Dieners and Other Rubbers

[Crackington]

Welcome to Rubber World!



I found myself collecting Dieners and other "rubber" prehistoric animals over the last couple of years and thought that it would be good to have a thread devoted to them and their eraser-head cousins on the Forum. Hopefully this thread will help bring things together and also be a place to show similar "rubber" medium dinos such as Wheetos, other and unidentified brands and of course the knock-offs.

Please feel free to add your own comments, anecdotes and pictures to the thread.

Diener Industries are a toy company which manufactured a huge range of erasers and plastic toys etc from the early 1960s onwards. According to Dinosauriana, they are now a Division of Wincraft Inc. and still produce eraser type items today, often with movie tie-ins like Disney and Star Trek. The Prehistoric sets were often sold under the "Itty Bitty Charms" label a range with a huge variety of figures – including aliens, animals, sharks, mythologicals etc -  and a legion of Diener collectors scooping them up. Here is a close up of some I caught as by-catch, with Hammerhead, Tiger and Whale-sharks (@Halichoeres take a look!), a rocket ship and muppet-esque characters:



Since the 1960s prehistoric animals have been a staple of their output and they have produced a number of sets. It hasn't been easy working this out though as I haven't found a single source with all the various iterations shown in one place yet (please point me to this if it exists!). So far I think there is a 1960s set of early, Charles Knight like moulds, 1970s/80s large and small sets, 1980s pencil toppers and a more modern set which was still being produced at least in the 2010s and might still be.  I'll share more info/photos on this soon, but here's another group snap to be going on with:



*Lego Professor Brian Cox shown in photos for scale

[SBell]

I grew up with lots of the Diener dinosaurs, and definitely had that hammerhead!

Currently just have a few Permian ones like Edaphosaurus and Eryops, but not sure where

[Crackington]

Thanks Sean, those sharks are very good and as for the Edaphosaurus and Eryops, they are what got me into looking into the Dieners.

I'd like to share what I have discovered so far about the different prehistoric sets Diener produced from the 1960s onwards.

I should say that genuine figures can be hard to identify as they don't always have the Diener name stamped on them, seemed to use different plastics ranging from eraser like to harder, almost Marx like and that the molds have been copied with figures from China looking very similar. 

Dinosauriana (my version is from 2014) reports that Diener was still making some of the figures then, namely the Ankylosaurus, Dimetrodon, Pteranodon, Stegosaurus, Triceratops and the T-Rex. I think they are from the same molds as the 70s/80s larger size ones, but it would be good if anyone has information on this. I believe these figures here are from that 70/80s ones large set molds:



According to Dinosauria the full set is Ankylosaurus, Brontosaurus, Edaphosaurus, Eryops, Megatherium, Plateosaurus, Pteranodon, Smilodon, Stegosaurus, Triceratops and T-Rex. Dinosauriana refers to this set as "Old School", though I think the 1960s set are different and much more in that vein! Many of these figure can also be seen in the Retro Erasers website (https://retroerasers.com/prehistoric-animals/), though I suspect that some pictured there such as the Mastodon, are from the original 1960s set.

I'm a bit unsure which set the three at the front row belong too, including the pink Pteranodon, but they all are marked as Dieners.

The sources I've found tend to refer the large set as being from the 1980s, but there is some evidence that at least some of the figures were produced earlier – see this website with the 1975 Diener Toys Catalogue and scroll down to see a blister card pack with 6 figures including the fab Edaphosaurus: https://plaidstallions.com/reboot/1975-diener-toys-catalog/

Diener also made a smaller sized set, which I was recently able to purchase from the collection of the late Anthony Beeson:



These figures are all stamped Diener 1987, with a similar line up to the larger figures, but also including a Dimetrodon. Dinosauriana stated that there was also a Megatherium and a Smilodon. It would be interesting to know if anyone has come across these in the smaller versions. Here's a slightly different angle for them: 



Next - I'll show the pencil-toppers in more detail and some info on possible Diener "Ancient Ones".


 

[Halichoeres]

I've always liked the Edaphosaurus from this line. I don't have any of these myself, but I have one of the Iwako ones, a little Icarosaurus.

[Libraraptor]

I really love those monochrome rubber figures, especially the Edaphosaurus!

[Gwangi]

I had a bunch of these as a kid but currently only have a T. rex by them. I didn't know they made a Eryops! I'll have to track that one down.

I had their Dimetrodon as a kid and bit off a chunk of its sail to make it look like a wounded individual. 

[CityRaptor]

Saw some of the Diener molds last year:
https://www.ideeundspiel.com/p/DEPESCHE0011902
Yep, available in depressing colors....

I also remmber the Triceratops, Stegoaurus and Dimetrodon being sold as Jurassic Park Merch.

[BlueKrono]

Saw some of the Diener molds last year:
https://www.ideeundspiel.com/p/DEPESCHE0011902
Yep, available in depressing colors....

I also remmber the Triceratops, Stegoaurus and Dimetrodon being sold as Jurassic Park Merch.

Louis Marx would have liked those colors.

[Crackington]

@Gwangi and @Libraraptor - yes the Eryops and the Edaphosaurus are definitely the stars of the Diener show for me too and the only two I'm displaying in my main cabinet.

@Halichoeres - I haven't heard of the Iwako brand or Icarosaurus - I'll check these out but please feel free to post any pics of it if you have any time.

@CityRaptor - thanks for sharing that link, the Dimetrodon and Triceratops seem to be a bit different to the other ones, so more food for thought in terms of separating the Dieners into different groups! Interesting that they ended up as JP merchandise too, but perhaps not too surprising giving that Diener seems to have some long links with movies and TV, Flintstones, Disney, Star Trek etc.

@BlueKrono - yes, I'm sure he would but they definitely went the full spectrum later, so looked more like MPCs!

Dinosauriana was not interested in this next set I came across and didn't show them in the 2014 version, dismissing them as mere pencil toppers - which they are, to be fair! However, these ones I picked up recently are rather good and I'd have loved them if I'd seen them as a kid!



There is an Ankylosaurus, Dimetrodon, Pteranodon, Stegosaurus and Triceratops the last four marked Diener and 1987 or 1989, but the unmarked Anky clearly belongs to the set. Presumably there will be more species out there somewhere, so please do post them in the thread if you have any, or if in different colours etc. They really do work as pencil toppers by the way (sorry if the picture looks a bit rude!):



I'll sign off now but will share the info I discovered on that really old set next time.

[Crackington]

Time for more info on the Dieners from my search into the ever more complex rubber-verse. As I 've said earlier, I suspected that there is a different earlier set from the 1960s and found a tantalising glimpse of these "ancient ones" on Ebay:

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/134240480554?itmmeta=01JMDG9F1KB5QBDGFC01F7NCJF&hash=item1f415b2d2a:g:GW8AAOSwNfxjKI5V

These are clearly part of the Dieners' "Itty Bitty Charms" range and the Ebay photos show a shop box of figures ready for sale. Dieners are highly collectable and sought after beyond the dinosaur collector community, so perhaps unsurprisingly, this is rather expensive, but probably fair as they do seem very rare and there are 100 odd figures in there. The set is only available for US based buyers too and unfortunately the seller has not shown the figures standing separately so we can get a good look.

Nonetheless, they are fairly visible and appear quite different from the 1980s sets. The T-Rex is rather skinny and has a Timpo-esque look about it, the Pteranodon has legs spread out, unlike the later figures where they are always together. The Megatherium's arms are in a different position and there is a nice looking Glyptodon and Mastodon, which don't appear in the later sets. The Edaphosaurus is misidentified as a Dimetrodon.

If anyone has these figures it would be great if they could post a picture of them.

This ends the tour of my Dieners. They are highly collectible and a very interesting range of figures not least because it's hard to pin down the different sets. These old ones in particular are very elusive, almost as if they have been erased from history  . I guess the kids who originally bought them in the 1960s must have actually used them and literally rubbed them away!

[SBell]

Iwako is a fun Japanese company. There's a whole bunch of different animals, I've got a Desmatosuchus and a few marine reptiles.

There's also a similar set of rubber but not eraser figures of similar animals.

I'll need to dig up photos at some point

[Halichoeres]

Here's the only Iwako I have, with a Lego person for scale:

[Crackington]

Thanks for showing the Icarosaurus @Halichoeres - it's a nice little figure isn't it and would look good alongside the Aurora Kuehneosaurus and the Coelurosauravus from the Primeval TV series.

@SBell - would love to see some pictures of your Iwako figures too. I did come across them on your Faunacast blog after Halichoeres mentioned them earlier, and they look great.

Quick update on the ebay sale of 1960s Dieners I posted yesterday, I've been talking to the seller and they asked me to correct that the box is available for bidders outside the US. Postage from an international sale will go through the US Ebay.

[Crackington]

I wanted to post about another nice set using the rubber medium, the Weetos from 1992. I have shown these before on my collection thread, but thought they were worth posting here as a resource.

The figures were given away as cereal premiums with Weetos, a version of Weetabix and are similar colourful but monochrome figures to the Dieners*:



In the set of 12 the two most interesting figures are the ankylosaur  Talarurus and the Lambeosaurus, being less commonly manufactured by companies.

The ubiquitous T-Rex, Triceratops and Dimetrodon look much more like their Diener cousins (knock-offs?). The marine reptiles Icthyosaurus, Plesiosaurus and Tylosaurus are from the same mold used for Paninis, as is possibly the Brachiosaurus. The Mammoth looks familiar too.

I'm still on the lookout for the Stegosaurus and Pteranodon to complete the set, but here is an interesting link  which shows them all, including an early 90s advert: https://cerealoffers.com/Weetabix_Ltd/Weetos/1990s/Prehistoric_Model/prehistoric_model.html

*The three at the front are Dieners or knock-offs btw.

[Crackington]

I recently scored a job lot of small vintage figures which I've collectively shown on my collection thread. There were also some Weetos and Diener a-likes and others in there:



The middle row shows the Weetos in this group, meaning I now have some doubles of them. There was also a nice Stegosaurus in red, which means I only need the Pteranodon now to complete the set. Here's another view:



You'll notice on the top row two punk Corythosaurs and a Spinosaurus plus two other stegs. I'd seen these before and wasn't too impressed; they can't stand very well either (too many Exploited gigs!). No idea of the brand, but they are marked Hong Kong so probably 1990s. Can anyone ID them?