Throughout my 23+ years studying the toy industry, I have attained an intimate knowledge of the various issues faced by major toy companies and the products they create. Having begun seriously collecting toys 23 years ago, I quickly discovered the art of selecting the best sample available on the shelf. In other words, standing in the toy aisle for five minutes studying two of the same exact figure, determining which sample has the least amount of quality control issues. As a kid, this probably was not a big deal. But as an adult, I admittedly feel a little stranger performing such inspections. Granted, when it comes down to it, the QC disparity between two figures (especially when there are plenty to choose from on the pegs) is quite minimal and often comes down to something as simple as which figure has eyebrows that look a little cleaner. Quality control in the toy industry is not something well-studied in a scientific sense. It is more of an onlooker’s interpretation of whether or not something looks right or looks off. However, after having collected for so long, worked in the industry itself at one point, and connected with many collectors online over the years, I have a good semblance of what good and bad QC looks like.
To most people who do not collect toys, quality control simply means that something works. It is a vacuum cleaner that functions as advertised, or a mixer that does its job in the kitchen. When it comes to toys, someone buying a single toy or purchasing a gift might associate the QC with whether or not it also functions. To a toy collector, however, it means not only proper functionality of the toy, but also the details of the paint. They say the devil is in the details, and as toy collectors, we are doomed to seeing that devil every time we pick up a new toy. Anyone who has been in this hobby for any appreciable amount of time understands what QC means and how the principles of good and poor QC should be applied. For example, when you are dealing with a mass-producing major toy corporation such as Hasbro, Mattel, or Funko, you anticipate that QC standards will be a bit more relaxed since the objective of such companies is to sell you a cheaply manufactured toy as inexpensively as possible. On the contrary, if you are collecting Hot Toys, Tamashii Nations, or Mezco figures, you expect nothing short of the amount of money you are paying for your toy.
In April 2018, Mattel delighted children and longtime toy collectors when they released their Jurassic World toy line. It gave them something that was absent from toy shelves since the late 90s, which was quality Jurassic Park toys that maintained a consistent scale and offered a multitude of products to bring the toy line to life. In fact, delighted is putting our sentiments down too lightly. Most fans were overjoyed by the sheer amount of awesome product Mattel was throwing our way. In the year and a half since its debut, a constant drip of Jurassic World toys has continued. Many of them have been available in stores, and for some of us, we have had to work a bit harder (and spend a bit more money) to import them from other countries. At the same time, the quality control issues that were there at the line’s beginning have continued to persist without any signs of improvement.
The point of this article is to highlight some of these ongoing quality control concerns. Again, Mattel has done wonders for fans and collectors, and it has been clear since the beginning that they have a team of passionate, enthusiastic professionals at the helm of their creative team. Nevertheless, given our adoration for the line, we would be remiss at neglecting the ongoing QC issues, as well as ignoring the opportunity to request these issues be looked into in order to benefit all Mattel’s Jurassic World customers.
Sloppy Eyes – We See You.
They say the eyes are the window to the soul, and when we connect with someone, we study their face. When we buy a toy, we are also first drawn to their eyes and their faces. One constant with Mattel’s Jurassic World line has been the difficulty in finding flawlessly painted eyes. In fact, through both my own evaluation of these toys and my conversations with other collectors, it almost seems as if you are more likely to find dinosaurs with misprinted eyes than with acceptable ones. To test this theory, I went to a local Walmart that was jam packed with an earlier 2019 wave of Attack Pack figures. I counted eight Velociraptor Delta figures in all. Of them, three of them had what I would call “acceptable” eyes, though they were far from perfect. (I could not see the other side of their heads because of the packaging.) The other five samples had eyes that would render them unbuyable to me as a toy collector. A couple of them were especially bad, with the eyes only being painted onto about 50% of the eyeball. This same pattern can easily be noticed from buying dinosaurs online. We are currently at a point in which quite a few of these more recent dinosaurs are unavailable in stores, so our only option to get them is by ordering from online stores such as Amazon, Entertainment Earth, Walmart, and Target. The unfortunate reality of buying these toys online is that the eyes are like a box of chocolates; you never know what you are going to get. Aside from myself, I regularly speak to a number of Jurassic World collectors and monitor discussions and social media posts to ascertain the bigger picture. This is a very well-documented issue that Mattel has been made aware of time and time again. Sadly, the eye issue has been around since day one, and it seems to have gotten worse, without any signs of Mattel intervening with their factories to address the issue.
Action Features – Working for You?
Despite what we may think of the action features many of Mattel’s Jurassic World toys have, we must take a look at their reliability. In my own experience, I have had fairly consistent luck with action features on these toys. If a dinosaur is supposed to roar, it roars. If it is supposed to whip its tail or bite down on a rival dinosaur, it does that. However, even these features are a bit inconsistent. Some Roarivores sound louder than others. I do not mean Baryonyx versus Ankylosaurus. I mean Baryonyx versus Baryonyx. You might find them on the shelf at the same time and notice this. In terms of the Dual Attacks, sometimes the features work better on some than others. The earlier Mega Dual Attack Suchomimus figure had a very flimsy bite. Thankfully, Mattel corrected this on later figures. But even then, some of them have stronger bites or weaker tail strikes than others. The same is true on other species across Dual Attack. Sometimes Dual Attack dinosaurs make clicking sounds when you activate an attack feature, and sometimes Savage Strike dinosaurs are more reliable than others. Earlier Stygimolochs had heads that would get stuck in the down position, though this seems to have mostly been corrected on more recent releases. For the Thrash ‘N Throw T-Rex, mine stopped roaring in the upward position after the first month or so. While I am not sure what the accuracy rate is for these as a whole, I know from having seen the same happen to others that it is likely a larger problem than expected. Coupled with that dinosaur’s inability to stand up after a few months, it should not be surprising that this is my least favorite T-Rex in the line. Another recent example has been the Dual Attack Battle at Big Rock Allosaurus. There have been multiple reports, including my own, of numerous samples that have mouths that get stuck when closed. Additionally, I recently came across a Bite ‘N Fight T-Rex that had a head that would get stuck as it looked to its side. Have a conversation with any collector who has been collecting this line from the beginning, and you are likely to hear some stories of problematic action features.
Inability to Stand – We Don’t Stan Standing!
One of the things Mattel has maintained from the beginning is that they designed their Jurassic World line so that every dinosaur figure could stand. While this may have been the case during the design and development phase, it has simply not been true in practice. Perhaps dinosaurs like Ceratosaurus, Metriacanthosaurus, Spinosaurus, and Thrash ‘N Throw T-Rex stood without issue in a controlled environment where they were tested, but in our collections, we have witnessed the contrary. These dinosaur species (as well as several others) simply will not stand for more than a few hours after removing them from the packaging. The problem seems to be the center of gravity on some of the figures, while on others, it is pliable plastic that flexes over time or during warmer seasons. On others, such as the Spinosaurus, it is loose joints that cause the problem. While part of me can sort of forgive these issues on $8 Attack Pack figures, it is harder to let that go on more expensive ones like the Thrash ‘N Throw T-Rex, the Action Attack Suchomimus, and elusive figures such as the Spinosaurus. Being able to stand is one of the most fundamental functions of any dinosaur toy, and if it cannot do that, then the design of those items needs to be looked at before they are repainted, repackaged, or retooled.
This is not a comprehensive list of QC concerns, as we have also seen things such as loose joints, excessive glue, misaligned body parts, tails that do not snap into torsos properly, and other non-eye related paint issues due to poor application and rubbing from lack of packaging protection. However, for the purposes of this article, we have chosen to focus on the most widespread and pressing concerns.
Once again, a little perspective is required in discussing quality control on Mattel’s Jurassic World toy line. This a humongous line of dinosaurs and related product, and they are produced by one of the biggest players in the toy industry. Like with other similar companies, the goal is to keep manufacturing costs down and profits up. This is done by manufacturing product cheaply and selling it in bulk to retailers at a low cost. The goal is not collector-quality toys such as with Hot Toys or S.H. Figuarts. (However, given recent images of eye issues on $30 Velociraptors in the Amber Collection, a line Mattel says is aimed at collectors, an argument can be made to the contrary.) At the same time, Mattel’s target audience, the kids, also notice these flaws. For those of us who collected Kenner’s Jurassic Park line 26 years ago as children, we remember a time when quality control was generally superior to how it is now. If a flaw was present, we would see it. This was not just a Kenner situation, as there was more consistency with toy production from various companies back then. I assume this was largely due to lower manufacturing costs at the time.
Poor QC is also not just a Mattel Jurassic World issue. Again, every toy corporation making toys on a grand scale has them. However, when most of the dinosaur toys in your toy line have misprinted eyes than acceptably printed ones, a conversation is warranted. I have long maintained that the longevity of any brand is built on its biggest fans and longtime supporters. When those fans voice concerns, it is because we care. We want to see the brands we love continue to improve, evolve, endure, and flourish. We want to see discourse and a respectful, productive relationship between collector and company. Mattel has gotten many things right with its Jurassic World toy line, ushering in a new golden age for fans of the Jurassic franchise. By fixing poor quality control issues, Mattel will reaffirm its dedication to the Jurassic World line and to its audience. And it will continue to produce the type of Jurassic World toy line that fans and collectors expect and deserve.
Thank you to the many community members who provided images for this article. We couldn’t of illustrated the wide-spread nature of these quality issues without the examples you provided from your Jurassic collections.
My Bite and Fight T Rex cannot close his mouth now. Is there anything I can do to try and fix this? Thank you
Mostly inability to stand
As a professional toy designer with 8 international toylines I’d like to point out some glaring errors with your article.
1. Toy “collectors” worldwide have this fundamental consistency that they are “experts” on what constitutes quality control. You yourself clearly say that you can recognise “poor quality control” just from standing for 5 minutes in a toy aisle. This is ASTOUNDING to me and my toy designer industry friends because when my first toy failed I spent a decade travelling to numerous toy factories in China, Japan and Mexico learning about toy production, meeting practical and 3D sculptors worldwide learning all about toy production and became friends with people at the highest level in the toy industry before EVER saying again that I knew ANYTHING about toys.
Yet in the last 20 years I constantly meet toy “collectors” who have never made a toy at factory who believe somehow that owning toys makes them experts on TOY PRODUCTION.
It doesn’t.
2.There seems to be a belief on the internet that educated, well written articles disguise inexpertise and misleading facts. Mass produced toys are not made for adults and collectors. They are made for children for play/social play, that’s the target audience. They are tooled by machines in lots of five digit thousands then fine details are painted in Chinese factories by workers who hand paint the eyes on the toys and they go through 200-300 an hour. You THINK Hasbro executives care about what fans think? Fans constantly throw up examples of the VERY FEW times they have made a tiny change to production in the all the years millions of toys have been made at Hasbro and Kenner…it doesn’t mean anything, it’s them throwing a bone to keep the machine working, they don’t care. It’s a billion dollar industry, you are kidding yourself if you think that’s real.
I can name over 30 things that fans and collectors don’t consider at all when talking about QC when it comes to making toys that you completely skipped over when discussing paint and toys standing up. I find it weird that I have all those toys you say “don’t stand up”…mine do. All my friends one’s do. This grand plot you are talking about, seems to be pretty localised. Quality control is HUGE, it involves marketing,, packaging, distribution, tooling, painting…your article is the tiniest, most insignificant particle of a machine that goes through a team of 45 people and only one team, the marketing team, cares what YOU think and only then, not as a collector but as a parent to some child as a “does the parent like their kid playing with this toy?”
3. “Retooling” is when a toy is sent back to factory to fix a problem. You use that word out of context. If they send them back for retooling it would be to fix the problems you mention. It’s not just repainting or adding sound boxes. If an entire toyline doesn’t stand up, you wouldn’t reissue it with a new paintjob, you “retool” it with new legs, changing the factory mould if feasible.
4. Many of the things you DO mention….you understand that many of the dinosaurs with play action on the toy shelves have been used and manipulated by numerous and many children BEFORE you buy them? Unless you literally buy them online or straight from box while being shelved? They have been hammered by kids in store….that’s why some break quickly. I have picked up many Jurassic World toys with broken tail-action on the shelf in the last six months. Most collectors buy off the shelf NOT online, it’s way cheaper to walk in and buy straight off the shelf THAT’s the reality on any toy forum if you REALLY do any research. If you are actually standing five minutes in toy aisles like a creep eyeballing toys you’d see many children ripping the hell out of toys on the toy shelf. Those are the toys fans are taking home.
5. Like many fans and collectors you generalise and use terms like “many” and “everyone” but the reality is, in terms of millions of toys this problem you are sensationalising is very small. Not “everyone” has this problem, in fact, in terms of your comments, people write “I’ve been very lucky for this not to have happened.” Could it be you have an innate problem with standing up toys? Wobbly shelves? A slanted apartment/house perhaps?
You are not an expert on toy manufacturing just because you have collected toys forever. Toy production in units of millions with worldwide distribution is mind-boggling, way beyond the scope of people with god-complexes who constantly brag “I collect toys therefore I am an expert in…” or even retailers who say “I buy and sell toys for nth number of years so I am an expert in….” It’s a myth, it follows on with bloggers, youtubers etc who get given free toys by toy companies with the same ego problems who equate “free product” with knowledge. No…knowledge is earned.
The adage “Well I know a lot of toy industry people” also doesn’t apply, whoopdee do, I know a lot of sex workers, doesn’t make me great at faking orgasms, I know a lot of mechanics…can’t fix a car…see how that works? It’s a false claim toy nerds have in their head.
I’ve been manufacturing toys at factory for 20 years, the guys at Hasbro and Kenner would laugh their asses off if I ever said I was an” expert on toys” just like they do every year at SDCC when they walk around listening to guys/girls brag about this rubbish and their toy collections/sculpts while their guys are pumping out 600 sculpts a year. Heed this: They laugh. I’ve seen it, I’ve heard it, money is the God of big business and it always has been. They don’t care that some fat, 40y.o. living in their mom’s basement doesn’t like the eye’s on a kid’s dinosaur as long as 200 000 units sell next quarter. I’m not being insulting, these are the people that invite me over to their houses to show off the same old things every week and tell me they are TOY EXPERTS and “What would I know about toys?”
I answer “Not enough.”
Standing in toy aisles I can tell good and bad QC ……God that gave us a laugh. I’ve wasted my life travelling to ACTUAL toy factories learning about REAL QC, this girl just eyeballs sh*t!
Oof! You may be a toy designer, however you sound anything but “professional”. No point in taking you to task on anything written here, but I’ll assume you don’t collect Mattel’s Jurassic line with any intensity to know they have some consistent, objective QC issues like the eye paint and standing across the board that we’ve never seen before in this franchise (or in other toylines at large, when it comes to the eye paint being mis-aligned on the majority of figure).
Just a little advice: If you find yourself wanting to make a point on the internet in the future — one that has any hope at being entertained and respected — sounding *much* less condescending and crass would go such a long way! It might have helped a little here, but alas.
I honestly hope you don’t work in the upper echelons of the toy industry any more because you sound extremely unpleasant.
I just bought an indominus Rex for my son and right out of the box the roar doesn’t work it tries to for a millisecond 2 times then it makes a weird beeping noise like the emergency channel on a television but only for about a second and a half to 2 seconds.
He says he doesn’t care and he’s still excited about having it because we’re trying to collect them all but I still might return it and get a different one. In my opinion the toys still seem somewhat quality but I see where you’re coming from, they seem to be a little less quality. I’m sure it’s a profit margin thing. The cheaper they can make the toy the more profit they make, which sadly equals crappy-er / less quality toys.. It’s a business so yeah… Wish it wasn’t that way but it is. In my opinion.
Translated in English
I’ve had a lot of luck with my toys, my Thrash ‘N Throw T-Rex is ceasing to play its sounds entirely, but I think it’s the batteries that are running out.
Ho avuto molta fortuna con i miei giocattoli, il mio Thrash ‘N Throw T-Rex sta solo smettendo di fare interamente i suoi suoni ,ma credo siano le batterie che si stanno scaricando
Even in Mexico, quality control is bad with the figures, but Mattel must also switch to another type of plastic to prevent the limbs from bending over the weight of the figure and falling. You should also fix the big feet and the lack of texture and scales on many figures.
A great summation of issues I’ve encountered as well! In addition I’ve had my Albertosaurus’ jaw slide off, but that’s easily fixed. I’m always wary of “sloppy eyes”.
On a contrary and possibly atypical note my experience with Kenner’s quality control for JP toys wasn’t as great at times. I remember my mom having to return a Dennis Nedry for a broken arm feature (joint clip broken in package), a dilophosaurus that didn’t spit, and a Red T.rex that got stuck on it’s roar. Heck, my second Red T.rex eventually did the same, though it lasted a whole lot longer before giving in to endlessly roaring (aka past the point for returns).
Oh, that happened to my Red Rex as well, I forgot all about that. Yeah, Kenner weren’t the gods of toys or anything, they made mistakes just like anyone else.
I’ve also had the Alberto thing happen. Honestly I thought it was kinda cool since it was easy to fix and would stay on as long as you didn’t deliberately try to get it off. It’s like a really really extreme Dino Damage feature.
I’ve been pretty lucky with eye paint apps. There are a few derpy eyes here and there but I haven’t gotten any super bad ones where the paint isn’t even on the eye or anything like that.
I’ve had pretty good luck with my toys overall, I’d say. I’ve had a handful of issues ranging from minor quibbles I don’t really care about to a single severe problem that Mattel was happy to correct. The big issue was an Indominus that had its’ arm snap off five minutes after I unboxed it, but I contacted Mattel and got a free replacement Indominus. Most of the other problems have been stuff like my Action Attack Suchomimus’ bite function breaking and the end of my Indoraptor’s tail breaking off, but I was keeping them in a box and other figures mingling with them caused the injuries, I’m sure.
I also have been able to get figures that are notoriously hard to stand to stand without much issue, but it’s because I’m willing to put them in weird poses. Legacy Spino, Savage Strike Pachy, Cerato. I’ve also had pretty good luck with paint apps.
One lesser-seen issue I did run into is that I have a Battle Damage Herrerasaurus that can’t move its’ neck up and down like it should. The joint is clearly there, but it just doesn’t work.