Review – Monster Hunter Qurupeco

Manufacturer: Bandai * Year: 2010

Here’s another blind box toy I grabbed while in Hong Kong, and this one is a perfect example of the sorts of things I like to try every now and then because I know absolutely nothing about the Monster Hunter video game series*. So why did I buy the toy if I know nothing about the series? Because the monsters shown on the box generally looked neat. Of course my luck wasn’t all that great since I ended up with the toy that looks the silliest and just isn’t all that much fun for me.

Qurupeco?

This bizarre creature is described at the Monster Hunter wiki as a Qurupeco that:

It has a trumpet-like crest, a large red vocal sac, and a flat fan-like tail that turns red when it is enraged and bright green when fatigued.

Someone forgot to mention “really dumb” in the monster’s description, because the word dumb really needed to be in there somewhere. It’s one weird monster that doesn’t look at all scary or cool. From the colors to that wacky head there’s nothing at all terrifying about this beast.

Sculpt

Decent enough, for what it is, and actually quite detailed in the teeth/head area of the beast, this is a perfectly suitable sculpt that fails only because I so strongly dislike the way that the monster looks. Its unfair to Bandai and the team behind the toy, though, because they were simply going on the creature design from the Capcom video game . . . but that doesn’t mean I’m not going to say how much I dislike the design.

Paint

Again, it’s adequate and the coloring is a perfect fit for the design because the colors are no more scary than the creature’s sculpt. The airbrushed gradient along the edges of the wings looks good, and the teeth and mouth are very well painted, but I just can’t get past the fact that this monster looks so damned stupid. Technically the paint is just fine for a blind boxed toy, though, so Bandai did as good of a job as we can expect with a lame creature design.

Into the Box With You!

Sometimes when you roll the dice you fail to strike it big, and that’s exactly what happened with this Monster Hunter blind box toy. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with the toy itself; all of my complaints are about the monster design which I seriously dislike. The price was okay for a toy of this size — I paid about $6/US for it — and I’m fairly confident if I had pulled any toy in the series except for this one I would have been happy with my purchase. But as it is I’m passing on any other Monster Hunter blind box toys. I just don’t need to run the risk of drawing a second one of these designs from the box.

Philip Reed has several toys from Hong Kong to review, not to mention the closet of mass market toys and the cool stuff he got at toy fair. Anyone who wants to kick him for choosing to post this monstrosity to the site needs to get in line because he’s already kicking himself for spending time with this thing.