Jurassic Park Series 2: Tanystropheus

Year of release: 1993-1994

Accessories:

-Two pieces of capture gear

-Collector’s Card # 45

Description: this bizarre animal looks like a snake with four small legs, since it has a very long neck and tail sticking out of a relatively small body. When neck and tail are stretched to their fullest extent the Tanystropheus measures a good 30 centimetres in length. The creature stands in a walking posture, with its hind left leg and front right leg moved forward and the other legs posed back. Its mouth is opened, revealing two sets of grizzly fangs and rows of smaller white teeth as well as a big pink tongue. The body and legs are made out of hard plastic, while the tail and neck are composed of softer material to accommodate the figure's flexibility for its constricting action.

Tanystropheus features a two-colour paint job, with dark green paint covering most of the upper part of the animal (most notably on the upper part of the tail, back, neck, upper legs and upper part of the head) and a lighter shade of green dominating its underside. The further down you get the lighter this green gradually gets, until its almost beige in colour on its belly. The darker green also runs in seemingly random patterns over the figure's flanks and legs. Due to the different material, both shades of green are brighter on the beastie's body than on the neck and tail. The tiny claws of this figure are not painted. It has small black eyes, and a beige JP logo on its left hind leg, along with the number .13.

Tanystropheus comes with two pieces of capture gear, both coloured metallic grey. The smallest of the two is your average cuff like tag, which can be attached to various body parts, like the tail or any of the legs, but the neck seems most obvious. The other piece is substantially bigger and consists of a long piece of “wire” with a cuff at one end and another one in the middle, and a large muzzle on the other end. The muzzle fits over the creature’s head, while the two cuffs can be put around the midsection of the neck and tail respectively, provided the creature's neck and tail are bent in the right position.

Analysis: has anyone here ever heard of the Tanystropheus? Well, it seems some Kenner toy designers have, because they came up with this awesome figure, a bold and inventive move since it's likely most consumers would never have known about this animal. Still, Kenner released it (the same thing cannot be said for equally unknown creatures like Ornithosuchus and Scutosaurus which were sadly denied a release back in 1994), and thank heaven they did, because this is one of the most interesting and coolest figures of the Series 2 line. It has a good paint job, though with a little too much emphasis on green. Its head sculpt looks nasty, quite dragon like.

Tany's attack feature is his constricting action, found in its tail and neck. Both are fully poseable and can be wrapped around other figures' limbs or even bodies, as if the Tanystropheus is some kind of big anaconda snake suffocating its victims before devouring him. In this case the huge teeth are a bit out of place, since constricting snakes don't have such teeth, those would only get in the way; therefore it's also odd this animal is nicknamed 'Cobra', since Cobras don't constrict their prey, they use venom instead. But since Tanystropheus isn't a snake, the poetic license is justified, more so because Tany can also hold (limbs of) small figures, like hatchlings, with its teeth. Tany's action feature is basically an improvement over the constricting bodies of the JPS1 Coelophysis figures, whose bodies were much too small to be really wrapped around other figures, not to mention their fragility which made playing without damaging them a challenge. Tanystropheus' body is much bigger, and can take on larger prey, but is still vulnerable (though not as much as the Coelophysis figures). It's quite susceptible to paint wear because of the softer material the neck and tail are made of.

The capture gear is very unlikely, since it isn’t able to fully restrain the animal. Though it might keep the neck, tail and head in check, the Tanystropheus can make a run for it since its legs are still free for use. Some sort of limb restraints would have been necessary here. Also, the position of the tail when the capture gear is in use seems very awkward for the creature, and makes it look damn silly.

Playability: good enough. All four legs are poseable, though the creature looks best when they’re in their usual position. The mouth unfortunately can’t be closed. Both the tail and the neck are bendable, but it’s better to be careful when bending them, since they’re quite fragile. Especially on the tail's part it often occurs that the metal wire inside breaks through and sticks out. Also, the paint on the rubbery parts of this sculpt is very vulnerable to paint wear. The capture gear is okay, but it only adds to the possibility of paint wear if you attach it to the figure. If you want your Tany to stay in good condition, you better not play rough with it and you avoid using its capture gear on him. However, since the poseability of the neck and tail is this figure's main attack feature, paint wear is basically inevitable if you want to play with it at all.

Realism: this Tanystropheus figure is surprisingly accurate (though Tany wasn't seen in any of the JP movies). Compared to human figures it's about the right size, and its neck is as long as its body and tail combined, as was the case with the real life creature. The only thing that is way off is the head, mostly because of the huge fangs, a feature Tanystropheus did not have in reality (though it does make him look mean and butch in this case).

Repaint: no, this is a new figure. However, it would be repainted twice. First, it would become the Chaos Effect Tanaconda, and the second time it would be repainted for the first JP: Dinosaurs line. In both cases the figure would come with the same capture gear as this JPS2 Tany comes with, but repainted.

Overall rating: 8/10. A highly original choice, and an excellent figure, though with flawed capture gear and being somewhat prone to damage. It's not the most common JPS2 dinosaur, since it was only released in the USA and in extremely limited numbers in Europe. As such it can be hard to find, often with varying costs, but it's definitely worth your while.