere else on Cameron, but as I’ve noted here in the past, one can easily pretend that they are so small and sparse as to be virtually invisible, just like in our beloved Prehistoric Planet.
And so at last we come to that most critical body part of them all, the one that truly makes or breaks any T. rex toy, the head. You can see right away that Cameron’s checks off a bunch of the boxes: it’s big, wide, deep, resembles a very chubby “T” when viewed from above, and features forward-facing eyes. It is quite handsome as far as megatheropod heads are concerned, certainly more so than any of those slant-snouted carcharodontosaurs or skinny-snouted spinosaurs. Cameron’s head also features large, lumpy scales covering the maxillae, cornified tissue ringing the eyes, a hardened nasal ridge, and solid, fairly flattened postorbital bosses, quite different from the raised, pointy ones adorning A’tahsaia. Oh, and no question of that accursed “shrink-wrapping” here.
Two features are worth noting. First, like many previous king tyrant toys, Cameron features a single jugal scale on either side of his skull, as shown below. However, a paper published just last year found that tyrannosaurs and other dinosaurs had soft tissue structures in their cheek regions known as exoparia. As a result, the jugal scales that we’ve become so accustomed to seeing on reconstructions may not have been present in life. But as far as potential inaccuracies go, I’d say this is a pretty minor one.
The other noteworthy feature is, of course, the lips that completely conceal Cameron’s teeth when his mouth is closed. He is not the first lipped theropod from PNSO, but he is their first such tyrannosaur, and many a collector has been wanting this for a very long time. And he does look positively fabulous with them. Another step closer to looking like a proper, bona fide, real live animal, yet still a very menacing one. I reckon it is too much to ask that PNSO redo all their other theropods to reflect this science, but they still haven’t yet tackled Bistahieversor, Dynamoterror, Sinotyrannus, Teratophoneus, or Thanatotheristes, so we can probably look forward to more lipped tyrannosaurs from them.
Opening Cameron’s jaws reveals 54 curved, sharp, well-defined teeth. The palate is intricately detailed, with visible nasal openings, and the tongue is large and flattened like an alligator’s. Interestingly, while only the tips of the upper teeth extend past the lip line, the teeth and the gums in the mandible jut well above the lip line. Just what theropod lips were actually like remains a topic of discussion, and will no doubt remain one for a long time yet, but I wonder if this particular detail was done in part to better showcase the dentition. It does make Cameron seem a little bit more “classic” when his mouth is open.
Overall, Cameron looks as though he stepped right off one of the pages of Mark Witton’s masterful 2025 book, King Tyrant: A Natural History of Tyrannosaurus rex, which you seriously do need to purchase and read if you haven’t already. Really, as far as size, sculpting, anatomy, and overall appearance are concerned, this toy is at the very peak. But of course, you know we’re not done yet. It’s time now to discuss the articulation.
Both Cameron’s skull and mandible are hinged, enabling him to tilt his head up and down, and open his mouth to an impressive 50 degree angle. His neck is ball-jointed in two places; it can turn from side to side and tilt up and down, but it can’t rotate. His arms have universal joints at the shoulder and elbows. His hips have ball joints, his knees and ankles have universal joints, and his feet have hinge joints. Due to his wide ribcage, however, his legs can only rotate forward so much. They do rotate much further in the opposite direction, but remember that T. rex, like all theropods, could not retract its legs past a vertical position in relation to its pelvis. Finally, Cameron’s tail is ball-jointed at the base and bendable near the tip. The result is a T. rex that can be put into a fairly wide range of active poses. A super fun toy to constantly fiddle with, that’s for certain. However, being a theropod means being front-heavy, and Cameron can only stand on his own in certain poses. To that end, PNSO has provided both 6 and 5 cm tall clear support rods.
So let’s make with the active poses! Here’s His Majesty taking down Torosaurus.
Upending Ankylosaurus.
Ambuscading Alamosaurus.
Polishing off Edmontosaurus. A recently described specimen has a T. rex tooth embedded in its nasal, indicating that it was killed by a bite just like this.
Enjoying a scrumptious meal.
Food is served and you’re stone cold munchin’
And how does Cameron compare to the original Beasts of the Mesozoic T. rex? Well, his legs and body don’t have quite as much range as Marbhtach’s (who has interchangeable lower legs, plus joints in his torso and tail). But when it comes to head and jaw articulation, Cameron wins decisively. Oh, and like Marbhtach, he can’t achieve a proper sitting or resting pose like the one Andrea is sculpted in. I’m not even sure if it’s possible to successfully pull off such an engineering feat.
From the very beginning, PNSO included posters with their prehistoric toys. Some of them featured original paleoart, which is always pleasant, but others merely depicted the toys superimposed against various backgrounds. In Cameron’s case, however, there is no poster included. Instead, there are two large information booklets, one in English and the other in Chinese. As of this writing, I don’t know if this means the end of PNSO posters altogether, or if this is just how it’s going to be for the Articulated Series, but if the former proves true, I honestly won’t lament it. The booklets contain a good deal of information about T. rex, from size to anatomy to bite force and speed. There are cameos by Cameron I and Andrea, there are skeletal diagrams, and there are a couple of original pieces of paleoart.
Cameron the articulated Tyrannosaurus rex represents a bold and ambitious new venture for PNSO, and a smart one in my view, given how popular and successful Creative Beast’s products have turned out to be. He’s big, charismatic, and intimidating as a king tyrant toy should be, he’s expertly sculpted, well-painted, and carefully researched, and his articulation makes him a great deal of fun to play around with. Indeed, I find it difficult to leave him in the same pose for very long. Plus he can be a handy reference tool for aspiring paleoartists, just as the BotM toys are. In short, he is a phenomenal toy and I heartily recommend him. I also look forward to seeing which other species end up being part of the Prehistoric Animal Articulated Toy series.
And to wrap things up, here is one final comparison, because I know it’s something many of you desire to see: Cameron alongside Sue from Eofauna. On that note, “Cameron” is a unisex name, so feel free to consider your toy a female if that’s what you’d prefer.
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