Review by SentaiSeiya

Each year brings us a new Super Sentai show. This year we have Zyuden Sentai Kyoryuger. The motif for this year is, for the third time, dinosaurs, and the gimmick is batteries called Jyudenchi (Beast Batteries). The Kyoryujin is the main mecha of the Kyoryuger, and it incorporates the battery and dinosaur themes of the show.



The Kyoryujin comes in a HUUUUUUGE box! It takes up most of my 20” light tent.



The size of the box is something to keep in mind if you are considering importing this toy from overseas, as the shipping will easily be about $50. After shipping that almost doubles the price on this bad boy.

When you open the box, you immediately realize why the packaging is so massive. One of the mecha, Gabutyra, is enormous. He is 11 inches tall and almost 16 inches from head to tail.



For size comparison he is standing next to a Saint Cloth Myth figure, which is about 6 inches tall. Gabutyra is so big in fact that he makes a nice ride for Seiya!



Gabutyra is of course a T-Rex. A kind of crazy looking T-Rex, but a T-Rex nonetheless.



This set includes the Jyudenchi (Beast Battery) for Gabutyra. The batteries have small button at the top left, which flips the panel on the inside of the battery. The two panels have a different stickers applied to them. The side with the drawing of the dinosaur and the sparkly background means that the battery’s power is ready to be used. The side with the blue background and the silhouette of the dinosaur mean that the battery is dormant.



The alternate sides of the battery have no effect on how the battery interacts with the toys; the rotating panels are merely a gimmick.

Inserting a battery and pressing down on Gabutyra’s head will cause the spikes on the head of Gabutyra to pop up.



The spikes are activated by a button on the top inside of Gabutyra’s mouth, which will press against the lightning bolts on the battery.

If Gabutyra's electronic features are turned on and you insert the Gabutyra’s Jyudenchi into its mouth, it will say” Gaburincho! Gabutyra”. If, however, there is no battery inserted, pressing the button on side of Gabutyra will make it roar.

All of the sounds for this toy come from yellow part of the left midsection of Gabutyra, where it has a speaker, which is just below the triangular button.



Dricera is the name of the bright pink mecha.



Dricera, also has a corresponding Jyudenchi (Beast Battery).



When this is inserted into Dricera, it will cause the tail of the mecha to extend out, turning it into a deadly looking lance/drill.



Dricera is of course a Triceratops.







Stegotchi is the blue Stegosaurus.



Once again, he as an accompanying Jyudenchi, which when inserted into Stegotchi causes an extra spike on Stegotchi’s back to appear.



Overall I, I thought that the Dricera and Stegotchi had the weaker designs in this set. First, they pale in comparison the awesomeness of Gabutyra. While all three mecha are pretty flat in design, Dricera and Stegotchi are much more flat than Gabutyra. Gabutyra has those big muscularly defined legs that really give it more depth. Second, the faces on Stegotchi and Dricera are kind of derpy.

Third, and most importantly, when you strip away their head, tail and weapons, they have almost the same body.





It feels like a very lazy move on PLEXs part to use so much of the same design on two toys that are included in the same set. Obviously this was done to save money. They didn’t even bother mirroring the sides. Nor did they bother sculpting separate hands for each side. Instead they opted to put the thumbs on center of the hands, so they could keep the same hand design. So the thumbs are in a freaky middle location, instead of at the top of the hands, where they belong.

Okay, time to get our gattai on and see if the sum of these toys is greater than the individual pieces.

The most complicated, which is not very complicated at all, mecha to get ready is Gabutyra. First you have to remove the yellow part of the tail. Then you move the outside parts of the legs back and you extend the inside parts of legs by pressing the grey button on them. Then you can separate the legs. The legs are then placed in the upright position and the panels on the knees are brought down to give the legs a more flat look.

The little T-Rex arms then need to be pushed down to allow the torso to be rotated into position. The last touches are to place the opened tail piece on the back of the T-Rex and to flip up the center panel on the top of Gabutyra to reveal the face of the mecha and put the helmet ( which is hidden in the tail) on its head.



As for Dricera and Stegotchi, the main to-do in order to get them ready is to slide their legs inward; first the front legs, then the rear. Dricera’s horns then need to be shifted to the back of the figure using the connecting arm.



Finally, the button the underside of these two has to be pressed, to spit out the batteries. Oh and don’t forget to remove the Stegotchi’s top panel, as I forgot to do on this pic.



Then you are ready to finalize this combination known as the Kamitsuki Gattai, which has been translated as biting combination. This is probably because when Dricera and Stegotchi are attached to Gabutyra, it kind of looks like Dricera and Stegotchi are biting at Gabutyra’s shoulders.





The Kyoryujin is a towering giant of a mecha, with some pretty odd proportions and color scheme.While the red, blue and yellow of the toy go pretty well together, the bright pink of Dricera clashes with the cohesiveness of the color pallet. The paint apps are pretty good, but lack finer detailing that we see in other Super Sentai toys.

As for articulation, the arms can move up 90 degrees.



This is par for the course on Super Sentai toys, so no love lost on this missed opportunity for better articulation. The legs can also move back 90’s degrees thanks to the ratchet joint at the hips. However, doing so requires removing the tail piece on the back of the Kyoryujin. The legs can also be spread outwards a bit thanks to a second set of ratchet joints on the hips.



So while the arms are restricted in their movement, I was pretty happy with the extra movement in the legs because I am kind of tired of legs that just two big bricks sticking out of the bottom of the Super Sentai toys.

The Kyoryujin can also produce a couple of weapons for fighting off baddies with. By fanning out the spikes on the back panel of Stegotchi, it becomes the shield for the Kyoryujin.



One issue I had with the shied is that sometimes the middles spike does not stay in place, since there is nothing securing it.

The shield can transform into the Pentablade by folding the spikes back in and raising the center spike up to form the blade of the sword.



On the blade you can see the 5 colors of the Kyoryujin; this is because forming the Pentablade requires all five of the Kyoryujin to be piloting it. So while it only requires three pilots to move, it can only perform the sword finisher with all five members on board.

The other weapons on the Kyoryujin are the drills of Dricera.

“Spin, Spin your Drills Dricera! “ Is what I want to say, but can't because all of the drills are fixed. Which is a missed opportunity to make the drill that much cooler.

So a big part of show Kyoryuger and the Kyoryujin is the music. In the show, the Kyoryujin can play Samba music during its transformation. It also has different sounds for the attacks for each of the three dinosaurs.

In order to activate the sounds that accompany the transformation of the Kyoryujin, you have to insert the Dricera and Stegotchi batteries into Gabutyra, one after the other. Then you can put Gabutyra’s battery back in his mouth. Finally, the batteries for Dricera and Stegotchi are put into the mouths of the toys. However, this time around, they need to stick out the mouth almost entirely. So there is no need to push the button on the bottom of the toy to slide the compartment back. This is important, because if the holding compartment slides back, the batteries will not reach the button inside of the connection points and they will not trigger the sounds.

When Dricera and Stegotchi are attached to the brackets on each side of the Gabutyra, the toy will say “Gaburincho! Stegotchi “ and “Gaburincho! Dricera.” The brackets on the arms do not have readers for the batteries; they have buttons. What this means is that the electronics in Gabutyra merely remember the order of these batteries . Then when the button inside each of the brackets is pressed, it will elicit the sounds in the order of that the batteries were put into Gabutyra's mouth. So you can use anything to press the buttons inside of the arm, and it will play the sounds for the batteries that Gabutyra has memorized. It would have been neat if there were battery readers in each of the arms, but I am sure that probably would have made this toy even more expensive than it already is.



Overall, I liked this toy for what it was. Yes,I felt that the design of Dricera and Stegotchi left a little to be desired. Also, the sounds are limited and the process for getting all of the sounds can be an involved process.

At the end of the day, however, this is a kids toy and it succeeds at being that. The construction on all three of these toys is rock solid. These toys feel like the can take a beating. Plus, I am sure that while the sounds on the toy are a bit limited, the kids in Japan, for whom this toy was designed for, will have a blast annoying their parents with the repetitive samba sounds of this toy. At first, I was not a fan of this design at all, but it has steadily grown on me. It is not my favorite dinosaur Super Sentai mech, but I it is nice to have some more dinosaurs robots in my collection.



