Review and images by Kikimalou, edited by Suspsy This is the very first time I’ve submitted a review for DTB and I thought that the new 2023 CollectA Shastasaurus would do the trick. What attracted me to this new ichthyosaur is the black and white interpretation. I like it when a creature from the past smells of convergent evolution. In...
As a person of Polish decent with a love for Triassic fauna I was elated to see that CollectA was producing a figure of Smok wawelski, a Triassic archosaur found near Lisowice village in Poland. And hot on the heels of their excellent Lisowicia too, another Triassic animal from the same fossil site. It was clear that this would be...
Review and photos by EmperorDinobot, edited by Suspsy I, Emperor Dinobot, was not very surprised to hear that Mattel would make a Tanystropheus figure. They had already done genera such as Scutosaurus and Postosuchus, along with numerous other non-dinosaur figures. Kenner also made a Tanystropheus toy and a bunch of repaints in the 90s’, so it was only natural that Mattel would follow suit. However, nothing would...
Guest starring Libraraptor Indohyus: Hello and welcome to this review! When discussing reviewing this figure, the talk led to the idea of having multiple reviewers giving their opinions on it (for reasons you will see later). So joining me for this review, we have reviewer and Forum legend Libraraptor! Welcome aboard! Libraraptor: Glad to be here! Been looking forward to...
For many years, the Triassic period has been the most overlooked part of the Mesozoic in toy form, usually Coelophysis or Postosuchus. More recently, however, more and more species are coming to the forefront and being made available in plastic. Even the Jurassic World toyline has jumped to this, as we see here in a recent figure of Shringasaurus, an...
A relic of toy trends from the 2000s, these cheap assembled models make for a decent little novelty item, as long as you’re delicate with them. I’ve never been much of a “card” collector, so I’ve never followed the hobby closely, but I do recall a time in the early 2000s when 3D card models like Z-Cardz and Star Wars...
The Middle Triassic began a mere five million years after the end-Permian extinction. On land, forests had finally staggered back from the destruction. Insects, mammal relatives, and sauropsids started to diversify into new–or sometimes rediscovered–morphologies. In the oceans, ray-finned fishes and coelacanths thrived, and some sauropsids returned to the sea. Among them was the earliest marine reptile thought to be...
CollectA has long been at the forefront of producing obscure toys of prehistoric animals but by and large they’ve all been tetrapods; four legged vertebrates and their descendants. This includes a variety of dinosaurs, pterosaurs, marine reptiles, and mammals. But this year CollectA has raised the bar and released four prehistoric invertebrate figures: a trilobite (Redlichia rex), Orthoceras, Pleuroceras ammonite,...
Review and photographs by Stolpergeist, edited by Suspsy Schleich has a long history of collaborating with other companies to make exclusive figures, including small giveaways that represented company mascots, figures that were simply animals with corporation logos printed on them, or the figures available in the Schleich magazines by Blue Ocean Entertainment. Last year, Schleich collaborated with McDonald’s for the...
At this point I think it’s fair to say that a new large-format pterosaur is among the highlights of CollectA’s new figure announcements. They don’t quite come every year, but they do seem to be coming more frequently. This year’s choice was one of the earliest pterosaurs, the peculiar Caviramus schesaplanensis from the Rhaetian (Late Triassic) of what would become...
Review and photographs by Funk, edited by Suspsy Nothosaurus was a widely distributed Triassic marine reptile with about a gazillion assigned species. Though it lends its name to the wider group Nothosauridae, it is probably fair to say the genus is obscure to most people. I can’t say I know much about it myself, but I happened to have this...
Time has eventually come, for one of the most impressive CollectA figures of 2020 to hit the European continent. And fittingly, it represents a European species. In 2006 paleontologists Jerzy Dzik, Tomasz Sulej and Grzegorz Niedźwiedzki discovered large bones in a clay pit in Poland. What was initially considered to be sauropodomorph dinosaur, was later recognized to be a massive...
