Dr Adam S. Smith (aka 'DinoToyBlog' here, and 'DinoToyForum' on the Dinosaur Toy Forum) is a curator and palaeontologist at the Nottingham Natural History Museum, Wollaton Hall, UK. Adam launched the Dinosaur Toy Blog in July 2007 and followed it up with the Dinosaur Toy Forum in January 2008, and the Animal Toy Forum in December 2012. He is particularly interested in marine reptile figures, especially plesiosaurs. Adam also runs The Plesiosaur Directory website and has published several popular articles and technical papers on fossil marine reptiles. He is a children's book author with 'The Plesiosaur's Neck' (2021) and 'The Tyrannosaur's Feathers' (2023).
This is the second plesiosaur produced by Procon, the first one being the elasmosaurid Hydrotherosaurus (reviewed here), but this is their first pliosaur. Procon are tending to divide collectors with their new lines.
We now return to our series of pliosaur reviews. We have already looked in detail at the popular Chap Mei Liopleurodon here and more recently the Kronosaurus by Schleich. Let’s now take a look at Safari Ltd’s offering, another popular figure, the Carnegie Collection Kronosaurus.
Many cheap dinosaurs (known as ‘Chinasaurs’ in the dinosaur toy collecting community because they are typically manufactured there) have a habit of adding vicious teeth to each and every species of prehistoric creature, predatory stegosaurs and triceratops abound for example, and Pteranodons; the name means ‘winged and (ironically) toothless’, with a ferocious maw.
Once again, Safari Ltd’s Great Dinosaurs collection impresses us with a pretty good figure, far exceeding our expectations for a $6 bargain and offering an embarrassing comparison for one of Safari’s other attempts at this dinosaur (the original Carnegie Collection Triceratops is simply appalling, in my opinion).
