crazy8wizard's collection update post-rebirth (7-25-2025)

[Faelrin]

@crazy8wizard My cats do the same sniffing thing all the time lol.

@Halichoeres My Spaz has done this on a few occassions, but most are generally kept away from her reach. My recent Mattel Borealopelta has been a victim. Thankfully I got pics for the review before she gave it the face bite treatment. Mostly in tact but yeah there is an obvious "scar" in one area.

[TooOldForDinosaurs]

Hey! Good to hear one of those plushies found it's way into your home after all. 

[Concavenator]

Looks like your cat is thinking the Dromaeosaurus is a worthy opponent!

[crazy8wizard]

Ahoy there everyone. I'm back with another update post to my collection. I haven't posted one of these since November of last year, so this update is going to be another big one and will encompass December, January, and most of February.
The collection shot this time around contains a much more colorful cast of characters and even a few customs. As usual, extra photos and my thoughts on these figures will be posted below.

Colorful variety, but quite a few Sauropodomorphs this time

Spoiler

Starting off are some horned herbivores from Safari. Two of these three are from the big discontinuation sale. Everything else being discontinued this year I either already owned one of, or we sell in the gift shop of the museum I work at, so only the Uintatherium and Diabloceratops warranted an online order. Zuul I picked up just because I had finally decided to go for it.

I know the majority opinion is that the PNSO Zuul is better but I'm a sucker for figures based on a semi-official piece of art, in this case the illustration from its description.

Next up are two Safari customs that I've actually had for a while, but were WIP customs that I only recently got around to finishing. The Patagotitan I heated up to have its back legs a little more bent and the neck raised up higher. This was going to be a Prehistoric Planet Dreadnoughtus flavored custom but then Collecta announced a legitimate Dreadnoughtus, meaning I don't have to modify this one any further. The paint scheme now is based off of the Patagotitan's designs featured in Titanosaur 3D: The Story of Maximo, meaning this one doubles as a documentary repaint and a museum repaint.

The Nanotyrannus is based off of Junior from Dinosaur Revolution. I gotta say, the safari Nanotyrannus looks a lot better with a refreshed paint scheme, personal bias notwithstanding.

Keeping up the Titanosaur theme, here's the Argentinosaurus and Sciurumimus from Collecta. By pure coincidence I bought the Argentinosaurus in early December, and the Sciurumimus in late February. Bookending with big and small, somewhat reminiscent of Lori the Hesperornithoides being found with Jimbo the Supersaurus.

The Argentinosaurus is certainly dated but I surprisingly love this figure, mostly because all the osteoderms and bumpicles make it so pleasing to hold.

Another sauropod. This ugly duckling is a knockoff of the Carnegie 2012 Brachiosaurus. Notable for being one of the very few Brachiosaurus that we can confidently say is definitely supposed to represent B. altithorax. The American species, or depending on how picky you want to be with the taxonomy, the only true species of Brachiosaurus. I stumbled onto this one online and knew it would make for a great custom without painting over a crazy expensive, hard to find model.

But like the ugly duckling I'm going to do my best to make it into the beautiful swan it should be by giving it a Walking with Dinosaurs flavored paint scheme. I've also been trying to straighten out the neck with the boiling water trick and while it has reduced the sharp bend it originally came with (it was curved into a dramatic u shape, almost 90 degrees from the base) the molding process and the fact it's hollow has left it with a slight bend like the original had, so before painting it I'll be doing a touch of plastic surgery to fix the curvature.

Speaking of figures I intend to customize, here's the Kid Galaxy Coelophysis. I had purchased this one along with the Scaphonyx to customize them into different genera. The Scaphonyx is still being painted, so expect to see it sometime later, but so far this one hasn't even been primed.

For this one I'm going to make the skull a little taller and maybe fix the hands. I'm going to use it as a stand-in for Gojirasaurus. Since Gojirasaurus is so fragmentary and many argue that it might just be Coelophysis, I figure it is really more of a symbolic custom. The Mesaland Dinosaur Museum has a Gojirasaurus model that I may use the color scheme of for the repaint but a corny part of me wants to give it a shin-godzilla inspired color scheme. What do you think?

Keeping up with the Triassic, the Mattel Eoraptor and Poposaurus, both figures I never thought I'd see, let alone from the Jurassic World line, and especially not good from the Jurassic World line. I was super excited when I heard that Mattel would be making a Poposaurus because that would make it the first, and so far only figure representing paleobiota originally found in the Popo Agie formation, which is local to me and one of Wyoming's very scant fossil bearing Triassic formations. Sure, I know it's been found in the Chinle formation too but it's awesome to see local and moderately obscure fossils make it into figure form. Here's to hoping somebody makes a Heptasuchus.

The Eoraptor is also very exciting because Ischigualasto fauna is also rare in figure form aside from some Herrerasaurus figures of varying quality and the remarkably uncommon Dawn of the Dinosaurs set. Before this, every other figure I've seen online has been a mislabeled knockoff, None of which looked like Eoraptor. I've seen mislabels of Indominus rex, Tyrannosaurus, Therizinosaurus, and even Scary Monsters from Jojo's Bizzare Adventure?! (That's not an Eoraptor, that's a Dioraptor!) The figure is a little odd but you know what, I'd take a genuine attempt that ended up weird than a completely different animal.

Freshly hatched Exaeretodon make for a perfect snack!

Next up is a figure I am surprised with how much I ended up loving; The Beasts of the Mesozoic Dilong. I disliked the color scheme when it was still in the concept stages, but after seeing some in hand photos of it, I ended up liking it a lot more. Same goes for the articulation. I thought it would be too similar to the dromaeosaurs and it would feel redundant, but surprisingly only the body is like that. The legs are considerably better at standing and if you're smart about the pose, it can stand unsupported.

Whoever can correctly guess what this pose is paying homage to gets a cookie.

Finally, a recent holy grail of a find. A figure I have been searching for quite some time. The Play Visions Placodus! The Play Visions "marine dinosaurs" set is coveted by many since it was only available for a short time. This set is hit or miss for me, since the Jurassic and Cretaceous sea monsters are a little dated and don't impress me much. The Triassic figures on the other hand (which fortunately, is over half the set!) are awesome and two of them have never had another figure made of them; Mixosaurus and Placodus. What surprised me about this figure is that despite seeing it in photos beforehand, I never noticed that it has blue tipped teeth.

I really like Placodus because it shows that not every placodont had big shells and looked like turtles. Granted, the fact that there's at least 5 unique placodont figures out there is impressive to me.

My army of Triassic sea creature miniatures grows. The Kaiyodo Tanystropheus and PNSO Atopodentatus would really tie it all together (along with the other 5 Triassic minis from Play Visions, hah)

[close]

Tune in next time where hopefully I have some better fabric for the backdrop. The green fleece is fine but the color looks inconsistent depending on lighting. I also have some customs coming so I might make a new thread for that too.

[Halichoeres]

Nice selection! My Placodus has the blue on the mouth, too, and it's too tidy to be accidental. Maybe it's meant to show it grasping some mollusk or brachiopod?

[crazy8wizard]

Hey there folks. I'm back with a collection post but this time it's not anything new. This time I decided to see what it would be like to organize some of my figures into a rainbow color scheme. Unfortunately I don't have much in the way of purple but that's okay because I was running out of room on my set.



If you also have a collection of figures with highly diverse color schemes I'd recommend you try this too! It's a lot of fun.

[crazy8wizard]

Greetings. I'm back with another collection post. I haven't done one one of these updates in months mostly because I just got tired of doing them. I do have a different thread in the works that I may post sometime this week.
Until then here are some figures!


Up first is the CollectA Torvosaurus. I found this one on sale and I thought I'd check it out to see if I like it better than the PNSO version. Unfortunately I don't, but it's still a pretty cool figure.


Next is a personal goal figure of mine: the Bullyland Liliensternus. If you've seen my previous posts on this thread, you may know about my affinity for figures based on real museum displays. The Bullyland museum line is the perfect example of this but since their discontinuation they have become quite rare. I've managed to acquire about five, now six of these rare figures and this one is especially exciting since I have the Plateosaurus which is part of the same diorama that the Liliensternus this figure is based upon is in.

The two are way out of scale with one another but I think that the Plateosaurus this figure is emulating is meant to be a subadult. Also I really like seeing the feathers on this. They're much more sparse than I would anticipate but feathers on basal theropods back in 2006~ish was fairly uncommon.


So this is an odd one. This little figure was made to be included with the Go Diego Go figure line from Mattel. It's meant to be a Sinornithoides, but I've been hunting one for quite some time to use as Hesperornithoides. (How many times are you going to hear a dinosaur collector say they've been actively searching for a figure this cartoony?) Regardless, it's a neat figure of a species that seems obscure in the scheme of things. I think I might repaint it though.



No, what you're looking at is not a tray of brownies, it's actually 48 MPC Cynognathus.
Did I necessarily want 48 of them? Not particularly, but now I have enough to keep as is, customize, and send to friends. If you want to trade something small for one of these feel free to DM me.

And now for something surprisingly weirder and more baffling than a tray full of nearly 50 cynodonts.

Well, not the figure itself, but what I did with it. This one requires some explanation.
First off, the Brachiosaurus. This is a 4D vision dinosaur anatomy kit. I had purchased this earlier in the summer to use the skeleton to teach about air sacs and pneumatic diverticula in saurischian skeletons at my local museum but afterwards I decided to keep the skeleton as is because it looked very aesthetically pleasing to me (I love sauropod skeletons) but now I had the problem of a hollow, half transparent brachiosaurus figure...
Second, a couple years ago I had a running joke with my friends about how I kept finding these tiny plastic ducks all over campus. This trend of finding ducks in weird places went on for years. (I promise this is relevant. Bear with me)

So finally it clicked as to what I should put inside this hollow brachiosaur.

So now you may be some of the first people to see a Brachiosaurus filled with roughly 100 tiny plastic ducks. This started out as a simple gag but has inadvertently turned into an artistic piece about dinosaur bird relationships and how something as small as a duck is distantly related to sauropods.

[Faelrin]

Hilarious great use of that hollow transparent Brachiosaurus other half.

Some good hauls, but I think the MPC Cynognathus dump takes the cake. I have many questions about the source you've obtained that group from. For starters, why that many, lol?

[crazy8wizard]

Some good hauls, but I think the MPC Cynognathus dump takes the cake. I have many questions about the source you've obtained that group from. For starters, why that many, lol?

I genuinely have no clue. The seller I bought it from is an antique seller on ebay but they mainly focus on vintage paper products. If I had to guess how this many ended up in one place would be that this is factory error stock. The lot also came with 50 MPC Plateosaurus which all have errors in the spots where the mold would inject the plastic. A few of the cynognathus have overextruded lines of extra plastic around their tails, but they're all in much better condition than the Plateosaurus.

[Faelrin]

Oh that is genuinely interesting. Congrats on obtaining them, factory errors or not.

[Halichoeres]

Those are very small ducks! They look like they're enjoying their cozy home. The Brachiosaurus kit is a neat little kit.

And not often I see that little Sinornithoides, one of Mattel's less talked about theropod figures.

[crazy8wizard]

Hey there folks. It's been quite some time since I've done one of these collection thread updates, in part due to a period of time where I was collecting almost exclusively miniatures (which I am saving for another thread), and in other part experimenting with a new photography setup (which is still in progress hence the cruder setup seen here today). Luckily, I have a great excuse to make a thread update since almost every single figure on this post have been some of my most sought after figures for several years! With that, let's take a look.

First up is one that has surprisingly eluded me for some time despite not being all that rare. I almost got one a few years ago but missed my shot. This figure is fairly uncommon but the really rare piece is the included fish accessory. You either have to find this one completely new or from someone who knows the fish came with it and didn't lose it. Somewhat unfortunately, the wings got seriously warped in shipping. The plastic is very rubbery and pliable so I'm hoping if I weigh the wings down for an extended period of time it can flatten them back out.

This figure was on my list for so long due to the really impressive aspect ratio on the wings, which often gets depicted wrong. Unfortunately the twisted wings make it look like it just got struck while flying and is now falling out of the sky to its inevitable doom!


Keeping up with the WIS, here is the Invicta Elasmosaurus that I got in a trade with @Primeval12 who managed to find it at Goodwill! An awesome find and an incredibly graceful looking figure. This model may be both dated and monochromatic, but those don't detract from how beautifully serene it looks. I'm a huge fan of marine reptiles, so this is a major win even if it isn't the perfect elasmosaurus.


Next up is a figure cursed by both limited availability, and region locked to the United Kingdom. This is the Dinosaurs in The Wild Tyrannosaurus! I mean it without a scrap of irony when I say that the T. rex from this attraction is one of my favorite depictions of the genus in any media. The huge robust body and legs, the powerful looking arms, the serene and wise looking eyes (on the actual show's model that is), and best of all the super thick mane of speculative feathers. I know it's probably dated in terms of feather coverage by today's standards but I have been all over this design since I first saw it. Owning any merch from Dinosaurs in The Wild felt like a pipe dream to me as someone in the US who found out about it years after it closed (and unfortunately missing my shot when the figures RE-released a few years ago online) so I felt like I would never own this figure without forking over an arm and a leg. I managed to find a used figure online for a steal of a deal though and now this majestic beast graces my shelves.

One thing I and many others have noticed is how gigantic the eyes are and that you can see the original sculpt of the eyes underneath the paint. I am actually going to attempt to fix this by stripping the paint just over the eyes, color matching the surrounding skin, and then fixing the eyeball to give it that calm squint seen in the show. I might even add a little touch up paint to bring this awesome figure to the next level.

Hail to the king, baby.

Finally is a figure that I have been searching for for nearly as long but with even less success. I have a story about what this figure means to me and how I came to acquire it, so if you'd like to read it's in this spoiler tab. If not, I'll include the usual tidbits about the figures I do in all my posts outside of it.

Spoiler

When I started college, the museum I work at had just finished prepping two remarkable specimens of Baptanodon (or Ophthalmosaurus natans if you prefer. Some research on our specimens is swaying me towards splitting them but many are still firm on the two being lumped.) I was instantly struck by this impressively preserved skull. From that day on, I was hooked on Ichthyosaurs. About a year or two later, once I started working for the museum I was given the opportunity to create a publicity project for a service grant and decided to make a short film about the Sundance formation, of which Baptanodon/O. natans is home to. I spent half a year working with and researching all of our collection for Sundance material in order to create a full coverage of the biota of the seaway. After this project Baptanodon and Ophthalmosaurus had skyrocketed to my top 10 list of animals. Not just top 10 ichthyosaurs, marine reptiles, or prehistoric animals. Top 10 in general. From here I wanted a figurine to represent this genus in my collection.

This was a bit of an unusual task, as there are quite a few Ophthalmosaurus figures out there, but all of them had something a little off. I still managed to collect most of them with the exception of the PNSO model (which I'm hesitant about due to the size) but every time, the Toyway Ophthalmosaurus was the clear winner. It has proportional body thickness, it has better positioned tail flippers, and it even has a piece of flesh representing the long, subdivided nares that Ophthalmosaurids should have. It was the perfect representation to me but there was a problem: This is one of the rarest figures in the line, save for maybe the Liopleurodon and Leaellynasaura or the phantom that is the Ornithocheirus, so every figure I found online was either sniped at the last second or over 100 dollars. I think at least one instance ended up in @TooOldForDinosaurs Ophthalmosaurus brigade (no disrespect whatsoever, I think your ichthyosaur school is really awesome) so I just kept a saved search on ebay and frequently checked picclick.

Miraculously, late last year I found one and for an actually good price, but I knew I would need some assistance getting it into the states. Fortunately @Primeval12 helped me out by routing it to his friend in England who would send it stateside later. The one catch being I would have to wait until the summer to receive it, and this was mid November. I was fine with this, as I would essentially be preordering the figure. After some issues with the post office, the parcel was sent (along with the Invicta Elasmosaurus from earlier) and it made its way westward! During the shipping the postal service must have dropped the package into a puddle or it got rained on because by the time it finally got to me the box was soaked and it REEKED. Fortunately, everything inside was just fine. And once I finally opened the package I gazed upon the beauty that was this figure.

[close]

Angels sang out an immaculate chorus, as down from the heavens came Ophthalmosaurus.

Ok I promise that's the only gratuitous edit I made. I just had to lol.

Here's the Ophthalmosaurus with its Cruel Sea and Sundance co-star Cryptoclidus/Tatenectes.

And with my original WWD repaint of Ophthalmosaurus. A good model but a lot more skinny than it probably should be.

"This little male has yet to learn that ammonite shells are too tough for him"

I hope you enjoyed reading about my Ophthalmosaurus adventure. It will be unlikely I ever have a story quite as in depth as this one again!

[Halichoeres]

Congrats on getting your mitts on these guys! I once bought a Bullyland Pteranodon just for the fish and then sold the pterosaur for cheap, so I've definitely contributed to the share of accessory-less pterosaurs.

Thanks for sharing your Ophthalmosaurus story; I always like to hear about people's personal connections to particular animals or places.

[Faelrin]

Congrats on getting your hands on all of these, especially the last (though I suppose all three are hard to come by, as you've mentioned). Enjoyed reading your tales on these as well. Also man did you make me nostalgic for the Ultimate Showdown. Was still in middle or high school back when that released.

[Primeval12]

My pteranodon came with warped wings too. Hot water should fix it nice and quick

[crazy8wizard]

Greetings, Denizens of DTF. I have another batch of interesting figures to show today, so without further ado here are some new(ish) collection pieces!

Starting off is a medium rarity I've been considering hunting for quite some time: the Carnegie Diplodocus.

Despite the slight datedness to it, this figure is still incredibly impressive. Giving dinosaurs a pop of blue is one of my favorite paleomemes. The figure itself is way longer than I expected, even for a Diplodocus. It genuinely might be the longest sauropod in my collection at this point in time, beating out the PNSO Alamosaurus.

POV: you are a cycad frond.

Next is the PNSO Cretoxyrhina. When I first saw this figure I thought it was rather plain looking but it strongly grew on me the more I saw it. Seeing it in person, the gold shimmer is absolute eye candy.

They did a really good job of making it look visually distinct from a Great White shark despite being fairly similar in size and build.

Obligatory.

Moving on, the rest are all JWR dinosaurs, and up first is the Titanosaurus. Now, this figure was a bit of a tricky one to acquire as it's a cup topper from a movie theater. I asked to see if I could buy one outright when I went to see Rebirth in theaters, but my local theater had the stipulation that you had to buy not just the cup, not just the drink, but an entire kid's combo popcorn and drink, so I...decided not to do that. Luckily, one of my good friends manages the theater so I asked him and he was able to bring me one.

Now, I'm not a huge stickler about owning figures of nomen dubium genera. I'm fine with having the occasional Nanotyrannus or Troodon (heck, I'm even considering making my own custom "Archaeoraptor" for fun). That said, there's a big problem with figures of "Titanosaurus" specifically in that I've seen a couple Titanosaurus figures prior to this movie's release that all looked fairly different. There 10+ species of this animal that have all gone to different genera. For instance, the Dinosaur King and Yowies Titanosaurus are all the short-necked long-legged T. colberti which eventually became Isisaurus, so I refer to them as such. For this figure, I just decided to call it Sauroposeidon because it's fairly Brachiosaurus-like, Sauroposeidon is one of my favorite sauropods (that has almost no figures), and also because it's contemporary with a certain someone we'll see in just a moment.

"You don't see that everyday!"
"...or ever!"

Next up we have Dolores the Aquilops. Despite the fairly mixed reception to this dinosaur's inclusion in the movie, from the moment I heard there was going to be one in the movie I was very excited. The Cloverly is very near (literally) and dear to me, and the earliest, most basal ceratopsian in North America is a distinction that really excites me. I managed to find two figures of this genus.

The first, is the Funko Pop. I don't tend to like funko pops but on occasion you'll have figures that either work surprisingly well with the "big head huge dot eyes" style, and some that have to force their way out of the style to exist. This one is more of the former. Aquilops would have a big head proportionally, seeing as it is a marginocephalian, but also Dolores in the movie has a big head. The big dot eyes work well, and the probably too long frill gets shortened in this style, so a rare win for Funko.

"no thoughts. head empty."
The next is a teeny tiny, pretty much mini scale Aquilops from Mattel with more accurate proportions. Based on my measurements of the head and the real life skull estimates, this figure is about 1:8th scale. In a twist of sculpting limitations, this figure leaves out the erroneous nose horn seen in the movie. I wasn't too bothered by it, since you could reach a little since you could assume "maybe it's a big feature scale or some other soft tissue structure" which is a stretch but not unheard of *coughhlgiguanodncough*. I'm glad it isn't really visible here though.

Now, if you're familiar with this figure, you may know it comes in a set. A set with...uh oh.

Jokes aside, I love this disgusting freak. My biggest gripe about Jurassic World when I first saw it is that the Indominus wasn't weird or creepy enough for my tastes. If you're going to make a fictional intentionally monstrous dinosaur in a science fiction movie, why not go all in and make it a gross disaster? I chose this set over the larger and more detailed Rumble & Rampage Distortus because: 1: I don't like electronic roaring figures. 2: I liked the smaller size (about the scale of it in the prologue of the movie). 3: this one has wrist articulation! Don't get me wrong, the paint on the bigger figure is much nicer, but one of the arms is permanently stuck palms down, presumably for stability.

This one can flex it's horrifically large biceps!

And with that I leave you with this little exchange I thought of. (extremely minor rebirth spoilers)

Spoiler

*Thunderous roaring*


"Woah, hey Distortus. Have a snickers."
"WHY?!"
"Because you turn into a rampaging mutant abomination when you're hungry."



"Better?"


"Better."

[close]

[Faelrin]

I was mainly wanting that set for the Aquillops, but man now I want that D. rex too. Looks like loads of fun to pose.

[crazy8wizard]

I was mainly wanting that set for the Aquillops, but man now I want that D. rex too. Looks like loads of fun to pose.

I would still prefer more articulation (hammond collection mayhaps) but the wrists alone kick the figure's versatility up a few notches.
I forgot to mention it in the post but I really love the almost gorilla-like knuckle walking pose, and the wrist joints allow me to pull that pose off!

[Halichoeres]

Nice bunch of additions! I kinda want that Aquilops but I'm not willing to buy that whole set for it. Maybe if it goes on sale someday.

The Carnegie Diplodocus and PNSO Cretoxyrhina are excellent figures; I think both look better in hand than in photos.

[Concavenator]

Congrats on scoring the Carnegie Dippy, it's awesome!