The best figure of every species, according to Halichoeres

[Gothmog the Baryonyx]

More wonderful additions to your collection, congrats

[postsaurischian]

I complain about the lack of fish in prehistoric toy lines, .......

  I can only concur with this!

  @Halichoeres: Your thread has so many cute & beautiful surprises . I love the trilobites (and am angry with myself that I haven't bought
  the Kaiyodo Study Room model when I had the chance to. The museum hasn't offered it since about 2012). Hm, I might get me that Bandringa rayi.

[Halichoeres]

What does Silva charge for his custom figures? The Anisopleurodon, for example? If you don't mind my asking.

Sorry for the late reply! The Anisopleurodontis was $140, not including shipping. The trilobite+conodont set was $50, and the last one, yet to be revealed, was even less.

I feel like those conodonts would fit right in with the Tully Monster, on terms of how weird they look.

And that Moschops is really nice. I really hope other companies start producing figures of that one again.

Conodonts were absolutely wild. Their teeth are terrifying. I also hope one of the big companies revives Moschops.

To put it bluntly: you have amazing  new additions!

Thank you very much!

More wonderful additions to your collection, congrats

Thanks!

I complain about the lack of fish in prehistoric toy lines, .......

  I can only concur with this!

  @Halichoeres: Your thread has so many cute & beautiful surprises . I love the trilobites (and am angry with myself that I haven't bought
  the Kaiyodo Study Room model when I had the chance to. The museum hasn't offered it since about 2012). Hm, I might get me that Bandringa rayi.

Thank you, that means a lot coming from you. It's a shame the Ceraurinella was so limited. I ended up getting it in a trade, but I hunted it for a pretty long time.

[Bokisaurus]

Wow, some truly amazing and wonderful new additions!

[Halichoeres]

Wow, some truly amazing and wonderful new additions!

Thank you!

And now, bony fishes of the Cretaceous:


TS Toys Muttaburrasaurus (Walking with Dinosaurs unofficial)
Scale: 1:30
Released: 2001
Albian of Australia
When I first learned of the TS Toys unofficial WWD line, I started looking for the Muttaburrasaurus, but I sort of stopped looking once the Australian Age of Dinosaurs line emerged. Of course, that line now seems stalled at one figure. Maybe one day they'll put out a nice bipedal Muttaburrasaurus, but for now this is at least an improvement on the CollectA version.


Mofun Toys Stygimoloch
Scale: 1:10-1:12
Released: 2019
Maastrichtian of North America
This mysterious toy has shown up in a couple of places on the forum, and the photos convinced me to give it a shot. It's definitely the largest, most detailed Stygimoloch on the market. It's odd, because I looked at the rest of Mofun's offerings, and they're mostly really bad bootlegs of Papo and Schleich figures. I don't know, then, where they got this pretty reasonable sculpt. Maybe it's a preemptive knockoff of one of Papo's 2020 figures that Mofun got to before production was finished. 


Much larger than the Takara Tomy version.


Not much on hand to the same scale, but this Coelurus will do in a pinch.


Papo Gorgosaurus
Scale: 1:40
Sculptor: Seo Jung-woon
Released: 2019
Campanian of North America
I've heard a lot of complaints about the size of this figure, but for me it's the perfect size. I like large animals in 1:40 if possible. It's a pretty good figure with a slightly weird pose, and at the very least it isn't another Ty***nosaurus. This replaces the 2004 Safari Gorgosaurus that's been on my shelf for the last couple of years. 


Hunting Hypacrosaurus


Custom Santanichthys diasii
Scale: 1:1
Sculptor: Vitor Silva
Lower Cretaceous
The last of the commissions from Vitor Silva. This fish is kind of special to me because it was the earliest fossil taxon in the time-calibrated phylogeny of characiform fishes that I built for my dissertation. I did a doodle of one in my art thread, it's my avatar on the forum, and I've been wanting one for my shelf for a pretty long time--but who's going to make one? Vitor Silva, that's who, the perfect sculptor for a taxon known from Brazil's Santana formation. Silva has posted this figure on his DeviantArt page, where he says it's the smallest figure he's ever made! The wire it's mounted on was not supposed to protrude through the back, so I have some minor repairs to make. It's such a tiny figure that a little damage in transit isn't particularly surprising.


With Safari's ammonite and Kaiyodo's Triops for scale. That's how small this thing is!


Finally, I got this PNSO Qianzhousaurus. I wanted one of their busts as a bookend for my paleo books, so I went with the one that's least overdone. I'd buy a PVC figure of this genus (well, a larger one than the existing mini). 

[Killekor]

Thanks for the photos and for the information Halicoeres! Your collection thread is always interesting.

If that stygimoloch is a "bad bootleg" of an upcoming figure from a brand I'll be definitely interested in the original. This knockoff is really great!

Killekor

[BrontoScorpio]

...

[BrontoScorpio]

Kaiyodo Barosaurus (Dinoland 100mm)
Scale: 1:100
Upper Jurassic
This is one of the few Kaiyodo pieces in my collection whose sculptor and release date I haven't been able to identify. It's a really elegant little piece, modeled after the mount at the American Museum in New York. ... Still, I think it's the best Barosaurus around.

Sculptor is Shinobu Matsumura, I think release date is arround the early 90's

[Bokisaurus]

Those are cool new additions, and that fish is tiny!

[ZoPteryx]

Papo Gorgosaurus

I've heard a lot of complaints about the size of this figure, but for me it's the perfect size. I like large animals in 1:40 if possible. It's a pretty good figure with a slightly weird pose, and at the very least it isn't another Ty***nosaurus.

I'm liking this figure more the more I see it.  Out of curiosity, how easy do you think it would be to correct its squatting pose?

Custom Santanichthys diasii

Wow!  Talk about a unique figure!  I really like the vaguely tetra-like color scheme.  Very appropriate! 

[Gothmog the Baryonyx]

I agree with you about the size of the Gorgosaurus, I don't want a big figure of it, it looks right with other smaller figures. If anything, it's actually too big for the Safari Ltd Parasaurolophus (2017).

[Halichoeres]

Thanks for the photos and for the information Halicoeres! Your collection thread is always interesting.

If that stygimoloch is a "bad bootleg" of an upcoming figure from a brand I'll be definitely interested in the original. This knockoff is really great!

Killekor

Thank you! I hope it's not a bootleg, because I don't like to support plagiarism, but if it is I'll want the original too.

Sculptor is Shinobu Matsumura, I think release date is arround the early 90's

Thanks for the information, I appreciate that!

Papo Gorgosaurus

I've heard a lot of complaints about the size of this figure, but for me it's the perfect size. I like large animals in 1:40 if possible. It's a pretty good figure with a slightly weird pose, and at the very least it isn't another Ty***nosaurus.

I'm liking this figure more the more I see it.  Out of curiosity, how easy do you think it would be to correct its squatting pose?

Yeah, I think Safari would make a better one, but this one is pretty solid by Papo standards. I'm not much of a customizer, but I think it would be pretty difficult. I expect you'd have to cut the legs completely off and partially sculpt new ones.

On the Santanichthys, good eye! The colors are modeled on several species of Astyanax, which is the genus I sampled most heavily for my grad research.

I agree with you about the size of the Gorgosaurus, I don't want a big figure of it, it looks right with other smaller figures. If anything, it's actually too big for the Safari Ltd Parasaurolophus (2017).

Yup, it's definitely too big for the Safari Para, but it would work with the Battat.

Those are cool new additions, and that fish is tiny!

Thanks! Definitely one of my smallest, hardly larger than the little Bandai ichthyodectid.

[Halichoeres]

Whoa!  Super jealous, those custom figures look amazing!  Do the conodonts have glass eyes?  And how did you decide on Anisopleurodontis?

@ZoPteryx I finally got a chance to check and the conodonts do have glass eyes. Sorry it took me so long!

[ZoPteryx]

Whoa!  Super jealous, those custom figures look amazing!  Do the conodonts have glass eyes?  And how did you decide on Anisopleurodontis?

@ZoPteryx I finally got a chance to check and the conodonts do have glass eyes. Sorry it took me so long!

No worries!  That's awesome!

[Andanna]

Great threat, great collection.  Very varied. Fascinating read.

[Halichoeres]

Great threat, great collection.  Very varied. Fascinating read.

Thank you, A @Andanna! I'm glad you enjoyed it.

[Halichoeres]

It's been kind of a slow couple of months, and I've moved since my last update. But I did come across something a little different recently. Check out this set of miniature historical globes released by Epoch in 2008:


Snowball Earth, one of the times when our planet is thought to have been completely covered in glaciers. This might have happened as recently as about 650 million years ago. You can dimly see the outlines of the ancient continents. Mildly interesting.


Pangaea, around the beginning of the Triassic. The last time all the continents were joined, although their total area was smaller than now.


Laurasia and Gondwana form from the breakup of Pangaea, around the Triassic-Jurassic boundary.


Modern Earth. This feels a little pointless. I mean, I already have a regular globe.


A transparent version of modern Earth. This feels even more pointless.

It's an interesting concept, and I appreciate the depictions of some paleocontinents, simple though they are. It would be so cool to have a more complete set of these to display alongside period-specific assortments of figures. This set only partially scratches that itch. The snowball globe is from a time before any of the organisms represented among my figures, so it's interesting but doesn't really go with anything else I own. The current one is pretty useless for a person who doesn't collect modern fauna, in addition to feeling redundant with an ordinary globe. The transparent version is the worst of all, and I can only guess they included it to save money on making a new mold. A Devonian one, or a Cretaceous one showing the Interior Seaway, would be pretty great. But hey, 2 out of 5 pieces being useful and interesting is about par for the course with gashapon sets. I can definitely use the two Mesozoic ones on my display shelves. Epoch has made some dinosaur-themed gashapon before, like dinosaur heads in the style of a trophy mount, and some fairly boring, not terribly realistic skeletons. But this was the release that sneaked Epoch into my collection.

[Faelrin]

Huh those globes are pretty interesting. That certainly would be an interesting idea, to have them on display with figures from an appropriate matching time.

[bmathison1972]

Tim, your collection is worlds apart...

[SBell]

It's interesting that they went Snowball earth, start of Triassic, end of Triassic, modern. It does feel like they could have gone one more at least.

And you know that the transparent one was the rare chase figure... even though it's the most pointless.