The results of last quarter are in, and it’s official: this past Christmas shopping season, Mattel beat Hasbro in sales. You can chalk some of that up to Mattel having a collector and kid-focused line for Aquaman versus Hasbro’s more exclusively younger-skewing Into the Spider-Verse line, and suggest that not having a Star Wars movie in December handicapped that particular brand. But as Mattel recently noted in a conference call, there was one brand they took over from Hasbro that had its best year yet: Jurassic Park/World.
Hasbro/Kenner had been the keeper of that brand since the first movie in 1993, and valued it at $100 million in sales in a movie year, but considered it less worthwhile in off-years. Mattel picked it up in time for Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom, and embarked on a comprehensive line strategy that kept all dinosaurs and human action figures in the same scale — roughly 3-3/4″, like classic Star Wars figures. (There are also plans for a 6-inch scale collector line similar to Star Wars‘ Black Series.) It paid off better than Hasbro’s less consistent offerings and was nominated for multiple toy of the year awards.
Now, Mattel has begun 2019 with a series called Dino Rivals that emphasizes action features and a collectible card element. With the exception of the smallest Protoceratops figure, the samples sent to me for review all included at least one “special move,” and in some cases two.
None of which would matter much if they weren’t decent dinosaur figures to begin with, and indeed they are. Eschewing the bright, artificial colors that have marred some dino-toys, they have what feel like realistic paint jobs (yes, dinosaurs probably had feathers, but the Jurassic movies ignore that, so the toys should too) and a level of detail that respects the fact that kids understand what makes a good sculpted figure and what doesn’t (even if they don’t intellectualize the distinction as such).
While much of the articulation is action-based — the T-rex, for example, turns its entire head and neck to the side AND bites down at the push of one button, and tail joints are also designed to thrash — joints that aren’t so involved tend to be ball-jointed to allow multiple poses. The wall-ramming dino from the movie adorably duplicates that action with a butting head, but mostly it’s all about chomping and whipping.
Each dino comes with a symbol on the sole of one foot that can be scanned with an app to reveal fun facts, as well as a trading card reminiscent of the old Transformers Tech Specs that show how powerful each dino is in different categories. There isn’t explicitly (as far as I know) a game yet based on this, but there certainly could be down the line.
For me and many other kids, dinosaur toys were a gateway drug into the larger world of toys. It’s great to see that the future of more playable dinosaur figures is brighter than the one the actual dinosaurs faced. As Toy Fair kicks off this weekend, I look forward with great interest to what’s next.
