Controversial opinions on dinosaur toys

[bmathison1972]

Remember, too, parents, at least those that aren't into dinos/animals themselves, often know less (remember less) about the animals than their kids ;-). What might look the same to a parent, a kid could easily tell apart.

[Sim]

Anyway, the way I see it, this buttresses my thesis that kids have terrible taste. (I include myself, I don't really care for Batman anymore either.) I'm willing to allow that some of the bad taste can be chalked up to their parents, aunts, uncles, and grandparents, but I don't care for children and won't pass up an opportunity to cast aspersions on them.

Respectfully, I think this says more about you than children.  I don't think I had bad taste as a child and I value kids in general.  Even you showed you had good taste by not caring for pointless Batman repeats.  I also disliked having more than one batman, and for that matter endless Dimetrodon but nothing else from the same time period.

[Pachyrhinosaurus]

I think this comes back around to the discussion in another thread about some of the ceratopsids being retired. As much as I like them, I can see how  they can compete with one another for shelf space, and aside from triceratops, look the same from the perspective of a kid or their parents. That's why I think they were retired, anyway. I wonder if sales dip for theropods with the addition of similar species.

As far as I'm concerned, Safari is the best in the business and their theropods are the best on the market, so I didn't want to come off as too critical. Especially since there are some theropods I'd like to see done by them-- such as struthiomimus. I just felt like the new releases were becoming more homogenous lately, especially compared to years like 2018. In my opinion, the ideal lineup would better represent what you'd see in a museum's fossil halls, with plenty of paleozoic and cenozoic creatures, but I also understand that dinosaurs will always be the best-sellers in the prehistoric toy market.

[suspsy]

Anyway, the way I see it, this buttresses my thesis that kids have terrible taste. (I include myself, I don't really care for Batman anymore either.) I'm willing to allow that some of the bad taste can be chalked up to their parents, aunts, uncles, and grandparents, but I don't care for children and won't pass up an opportunity to cast aspersions on them.

Respectfully, I think this says more about you than children.  I don't think I had bad taste as a child and I value kids in general.  Even you showed you had good taste by not caring for pointless Batman repeats.  I also disliked having more than one batman, and for that matter endless Dimetrodon but nothing else from the same time period.

I was very much into TMNT back in the day and while I enjoyed the villains, I really liked getting all the different versions of the four Turtles. The Storage Shell toys in particular were fun to play with. So were the mechanized ones.

And I'm sure all the toy companies can point to consistent market research to justify the glut of Batman and Spider-Man and T. rexes on toy shelves.

[BlueKrono]

Anyway, the way I see it, this buttresses my thesis that kids have terrible taste. (I include myself, I don't really care for Batman anymore either.) I'm willing to allow that some of the bad taste can be chalked up to their parents, aunts, uncles, and grandparents, but I don't care for children and won't pass up an opportunity to cast aspersions on them.

Respectfully, I think this says more about you than children.  I don't think I had bad taste as a child and I value kids in general.  Even you showed you had good taste by not caring for pointless Batman repeats.  I also disliked having more than one batman, and for that matter endless Dimetrodon but nothing else from the same time period.

I was very much into TMNT back in the day and while I enjoyed the villains, I really liked getting all the different versions of the four Turtles. The Storage Shell toys in particular were fun to play with. So were the mechanized ones.

And I'm sure all the toy companies can point to consistent market research to justify the glut of Batman and Spider-Man and T. rexes on toy shelves.

@suspsy Were you aware they just rereleased the storage shell turtles? They're just like the ones you grew up with.

@Halichoeres I am of the opinion that either I had good taste as a child or that I had terrible taste and maintained it into adulthood. Both are equally likely. I'm hoping to raise my kid to be the type who would go to a museum and ask a worker to point them to the Dunkleosteus.

[Sim]

In my opinion 2018 was one of the worst years for Safari in terms of diversity.  They made two ceratopsids, two sauropods, six mammals...  That is precisely a homogenous year, lots of repeats and types of animal already in the line, which are good for people who like them (which I believe are the people who praise that year) and almost the entire lineup being unappealing to people not fond of those groups, such as myself.  I didn't get a single figure from Safari's 2018 lineup as none appealed to me, and I like lots of different types of prehistoric animals.

It's interesting to hear of someone who likes variants of main character toys, I wasn't expecting someone to like that.  However I'm not convinced there is market research to back up making lots of variants of the same character in all cases.  To me it seems more likely that companies guess popular characters will sell well even when redone slightly differently.

[Shane]

And I'm sure all the toy companies can point to consistent market research to justify the glut of Batman and Spider-Man and T. rexes on toy shelves.

This is the key right here. As much as we as collectors might have plenty of anecdotal evidence showing customers with similar tastes as ours, there is a much more "silent majority" out there that buys your Vaders, your Batmans, your T. rexes.

The key is to strike a balance. As much as someone might bemoan yet another tyrannosaurid from Safari, that's why there are other figures available.

[Gwangi]

Jurassic Park collectors have definitely felt the effects of the "female action figures don't sell" mentality. Was there even a Lex figure for the original Kenner line? Wasn't the Mattel one the first one?

[Faelrin]

@Gwangi Yes it was. Yeah we waited this long for one. Granted I was technically a toddler when the original JP line came out, but yeah point still stands. They also never did Hammond either.

Edit: Did they do Kelly either for TLW line? I feel like they didn't. Gotta check JPToys and jog my memory.

[Halichoeres]

Anyway, the way I see it, this buttresses my thesis that kids have terrible taste. (I include myself, I don't really care for Batman anymore either.) I'm willing to allow that some of the bad taste can be chalked up to their parents, aunts, uncles, and grandparents, but I don't care for children and won't pass up an opportunity to cast aspersions on them.

Respectfully, I think this says more about you than children.  I don't think I had bad taste as a child and I value kids in general.  Even you showed you had good taste by not caring for pointless Batman repeats.  I also disliked having more than one batman, and for that matter endless Dimetrodon but nothing else from the same time period.

The part in bold was intended as a joke. I thought the phrasing was too outlandish to be taken any other way, but of course on the Internet everything is presumptively literal, maybe even more so on this forum than elsewhere. That said, I'm kidding in earnest a bit, I do think children on average (we paleo enthusiasts simply don't represent the average) don't have very sophisticated taste. That's not their fault, it's just the way it is.

@BlueKrono He'll rebel by liking all the stuff you don't! (For everyone else, he's slyly alluding to an incident in which I was charmed by an inquisitive child at my old job.)

And I'm sure all the toy companies can point to consistent market research to justify the glut of Batman and Spider-Man and T. rexes on toy shelves.

This is the key right here. As much as we as collectors might have plenty of anecdotal evidence showing customers with similar tastes as ours, there is a much more "silent majority" out there that buys your Vaders, your Batmans, your T. rexes.

Yeah, I'm sure they wouldn't keep doing it if it weren't printing money for them. For action figure companies, re-using molds to cut costs probably contributes to the sameness as well.

Sorry to hear about people's parents putting the kibosh on their interests. By crazy chance I still have some toys from when I was a kid, like some of my Legos and actually even a few old Batman action figures. When I was 11 or 12, I had a comic book collection and trading card collection. It wasn't much, maybe a few dozen books that I'd bought with chore money. But my mom became convinced that they were inviting demons--yes, literal demons--into the house, so she made me burn them on the grill. Around the same time, she said that my "obsession with animals verged on idolatry," and so she only let me keep checking out animal and dinosaur books from the library if I also read the Bible through. Reading the Bible helped turn me into an atheist, and then I went on to get a PhD in evolutionary biology, so, uh, good job I guess? I don't really have any nostalgia for the burned comic books, though, except that I could maybe have gotten a little money for them if they didn't go up in multi-colored, toxic smoke.

[Sim]

Oh, sorry, I didn't realise you were joking about that bit.  I think I'm not good at telling when someone is joking as part of a medical condition that I have.

[Halichoeres]

No need to be sorry. I run into that on the forum continually and I should probably modulate my jokes better for the setting. My brother is autistic, and while I don't want to speculate on whatever medical condition you might be referring to, my impression of this hobby is that it attracts a disproportionate share of autistic people. So I should be assuming that what I say will be taken literally by at least some readers.

[Blade-of-the-Moon]

@Gwangi Yes it was. Yeah we waited this long for one. Granted I was technically a toddler when the original JP line came out, but yeah point still stands. They also never did Hammond either.

Edit: Did they do Kelly either for TLW line? I feel like they didn't. Gotta check JPToys and jog my memory.

Lex was totally overlooked and I recall something about how Ariana Richards, the actor that played her was disappointed they didn't make one.  Hammond was left behind for similar reasons I feel, they couldn't make a kindly old grandfather figure when they were creating an ACTION line with buff males.

Kelly was only included with the Mobile Command Center. Hopefully she will get another figure with all these Lost World releases.  I still need a Claire from the first film to go with Owen and the Indominus Rex.

[Sim]

And I'm sure all the toy companies can point to consistent market research to justify the glut of Batman and Spider-Man and T. rexes on toy shelves.

This is the key right here. As much as we as collectors might have plenty of anecdotal evidence showing customers with similar tastes as ours, there is a much more "silent majority" out there that buys your Vaders, your Batmans, your T. rexes.

The key is to strike a balance. As much as someone might bemoan yet another tyrannosaurid from Safari, that's why there are other figures available.

Well, I hope then that Safari will release a new featherless adult Tyrannosaurus this year!

Another unpopular opinion, apparently: Young Tyrannosaurus are hideous and I hope not to see another figure of one anytime soon.

[ceratopsian]

@Sim. I'm curious. Can you explain, please, what it is about young Tyrannosaurus that you find hideous?

[Sim]

@ceratopsian, the head shape and huge legs compared to the rest of the animal.

[ceratopsian]

Thank you @Sim.

@ceratopsian, the head shape and huge legs compared to the rest of the animal.

[bmathison1972]

Definitely a change of pace from the usual in this thread, which is me trying to convince everyone else to stop buying Tyrannosaurus and Spinosaurus!

hahahahaha

[DinoToyForum]

  I teased apart the interesting discussion about our childhood collections and parents into a separate thread (as best as I could, it was rather intertwined): https://dinotoyblog.com/forum/index.php?topic=10656.0

[Lynx]

A couple more (more or less) controversial takes.

- A company can not completely 'claim a pose' or color scheme. I understand if it's a direct copy-paste or bootleg; otherwise, it's a free game.

- There is no such thing as an overrated figure. A figure may be popular or overused in media, like the Papo Tyrannosaurus, but most of the time it has earned its popularity.

- Bold color schemes make a figure better. There are few if any examples of a "flashy" color scheme greatly degrading a figure's quality, but I can list many dull color schemes that ruined a figure, or at least for me. (Ex. Safari LTD Parasaurolophus, PNSOs... pretty much most ceratopsians from PNSO, Papo Polacanthus [hope I didn't butcher that], etc)

- Comparing PNSO, Nanmu, W-dragon, etc quality with Safari LTD, CollectA, and Mattel is unfair IMO. The latter were made as toys, the prior was not. Kids need toys that are durable, easy to handle, and fun. There is obviously going to be a "decrease in quality" between these almost statue-like models and a children's toy. (Nor am I saying that CollectA, Mattel, and Safari LTD are low quality, of course.)