Normally when toy companies make juvenile dinosaurs, they just take known adult dinosaurs and make a smaller cuter version. Even respectable companies like Safari and CollectA have gone this route in the past. I typically don’t have any interest in these, but a fair number of taxa are known only from infant or juvenile remains.
Author: Halichoeres
I'm a biologist and illustrator teaching anatomy, evolution, and similar subjects at a university in Chicago. I'm on a mission to hunt down the best toy version of every Paleozoic and Mesozoic animal and plant, which leads to some incongruous display shelves. That mission also means a pretty motley assortment of reviews, with maybe a bit of a bias in favor of fishes.All reviews by this author
Review: Dunkleosteus (Chap Mei)
3.8 (12 votes)
In the past few years we’ve seen an explosion of Dunkleosteus figures from all kinds of companies, from masterpieces like Favorite Co’s rendition to worthy-but-flawed efforts like CollectA’s to fairly bad ones like the subject of today’s review. It’s the most popular prehistoric fish in plastic, eclipsing the huge but otherwise utterly boring C.
Review: Sinopterus (Günther)
2.2 (6 votes)
More than 100 genera of pterosaurs are known from sufficient remains to make a good guess at their appearance. Nevertheless, only about 10 genera have been made into decent figures by major toy companies. Here’s one that hasn’t: a wind-up flying Sinopterus by German toy company Günther.
Review: Tawa (Conquering the Earth by Schleich)
4.1 (17 votes)
The kinds of dinosaur toy fans who care about accuracy and realism tend to find Schleich frustrating, perhaps because Schleich has, at the very least, the technical capacity to make outstanding figures. For example, their recent Kentrosaurus was a solid effort, but in the same year as a good figure like that they’ll release arrestingly ugly toys.
Review: Cephalaspis (Starlux)
4.8 (13 votes)
The earliest vertebrates didn’t have jaws, but once true jaws evolved the animals that had them quickly became more numerous and diverse. These days, the only jawless fishes left are a few dozen species of lampreys and hagfishes, but in the Early Devonian most fishes lacked jaws.
Review: Paleozoic Creatures (Colorata)
5 (13 votes)
Colorata has been making boxed sets of dinosaurs for several years now, which occasionally include dinosaur contemporaries like pterosaurs or mosasaurs, but in December of 2017 they released their first boxed set of prehistoric figures featuring exclusively non-dinosaur taxa. Say hello to the Extinct Animals: Paleozoic Creatures set.
Review: Oviraptor (Conquering the Earth by Schleich)
4.5 (23 votes)
Normally I prefer to write about noble fishes, but occasionally I must sully myself with filthy theropods. Today is such an occasion. Join me for a look at Schleich’s Oviraptor. Schleich has earned a lot of derision for their sometimes hilarious depictions of dinosaurs.
Review: Pituriaspis (Mega Squali by Diramix)
3.8 (4 votes)
We met the Italian company Diramix last year when we reviewed their Livyatan. Their rubbery, stretchy toys aren’t much to look at, but sometimes they take on some interesting species. I’m a sucker for those, so late last year when their “Mega Squali” line came out, I had to have the random prehistoric fish that they included.
Review: Mononykus with Desert Environment Accessory Pack (Beasts of the Mesozoic: Raptor Series by Creative Beast Studio)
4.9 (45 votes)
David Silva, the sculptor behind the Creative Beast line of model kits, ran a Kickstarter campaign in April 2016 to produce the Beasts of the Mesozoic “Raptor” Series, a range of large-scale dromaeosaurid action figures that he strove to make accurate, detailed, and posable.
Review: Ankylosaurus (Wild Safari by Safari Ltd)
4.6 (34 votes)
With the 2017 Tyrannosaurus and 2018 Triceratops, Safari Ltd has made a good start on reconstructing a 1:35 version of the Hell Creek formation of the Maastrichtian (latest Cretaceous) of Laramidia. To help round out the Hell Creek fauna, they’ve just released a new, updated Ankylosaurus, another giant contemporary of Tyrannosaurus and Triceratops.
Review: Tiktaalik (Paleozoo)
4.4 (10 votes)
It’s easy to think of evolution as a linear process, where one species in the fossil record gives rise to the next in an ever-improving, ever-ascending ladder. But the reality is messier. It’s more like a bush with lots of dead-end branches–any one specimen is unlikely to be our direct ancestor, but many of the transitional forms we find in the fossil record would have been, at least, pretty close relatives of our direct ancestors.
Review: Polacanthus (Papo)
3.5 (21 votes)
The Early Cretaceous Wessex formation in England is rich in vertebrate fossils, including dinosaurs like Baryonyx and Iguanodon, pterosaurs like Caulkicephalus, many kinds of fish, and even some fragments of small mammals. Today we’ll take a look at one of the most heavily armored denizens of Early Cretaceous Eurasia, Polacanthus, as depicted by Papo.