Battat Gallimimus variants?

[Carnoking]

So recently I came into some extra battat Gallimimus figures. Originally I was simply going to part with them, but then I noticed some subtle disparities between my original and the newbies and it made me wonder if I had found some variants.



For one thing, the paint on the newcomers (left) seemed much more orange as opposed to the bright yellow on mine (right). There also appears to be more brown markings on them, most notably in the stripes that run all the way up to the head and more of that reddish brown paint on them. The stripes run all the way up to the head for one thing, and the base of the tail has more coloration as well.



Another thing that struck me as interesting is the newcomers seemed more robust than the original I have. The torso and base of the tail look to be a bit thicker on the new ones (bottom). I'm well aware that Battat resculpted several of their models, over the years, and I can even expect some changes to paint to happen over time, but I had never heard anything about changes in the gallimimus. Can anyone shed some light on this?

[SidB]

I took a look at my specimen this morning and it is the more orange version with the stripes running right to the head. Now I also have two minis. They are the same color and also have similar striping, I believe that the minis appeared later in the series of issues (1994, 1996, 1998), right? So, on that basis, would this indicate that the yellow version with the shorter stripes might be an earlier one?

[Halichoeres]

Could the change in base color just be due to differences in cumulative light exposure over the last 25 years? The difference in the width of the dark dorsal band I think can be attributed to normal variation in paint apps.

[Dinoguy2]

Could the change in base color just be due to differences in cumulative light exposure over the last 25 years? The difference in the width of the dark dorsal band I think can be attributed to normal variation in paint apps.

That's definitely possible. The difference in stripes could just be individual variation, assuming these were all hand painted. The narrower sculpt on the yellow one, though, suggests these might have been part of two separate production runs. Something either changed with the mold, or they changed to cooling process that resulted in loss of a mm or two from the 'middle' along the seam, or shrinkage of the plastic (I'm assuming they have the same kind of underlying plastic?). Often slight color differences are explained by later production runs where the factory has ordered a new batch of paint that doesn't quite match the original. See this in other lines as well as action figures where a figure is re-released.

FWIW, I have the darker more orangy shaded one and I bought that off the DOL site from Jeff Polling around 1995 or 1996.