Here I am again with another review for another Favorite dinosaur. No, I don’t mean it is my favorite but rather made by the Favorite Company who it seems feel so confident in their models that they changed their name from Kinto to Favorite. It still feels weird to say the word favorite not as an adjective...
Stegosaurus has for some reason become a recent favorite of mine among the dinosaurs. It is such a bizarre dinosaur and I feel it is taken for granted due to its large presence in pop culture, that, and we’ve known about it since 1877. As a stegosaur alone it is quite bizarre, the only one with such...
Although good Velociraptor toys are hard to come by, it’s easier to get hold of a half-decent Styracosaurus – meaning that Favorite (and Araki) had to try a little harder to impress with their Soft Model resculpt of the famous ceratopsian. Does their punk-rock centrosaur deliver? Well, you’ll have to read the rest of the review to find out....
Feathered dromaeosaurs are always welcome on the toy market, and especially feathered Velociraptor figures. Perhaps rather unsurprisingly – given that a certain 20-year-old film is raking in the cash yet again this year – the biggest dinosaur toy names (in the West, anyway) continue to peddle scandalously nude figures. Even Safari’s Wild Safari line, with its little info-tags and educational...
Favorite’s ‘soft models’ have had a complete revamp this year, with an all-new series of sculpts by the renowned Kazunari Araki. With the exception of Pachycephalosaurus and Deinonychus (replaced by Velociraptor), every animal in the original series has an Araki counterpart, and the differences are quite striking and very interesting. Presumably hedging their bets from a scientific standpoint, and also...
Review and photos by Patrick Bate (Pixelboy), edited by Plesiosauria. Ah, Japan. A culture that seems to be equal parts tradition and progress. Fortuitously, when it comes to dinosaurs, progress seems to be their strong suit. If you’re looking for accurate, up-to-date dinosaur figures, Japanese companies like Kaiyodo, Kabaya, TakaraTomy, and Kinto/Favorite are often your best bet; and this Tyrannosaurus...
Favorite’s ‘Soft Models’ tend to receive acclaim on the Dinosaur Toy Blog and I’ve been promising to review the Plesiosaurus for…well, years actually. Certain members of the Dinosaur Toy Forum tend not to let me forget it! So it will be a weight off my shoulders to finally give this figure the attention it deserves. This review is also timely...
Review and Photos by ‘Tyrantqueen’. Edited by ‘Plesiosauria’. Continuing with our reviews of the Oldies model series, here we have the 1950s tail-dragging Brachiosaurus sculpted by Kazunari Araki (as is the entire Oldies line). The most well-known species of Brachiosaurus now goes by the name of Giraffatitan brancai (formerly Brachiosaurus brancai). Although Giraffatitan also belongs to the...
Review and photos by Tyrantqueen. For my first Dinosaur Toy Blog review I am going to look at the 1850s-style Iguanodon in the Oldies desktop model series by Kinto/Favorite co. The Oldies series of replicas is intended to be a nostalgic take on outdated interpretations of dinosaurs from yesteryear. Each replica comes with a wooden plinth, which I have removed...
Parasaurolophus walkeri is one of the most widely recognised and much-loved hadrosaur species, and no dinosaur toy line is complete without it. (Sorry, P. tubicen and P. cyrtocristatus.) It’s only proper, then, that Favorite include it among their ‘soft model’ lineup. As (almost) always, they’ve done an excellent job. I’ve critcised the Favorite ‘soft’ dinosaurs in the past for...
Back in 2010, Favorite released a re-sculpt of the Tyrannosaurus from their resin ‘Desktop’ range, alongside Triceratops and Allosaurus. Once again, it is a huge improvement over its predecessor anatomically but is likely to strongly divide tastes. Just as with the Allosaurus, a large, overhanging ‘lip’ covers all of the teeth in the upper jaw, with only the very tips...
Most sauropods tend to more or less look similar; big body, long neck long tail. Rarely will a sauropod possess any distinguishing characteristics beyond those three things. Then there is Amargasaurus. This dinosaur was a smaller (relatively speaking) sauropod from the early Cretaceous in what is now Argentina. It is highly distinguishable amongst other dinosaurs by the double row of...
