Who makes it? Kaiyodo as the ‘chase’ figure for their Coca-Cola/JPIII tie in series. As a chase figure, they don’t always have numbers in the series, just SP
When did it come out? With JPIII so…2001?
Still available? Probably, on the after market sales and auctions. Like mine…they were only sold with Coke products when the movie was being promoted
Where can it be found in my displays? It’s not. It’s in storage awaiting me getting around to selling the set. It has been displayed with the rest of the set at different times in the past.
How does it fit in the collection? Well, at the time it was especially about Kaiyodo dinosaur sets. I still have a lot of them, but this one just kind of fell into the collection.
Any story behind it? There is, and it’s a story of how collectors form communities! The background is that there was a period where several sets of prehistoric Yowies (Lost Kingdoms) and recently extinct Yowies (Forgotten Friends) came out. In Australia only. Through the collector contacts of the time I knew someone in Australia that was getting me a bunch of the animals I needed. She happened to have a Kaiyodo Coca-Cola set and offered it to me cheap, so I went for it. I have since traded with and purchased from her many times, with things going back and forth from Australia and Canada!
Notable remarks about this figure (a review that isn’t really a review): As a JP model, it’s a reasonably good reproduction of the skull of the Spinosaurus in the movie. Clearly, it isn’t quite on par with recent reconstructions, the snout isn’t flat enough and it seems proportionally too short. But it works in the context of the fiction where it came from, which predated the recent discoveries and interpretations.
Would I recommend it? Are you a huge JP fan? Even JPIII? Then yes. Otherwise, it’s okay as a dino set. The Spinosaurus skull is of course not entirely accurate to what we think we know about them now, but it would be modeled after the JP design. It might also appeal to fans of spinosaurs and their relatives.
