The Energon Pub

This looks better than the previous JP crossover set, imo. Will likely snag it up!

that dinobot looks really good

The Dino is definitely a heavy retool of Dinobot and it works.
As for the jeep, it does look completely new.

I'll hold on pre-ordering though.
Like for the previous set I expect the initial Canadian price to be bloated and the thing will be on discount sooner or later.

It feels really weird that the Autobot character in this set looks like Dennis Nedry, after all he was the villain of Jurassic Park movie. If he hadn't sabotaged the park systems in order to steal dino embryos no one would have died. They even include the shaving foam can he was using to transport his stolen embryos.

Makes you wonder if the creators of this set have ever watched the movie.

Amusingly, Dennis Nedry would probably be a turncoat for the Decepticons - would have been nice if they had managed to work that into the fiction considering. I see they're going with the Dinosaurs = Decepticons and Cars = Autobots approach. Overall, I love the set and will likely grab it because that Dilophosaurus is unique in itself. My inner Jurassic Park fan is curious about it and intrigued, and my inner Transformers fan is ecstatic to have another dinobot in the collection that is also a proud Decepticon.

Thinking about it, that spitting Dino is out of scale. They should have retooled Core Vertebrax instead.
The set would have been cheaper too.

-Kanrabat- wrote:The Dino is definitely a heavy retool of Dinobot and it works.

It shares some engineering, but not parts.

After watching the fluctuating prices of the first set (which I didn't really like) I'm definitely holding out for a massive discount, maybe the next Pulse Warehouse sale.

Emerje

I'm liking these better than the last ones too.

Dino actually looks like a beastswars toy, the dino arms still seem a bit off but no where near as bad as dinobots.

The wheels on jeeps bot mode do look a bit weird and the hardhat reminds me of those megaman enemies but still seems okay.

Will definitely wait for reviews with the first JP quality of the car bot.

Another mixed bag. Looks somewhat better than the last set

The autobots jeep alt mode is cool of course, robot mode is mostly okay but that headsculpt is just lame. Shoulder joints look like they'll be a nightmare as well

Dilophocon looks cool though. Alt mode a bit wonky but good enough. And robot mode looks cool, minus the potentially loose ball joint arms. Could they make an Iguanus out of this? Kinda want this set kinda don't

Other set is only $50 on Amazon rn too

blackeyedprime wrote:The wheels on jeeps bot mode do look a bit weird and the hardhat reminds me of those megaman enemies but still seems okay.

I'm taking a guess that the wheels are meant to replicate Nedry's belly. (The choice of using the tires to assist in it looking round, probably.)

Cool looking set. I know with the previous set, the significance of JP93 was obviously the year the first film came out. Not sure what the significance of JP12 is..??

As for the toys themselves. I can see why people without looking back would think Dilophocon is a heavy Kingdom Dinobot retool, also that the jeep is a heavy retool of the previous JP jeep. While it does seem likely these are all new. I'll wait to see some side-by-side comparisons.

Many people thought the X-Men Blackbird was all new, but it did in fact tun out to be a very extensive retool of SS RotF Jetfire.

Two things, the first set the Autobot was based on that Dinosaur wrangler who got outsmarted by a Raptor, in this set the Autobot is based on the human who betrayed everyone and took a facial. If this line continues will we see an Autobot based Samuel L Jackson with a detachable arm?

We're getting a Transformer that looks like Newman from Seinfeld, in all my years I never thought I'd see the day.

Next set will feature the Lawyer that transforms into a toilet.

Yeah, I honestly don't remotely see how Dilophocon is even remotely a retool/remold of Kingdom Dinobot. The small frame, ball joints, different transformation scheme, THE SIZE all scream new to me. Heck, I would bet more money that it shared engineering more in common with old beast wars figures from the 90s' instead.

On that note, This is an appealing set. JP12 looks very...stout. Love the accessories, the body, and the alt mode of course. Dilophocon looks a bit malnourished in the paint department. It's a rather unique beast mode so I'll give it that.

Made the mistake of pre-ordering the last JP/TF Collab set at full price. I'll happily wait for the inevitable discount for this set.

This price is ROUGH, I will wait for a discount.

Also, a big miss is their attempt at a raincoat. Since they only do the top part, it looks like Nedry is wearing a construction hat instead.

Also, I will reiterate, both are new molds. While there may be some similarities, both are deluxe scale which is different from whichever toy they may share similarities with.

Razorbeast88 wrote:Could they make an Iguanus out of this?

I was wondering about that, but the problem is he's sort of backwards. On Iguanus the arms turn into the front legs and the rear legs are fake little stubby things with the bot legs hiding underneath. Here his arms hide underneath and the legs become the dino legs and they're just too big for a frilled lizard.

Emerje

Emerje wrote:

Razorbeast88 wrote:Could they make an Iguanus out of this?

I was wondering about that, but the problem is he's sort of backwards. On Iguanus the arms turn into the front legs and the rear legs are fake little stubby things with the bot legs hiding underneath. Here his arms hide underneath and the legs become the dino legs and they're just too big for a frilled lizard.

Emerje

Never mind Iguanus. This wouold be perfect for Crazybolt!!

Sabrblade wrote:

Emerje wrote:

Razorbeast88 wrote:Could they make an Iguanus out of this?

I was wondering about that, but the problem is he's sort of backwards. On Iguanus the arms turn into the front legs and the rear legs are fake little stubby things with the bot legs hiding underneath. Here his arms hide underneath and the legs become the dino legs and they're just too big for a frilled lizard.

Emerje

Never mind Iguanus. This wouold be perfect for Crazybolt!!

I mean, it basically is Crazybolt's cartoon model already. New heads and you're pretty much done.

Emerje

Hoping they retool the dino into Iguanus and/or Crazybolt, and then they retool that into Alligator Megatron. I'm still hoping for a retool of Airazor into Bat Optimus...

At least they showed more innovation with this than with the previous JP set. Not convinced I'll get it though. Hefty price tag for what looks to be only 2 deluxes.

And it always bugged me from the movie that the Dilophosaur was depicted so small. Their normal size is 8 feet tall and 25 feet long when fully grown. Unless the one in the movie was a pre-juvenile.

Pretty nice looking set.

Dilf-ocon appears to be an upsized shared engineering concept with Kingdom Vertebreak. Interesting. I love the Dilophosaurus mode, with excellent blast effect uses.

JP12 actually looks pretty neat and solid too!

Overall, nice and interesting set.

Gonna put my paleontologist hat on for a moment here.

Comparing both Dilophocon side by side with Vertebreak in just the promotional images alone here you can definitely see that Dilophocon does in fact share similar tooling as Vertebreak.





There's some additional molding done for it from what I can tell, but overall yeah I'd say it looks like it is using the tooling more from Vertebreak than anything else. I suspect it was "upscaled" if it is in fact, larger, but again when the final product is in hand we'll know for absolutely certain. So, the Dilophosaurs in Jurassic Park were undersized anyways, canonically this is either due to genetic anomalies or because they were juveniles possibly (both ideas have been kicked around in auxiliary media and by film creators and in-universe material). The real Dilophosaurus is a beast, about 18-22 feet, and would technically be in scale with the Jeep if Hasbro are using those size measurements from the actual animal. It is Hasbro, they don't always do stuff in scale and sometimes they just throw whatever at the wall to see what sticks in the capacity for Jurassic Park stuff. *grumble grumble*



This is the real size comparison of the actual animal. Chomp. Chomp. Dilo is a big chonk.

Also, no, the actual animal didn't spit venom. That was introduced by Michael Crichton in the original novel due to the belief at the time the jaw muscles of the actual animal would be too weak to munch on anything. Later studies published since then have shown otherwise and that the subnarial gap (kink in the snout under the nose) in the top jaw was used as a way to trap prey items in their chompers to cut down on the prey struggling free from their bite. They probably ate mostly smaller animals (think lizards and rodents) as well as smaller dinosaurs (this was the early Jurassic, so things didn't get super huge until much later) at the time and scavenged from slightly larger carcasses - or if they were social and pack hunters they could probably take down the prosauropods of that time with relative ease if they had coordinated attacks.

Tyrannacon wrote:No, the actual animal didn't spit venom. That was introduced by Crichton in the original novel due to the belief the jaw muscles of the actual animal would be too weak to munch on anything. Later studies show otherwise and that the subnarial gap (kink in the snout under the nose) in the top jaw is used as a way to trap prey items in their chompers.

The dinos in JP are more engineered monsters than anything else though. It's even canon they they had to "fill in the genetic gaps" with random things.

It's really too bad that we may never know what the dinosaurs TRULY looked like. We can only make do with the "shrink-warpped" bones that are the dinos we all know.

Some artist imagined if we did the same thing to modern animals.

-Kanrabat- wrote:

Tyrannacon wrote:No, the actual animal didn't spit venom. That was introduced by Crichton in the original novel due to the belief the jaw muscles of the actual animal would be too weak to munch on anything. Later studies show otherwise and that the subnarial gap (kink in the snout under the nose) in the top jaw is used as a way to trap prey items in their chompers.

The dinos in JP are more engineered monsters than anything else though. It's even canon they they had to "fill in the genetic gaps" with random things.

It's really too bad that we may never know what the dinosaurs TRULY looked like. We can only make do with the "shrink-warpped" bones that are the dinos we all know.

Some artist imagined if we did the same thing to modern animals.

Yeah, definitely. I wouldn't say Dilophosaurus is a push-over by any means - it has the body plan that Coelophysis and other early theropods of that time and then subsequently carried over until the end of the Late Cretaceous. I edited my above post to point that out where I could.

The paleoartist, John Conway, (the artist you're probably referencing here judging from the thumbnail of the video) championed this idea and does make some impressive points about how little we know about dinosaurs and their actual life appearance. I mean look at the skull of hippo and compare it to the actual living animal. That said, Mammals are weird though in the sense they have a lot of extra tissue and muscles anchoring in and around their skull - dinosaurs are more a cross between birds and reptiles. That doesn't mean Conway doesn't have a point as it is a fair one. We can get peaks into the appearance of dinosaurs though and there's a lot we can gain from looking at other related animals that have been found with such things as skin/feather impressions. For example, take Tyrannosaurus and Yutyrannus - a feathered relative. So there are ways to know from trace fossils like skin imprints and even feather impressions that give us a hint. Keep in mind those impressions represent one tiny bit of the animal so there is no definitive evidence that there wasn't some kind of feathering going on. This is all thanks to different types of preservation. Too many people do restore the dinosaurs as their other archosaurian ancestors (crocodilians) or other modern reptiles like Monitor lizards, and not like their descendants, birds. Birds have some wacky displays and likely dinosaurs had some wacky ones similar or on the level of too.

Did Dilophosaurus have feathers? We can't say for sure 100%, but it's possible it could have.