Dilophosaur fans of multiple varieties get the best deal with this pair of charmingly well-constructed plush predators of semi-anonymous origin. The realm of gray-market (dinosaur) toys is full of, well, gray areas to be cautiously navigated; in an online age it’s especially easy to get lost in a malaise of sketchy knockoffs and bootleg toys from unknown sources. Amidst the...
In the world of paleoart and paleomerch, it’s very common to see artists and toymakers draw inspiration from the imagery of other creators. Often this can be a good thing and a chance to reinforce contemporary understanding – consider how many vintage toys drew from Charles R Knight and Rudolph Zallinger – but sometimes it ends up becoming flagrant theft of another’s...
Sometimes there’s no avoiding bad timing. Since paleontology is an ever-shifting field of scientific understanding, any artistic or commercial renditions of prehistoric life risk becoming obsolete at the drop of a new find. Such was the case for Safari Ltd., who announced the release of a new Dilophosaurus model for 2020 to replace the previous Wild...
Thanks to its appearance in Jurassic Park, Dilophosaurus is, in the words of one paleontologist, “pretty much the best, worst-known dinosaur.” Even if you’re well aware that it wasn’t small and didn’t spit venom and didn’t have a frill around its neck, you probably grew up reading about how fragile its twin crests were and how relatively weak its bite...
A relic of toy trends from the 2000s, these cheap assembled models make for a decent little novelty item, as long as you’re delicate with them. I’ve never been much of a “card” collector, so I’ve never followed the hobby closely, but I do recall a time in the early 2000s when 3D card models like Z-Cardz and Star Wars...
It was a truly sad day for the entire dinosaur toy community when Battat Terra sculptor Dan LoRusso passed away in 2015. He was immensely talented, meticulous in his research, and most importantly of all, friendly and kind. At the time of his death, he had begun working on sculpts of Majungasaurus, Plateosaurus, and Yutyrannus for the Terra line. We...
Review and photographs by Stolpergeist, edited by Suspsy Schleich has a long history of collaborating with other companies to make exclusive figures, including small giveaways that represented company mascots, figures that were simply animals with corporation logos printed on them, or the figures available in the Schleich magazines by Blue Ocean Entertainment. Last year, Schleich collaborated with McDonald’s for the...
Morning sun rises over the Pangean plains of the Late Triassic. The wet season has just ended, and it is a time of plenty for herbivores across the scrub land. This means the predators do well too. A lone Coelophysis wonders the land, searching for water to wash down a recent meal. The female stops by a lake, watching carefully...
Greetings DinoWaurriors! While being a great medium to introduce the masses to dinosaurs, films can have an awful effect on people by presenting inaccuracies and people drinking them in as fact. Such is the case with Dilophosaurus in Jurassic Park. In the film, it was presented as a small predator, venom spitting with a frill, when in fact it had...
From the savage teeth of tyrannosaurs to the intimidating horns of ceratopsians to the endearing crests of hadrosaurs and to the peculiar noggins of pachycephalosaurs, dinosaur skulls truly are stupendous. I previously reviewed Safari’s toob of prehistoric mammal skulls; now I’ll be looking at their Dino Skulls toob. There are eleven skulls in total, all painted medium brown with streaks...
Review and photographs by Funk, edited by Suspsy This review is of a toy I distinctly remember seeing in a store and asking my mom to buy some time in the early 1990s’; it looked like a big, bad killer dinosaur, much fiercer than the others on the shelf. I always thought it was supposed to be an inaccurately proportioned...
Review and photos by Faelrin, edited by Suspsy The Legacy Collection line is one of the most controversial assortments of the Mattel Jurassic World toy line, what with having very poor distribution worldwide except for the most part in the US, and only at Target stores due to it being a retailer exclusive (exceptions being the Spinosaurus, etc). There was...
