I have a soft spot for the UKRD figures of the 90s, as they were among the first dinosaur toys I collected as a kid, and I’ve reviewed quite a few of them for this blog. I’ve now reached the Stegosaurus from 1992 and thought it would just be an “also ran” kind of review, as the figure itself is...
Other reviewers seem to have stopped covering UKRD figures years ago, but there are still a lot of them left to go, so I guess that’s my lot in life. While they may seem like mass-produced dreck to most people, I find them interesting and charming because they often reflect outdated or downright bizarre ideas and vintage palaoart, usually (with...
This is my first review as an author rather than guest reviewer at this blog, so I’ll start out with a classic figure, the UKRD Iguanodon from 1992. Iguanodon of course has the distinction of being the second named dinosaur genus (after Megalosaurus), and has remained relatively famous for a non-American dinosaur, even being the protagonist of a film, Disney’s...
Review and photos by Funk, edited by Suspsy Yet another Tyrannosaurus toy review you say? Well, this one is unlike most others, and is rather baffling in some of its design choices, so there should be enough novel things to say about it. It’s the UKRD bendable Tyrannosaurus, part of a 1992 line that seemed to be flexible versions of...
Review and photographs by Funk, edited by Suspsy There are still plenty of UKRD toys from the 1990s left to review, so next in line is the mid-size Parasaurolophus from 1992. Due to its distinctive crest, Parasaurolophus is probably the most familiar hadrosaur, and therefore has a lot of toys to its name. As with many of the other UKRD...
Marginocephalia is a clade full of interesting species that are largely hard to define by their body, with their only real definition being their heads. There are two groups, the ceratopsians (for which the number of models are near innumerable) and the less popular pachycephalosaurs. There are many figures of them, though far from the numbers of their ceratopsian counter...
Review and photographs by Funk, edited by Suspsy It probably wouldn’t be an exaggeration to say that Pteranodon is the most popular of all pterosaurs, and likely the one with most toys to its name. To this day, it remains one of the most recognisable pterosaurs, if not prehistoric animals in general, no doubt due to its very distinct head...
Review and photographs by Stolpergeist, edited by Suspsy UKRD is a rather mysterious company that produced mostly John Sibbick inspired dinosaur figures from 1987 to 1993. In fact a lot of the inspirations for UKRD’s toy figures can be found in one single book, “The Illustrated Encyclopedia of Dinosaurs” (1985), written by Dr. David Norman and illustrated by Sibbick. Up...
Review and photographs by Funk, edited by Suspsy The UKRD dinosaurs were mass-produced back in the early 1990s’, and don’t seem to be particularly sought after today, but some of them appear to have been inspired by John Sibbick’s palaeoart in David Norman’s 1985 Encyclopaedia of Dinosaurs, which I think makes them somewhat interesting. That also seems to be true...
Review and photographs by Funk, edited by Suspsy UKRD released a series of dinosaur toys in the early 1990s’, and I remember my kindergarten class had dozens of them. They came in at least three size classes, with the medium ones being most prevalent. Many of them seem to have been modelled after John Sibbick’s artwork in David Norman’s classic...
Fans of the dome headed pachycephalosaurs are hard pressed to find toys representing this group with one exception, Pachycephalosaurus itself. While not as popular as the likes of Tyrannosaurus or Triceratops this genus is unique enough to have been reproduced in plastic many times over, even by substandard companies like UKRD. In fact, UKRD made at least a...
There is only a certain set of collectors that will probably recognize the name UKRD. In quality they ranked well below the museum quality models produced during their time. There was, however, a wide assortment of them, in a range of sizes, and a lot of kids in the early 90s had them. They were certainly good enough to play...
