Jurassic Park Dinosaurs: Baryonyx

Year of release: 1999

Accessories:

-Two pieces of capture gear

Description: Baryonyx assumes a walking posture, with its left leg moved forward and its right leg backward. Its tail is bent towards the right, mostly so this figure fits on its card. Its back and neck are covered in rows of small bumps, while a single small horn is found on the snout. It is equipped with a whipping action: pulling the right leg back and forth makes the head spin around, as if the creature is thrashing its head. This also accommodates a dinosaur-breaks-free-of-restraint-gear action: when the capture gear is on, the Baryonyx can break free by thrashing its head left and right. Additionally, the beast’s lower jaw snaps back when pulled down and released, making it possible for this sculpt to clasp other figures between its jaws, though the mouth can’t open really wide so most figures won’t fit.

This creature sports a rather intricate and detailed paint job, especially for JPD1 standards. It's mostly brown, save for its underside ( lower jaw, throat, belly and lower part of the first half of the tail) which is beige instead. The brown colouring is darker on the tail and limbs, probably because these are made of different, softer material. Around the eyes, on the back of its head and on its back and front part of the tail, a total of eight small orange stripes are located. Additionally, thin dark brown stripes and swirls are found on the back and tail of the creature, including one that runs in a full circle around the base of the tail near the anal region. On both upper legs, a series of light pink spots and shapes is found. The dinosaur has white teeth, a red tongue, yellow eyes (no pupils) and a black JP logo on its right upper leg. Its claws on both hands and feet are not painted.

This Bary comes with two pieces of capture gear, which form a sort of harness around the creature’s upper body and restrain its arms and head. However, it wouldn’t stop the creature from just running away. Both pieces are painted in a metallic dark grey colour.

Analysis: this Baryonyx seems to have gotten luckier than most other JP: Dinosaurs 1 figures and, other than them, was blessed with a more elaborate an inspired paint job by some creative designer. Though it's still far from a perfect figure (it comes with a bit of a poorly developed and unoriginal action feature and it keeps falling over), this paint job at least makes it stand out in this line. It works well on this figure and gives it a sort of murky and muddy appearance, as if it's been spending too much time fishing in swamps (which wouldn't be unusual behaviour for this particular species of dinosaur). The little details like the pink spots and vague dark brown swirls give it extra character.

Like any JPD1 figure, it does miss some minor detailing though, most notably the horn on the nose and the unpainted claws: in the case of the latter, given the big single sickle shaped claw on each hand, it would have been nice to see these painted at least, since they remain ever a Baryonyx trademark. Also, the lack of painted pupils gives the eyes a demonic touch, as if this is an especially sinister animal. Aside from these minor complaints this is certainly one of the best repaints of the line, though not necessarily one of the best figures.

Repaint: yes. This is a repaint of the original TLWS2 Baryonyx, including that figure's capture gear. A second Baryonyx repaint was released for this line along with a Peter Ludlow repaint.

Overall rating: 7/10. An interesting paint job, missing some details but definitely more original than most other JPD1 paint jobs. The figure itself is okay but nothing special. As one of the rarer Wave 2 releases, this figure is much harder to find than most other JP: Dinosaurs 1 figures. It usually fetches rather high prices, also because this sculpt is just not very common in general so it is more sought after (even though it's certainly not the best sculpt around). You better decide for yourself whether this one is worth tracking down and spending fair amounts of cash on.