Tyrannosaurus (Linde)

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Photographs by Doug Watson, edited by Dinotoyblog

It is time for the “King”. Today I would like to review the Tyrannosaurus by Linde. Linde produced a coffee substitute herbal tea back in the 1950s and casually added little plastic toys as premiums to the packages. There was a total of eight prehistoric animals among them. The Linde T. rex is of olive-coloured, marbled plastic with a waxy feel. It is 6.2 cm tall and 7.5 cm long, one of the smaller T. rex collectibles out there, similar in size to Marx or the Bullyland minis.

It is very old fashioned in posture: broad and bulky. A dinosaur adept immediately recognizes that the sculptors clung to the Tyrannosaurus from the Great Dinosaur Mural at the Peabody Museum of Natural History from the Yale University in New Haven, while sculpting this model.

The unequalled fresco was painted to the wall of the great dinosaur hall by Rudolph Zallinger in 1944 and is still highly esteemed by palaeoartists around the world. The mural shows early reptiles as behemoths of a long lost time and represents the common view of dinosaurs those days. They were regarded as sluggish, dim-witted animals leading cluelessly towards extinction.

The Linde Tyrannosaurus is a three-dimensional version of the T.rex on the fresco. The sculptors assigned all the details accurately: nostrils, ears, the very small arms, the eyes and the teeth. They even noted the crest on the back, making it look like it is made of skin. It runs down to the end of the tail as a small, jagged ridge. I also love the highly detailed plaits on the neck. The waxy surface makes these plaits look like leathery skin.

Overall, the Linde T. rex is a gem in every collection. Not just because of its overall look, but also because its connection to the Yale mural and the fact it is probably the only Austrian T.rex out there.

This is a figure that affords a multidimensional approach, and that is just of my taste. Unspectacular at first sight, it reveals its secrets upon closer inspection, little by little. Sometimes Linde prehistoric animals show up on Ebay. Their Rhamphorhynchus is supposed to be highly sought after.