My heart jumped in excitement when Mattel announced in 2021 that they were going to make one of my favorite dinosaurs, Masiakasaurus knopfleri! I finally get to talk about it which is an added bonus. This particular reconstruction is based on the 20 or so years old depiction that has dominated all sorts of media this animal was featured in....
Times have been very hard lately, and the smallest gestures are worth living for. I would like to thank Happy Hen Toys for providing me with this interesting specimen, so I could pass the time playing with it, photographing it, and helping me to focus on something less painful. You’d be doing a disservice to yourself not checking their store...
I, EmperorDinobot, have a less than healthy obsession with the Beasts of the Mesozoic. These are the dinosaurs I wanted to own as a kid. Dinosaurs that were articulated beyond what Kenner and later Hasbro’s dinosaurs could do. And here I am, roughly two decades later, sitting in bed with my own personal computer doing what I always did as...
Last year was an exciting year for Irritator! Not only did we get two new figures by Mattel, but we also got a new study looking at the jaw articulation of Professor Challenger’s Irritating creature from Brazil! Join me, Emperor Dinobot, as we look at one of the most interesting figures Mattel has given us thus so far, barring the...
At this point in my life, my reviews are all going to be somewhat personal. As collectors, we tend to form serious attachments to our toys or figures, as they often serve as memory capsules. They remind us of things such as a fun event that led to their discovery, a trip where a collector bought a figure at a...
I, Emperor Dinobot, am also fond of plush prehistoric fauna. When I read that Little Softs were offering a quirky, newly described Scottish rhamphorhynchid, I had to jump into it. It is very bittersweet for me to be writing this review, though, and I will explain so later. My dear Dearc came in a plastic baggie to avoid dirt (I...
Sorry for the absence. I have been gone for some time to take care of personal issues, but never think that I, Emperor Dinobot, have forgotten about you, my dear readers. As you may know, ceratopsians are my favorite group of dinosaurs, and this is evident not just for my love of BOTM’s ceratopsian line, but because I always…I always...
The chaos continues! Dinosaurs have evolved, and more species are on the loose! This may sound scary, but it does not have to be. The usually docile, bighorn sheep-sized Avaceratops has been spotted at high altitudes, getting comfortable in their modern colder environments. Their sharp horns are a reminder that, while they generally have a gentle disposition, they should be...
I, Emperor Dinobot, recently posited a question around, and it was the following: Could Mattel be designing dinosaur figures and naming them afterwards? We already have an example: Roarivores Sinoceratops is actually a Pachyrhinosaurus, but it got a name change due to the fact that Universal wanted to market Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom to the massive Chinese audience, and Pachyrhinosaurus...
We owe a lot of our pop dinosaur knowledge to books such as “The Humongous Book of Dinosaurs” by David Norman (et al.), written in the very late 1980’s and early 90’s, published by various publishers in many formats, like collectible magazines, all which often included a comprehensive list of dinosaurs from a-z, and from all over the world. The...
Proceratosaurus. “Before Ceratosaurus“. I remember when I first laid eyes on the exquisitely preserved jaws of this animal, found in England from the rocks of the mid Jurassic. The picture was in most dinosaur books throughout the 80’s and 90’s, accompanied by a somewhat vague description usually saying that it looked like Ceratosaurus and Ornitholestes due to the nasal horns...
Well, for my next magic tr…I mean 50th review, I will address Mattel’s strange choices when it comes to making figures based on my new favorite group of ancient reptiles: pterosauria. Ornithocheirus is a name that has been in paleo literature since the 1870’s, though the genus had become kind of a wastebasket taxon through the early 1900’s and onward....
