Described in 2021, Ceratosuchops is an early Cretaceous spinosaur known from the UK’s Wessex Formation. It’s only known from some fragmentary bits of skull, including a nearly complete braincase, and some tail vertebrae. Despite these scant remains two toys now exist of this genus, one from CollectA and another from Mattel. Today we’re looking at Mattel’s, which I waffled back-and-forth on until it went on sale on amazon for a price I couldn’t refuse. Ceratosuchops was described the same year as Riparovenator, another spinosaur from the Wessex Formation that so far lacks any toy representation. These two spinosaurs are considered more closely related to Suchomimus than to Baryonyx. Its full name is a badass one, Ceratosuchops inferodios means “horned crocodile face, hell heron”.
Mattel’s Ceratosuchops is a Wild Roar figure, which means that it has an action feature tied to sound. The tail controls the movement of the head and neck; twisting the tail also twists the head and lifting it up-and-down also moves the head up-and-down while the jaw snaps shut. The arms are on universal joints, and the legs can rotate forward and back.
The figure stands 5.5” (13.97 cm) tall to the shallow sail along its back and measures 14” (35.56 cm) long. It’s hard to know the size of something with so few remains but estimates put Ceratosuchops at 27’ (8.5 meters). The toy also has wonky proportions typical of Mattel dinosaurs, like the tail being too short, but using body length we get a scale of 1/23.
Now, as far as what Ceratosuchops actually looked like we clearly don’t have enough of it to say but Mattel shows incredible restraint when it comes to speculation here and sticks to a conservative spinosaur body plan. The only embellishments are some short hornlets over the eyes, some spines along the nape, and a whole lot of scars over the body.
The snout is long and narrow but perhaps a bit too broad and has only a hint of the subnaral gap that should be there. The teeth are finely sculpted rubbery inserts, and the tongue has a pitted texture and ridges run across the roof of the mouth. Clusters of feature scales are sculpted around the orbits, and back of the skull and jaw, and saggy skin folds hang down along the throat.
The body is detailed with small polygonal scales and larger feature scales are scattered about, mostly in clusters, over the shoulders, along the tail, and elsewhere. Scutes run down the fingers and toes and the inward facing hands have pebbly scales over their inside surface. The claws appear sharp and formidable but a larger claw on the first digit would have been appreciated. The arms are made of soft and pliable rubber and so is the tail tip, but the rest of the toy is hard plastic.
The toy represents a decently accurate spinosaur, which ads a lot of appeal, but the paintjob is appealing too, albeit incomplete looking. The head is entirely black with orange eyes, black pupils, and white teeth. The inside of the mouth is pink and glossy. The neck is yellow with black stripes, and this pattern continues along the flanks until it is entirely replaced with black coloration.
It’s neat how the yellow with black stripes eventually transitions to black with yellow stripes but the lack of any paint application on the tail, legs, and arms leads to an unfinished look, in typical Mattel fashion. Just a bit more yellow along the top of the tail and some painted claws on the hands would have gone a long way. Still, I’m a sucker for a black and yellow combo, so I find the front half rather striking.
The Mattel Ceratosuchops is one of Mattel’s better spinosaur toys but since it almost didn’t make the cut for my own collection, I can’t say that it’s an essential addition. If you enjoy collecting spinosaurs I’m sure you’ll appreciate it. This figure was released in 2024 and is no longer available in stores but can still be found online for retail price, or less! I got mine for $13 on amazon and it’s frequently on sale for that price, which might also mean it won’t be around much longer.
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