Last year saw the release of what I still consider to be the best pterosaur action figure ever made, the Aerial Ambush Quetzalcoatlus. As I said in my review of it, it was a true marvel of pterosaur toy engineering. Not just big and impressive, it also had the ability to realistically stand quadrupedally (as pterosaurs did) and open its wings for flight. So, when Mattel announced that they were retooling that pterosaur for the Reimagined line, I knew I would have to acquire that one too. Indeed, this was one of my most anticipated toys of the year.
The Reimagined Quetzalcoatlus is largely identical to its predecessor (read its review, here) but instead of wings made of fabric they’re made of thin rubber and attached to rubber arms and legs. It can do the same thing that the Rebirth Quetzalcoatlus did but via a bendable wire inside its arms and elongated fourth digits, rather than through a locking mechanism in the elbows and wrists. This is similar to what Mattel did with their Hammond Collection Geosternbergia. Like the previous Quetz, this one also has a button that opens its mouth and lets out various bird-like shrieks. It is articulated at the base of the head, base of the neck, and shoulders with ball/hinge joints, and the legs can swing forward and back.
While the locking mechanism in the Rebirth toy often failed and caused the wings to spread open with the slightest touch, this one obviously doesn’t do that, it’s more sure standing. That said, getting it into a quadrupedal pose is more laborious. It takes a lot of fine tuning to get the wings folded just right and I fear that doing it too often could cause the rubber material to wear and crack. Looking at the comparison pictures you’ll see that the arms are still spread further apart than on its Rebirth counterpart. Also, the rubber membrane on the wings make the toy substantially heavier.
This toy also differs from the Rebirth version in having a retooled head. The vibrant red beak has a heavier build and grooves along the edge of the upper jaw. This, along with the rubbery orange crest on the nape, pay direct homage to Kenner’s “Fire Beak” Quetzalcoatlus. This rare, fan favorite toy, was part of The Lost World series 2 and was a retooled version of The Lost World series 1 “Steel Beak” Pteranodon. The packaging of Mattel’s toy mimics that for Fire Beak as well, with a mountainous background. That toy had talons that could clutch smaller toys though and this one does not, sadly, but it’s definitely a more attractive looking toy.
The rest of the paintjob harkens back to Fire Beak as well, being mostly steely gray in color. Mattel went one step further though and added patterns to the wings. The dorsal surface of the wings have jagged, lightening-like red-orange markings, while the underside is yellow, with the gray color jaggedly cutting through it. A sharply edged, dark gray patch is painted on the back. The eyes are yellow with black pupils, and the tongue and rictus tissue are pink. The claws are all unpainted. It is, overall, a very appealing paintjob that really leans into what made the Kenner toys so great. I love that both sides of the wings are painted with different patterns. That said, the yellow on the underside of the wings transitions from dark to light as you move closer to the tips but the transition isn’t good, with sharp lines separating the different tones rather than a blending between them.
The detail work is the same as it was on its predecessor, which is to say it’s rather good. The toy is covered in a healthy coat of pycnofibers and the wings appear leathery. The beak has a keratinous texture, and the tiny eyes are sunken into wrinkled orbits. The tongue and rictus tissue appear wrinkled and fleshy.
This toy is the same size as the Rebirth version. It has a 24” (60.96 cm) wingspan and measures 13.5” (34.29 cm) from beak to tail. In a resting pose it stands about 10” (25.4 cm) tall to the top of the head. The Quetzalcoatlus in Jurassic World: Rebirth is reported to have had a 39’ (11.88 meters) wingspan and to have stood 16’ (4.8 meters) tall. Using wingspan, we get a scale of 1/19.5 and using height we get a scale of 1/19.2. This is sufficiently close in scale with Mattel’s generally 1/18 humans, vehicles, and canon dinosaurs.
The Reimagined Quetzalcoatlus takes one of Mattel’s best toys and transforms it into a vibrantly colored, impressive throwback to one of Kenner’s most beloved Jurassic Park figures. That said, it’s kind of heavy, clunky, and awkward and if I had to choose between them, I would choose the older Rebirth toy over this one. I’m happy to have both though, and if Mattel wants to retool it again into Dominion’s Quetzalcoatlus, then I’ll no doubt buy this toy a third time.
All articles on the Dinosaur Toy Blog are written without the use of ‘AI’
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