Wild Safari 1996-2007

[Pachyallosaurus]

Hello everyone! Does anyone else have nostalgia for this line? If so, what are your favorite figures? Discuss in the chat room below!

[Pachyrhinosaurus]

Definitely. My first real dinosaur toys were the triceratops, utahraptor, brachiosaurus, and pteranodon I got from the craft store in second grade for a shoebox diorama project. I got the tyrannosaurus and (I would imagine) the stegosaurus later that year. For my birthday I was given the WS dino babies box set, and I remember getting the spinosaurus the day we put up our Christmas tree. After that they were the only dinosaurs I would really play with as a kid, out-competing the assortment of chinasaurs I had before then. It's hard to pick a favorite but I'd say the original four out of nostalgia.

[sauroid]

when i started collecting seriously (by seriously, i mean intensively as in most of my extra school money went to my collecting, altho i was already buying prehistoric/modern animal toys while growing up), the first batch of figures i got (around 20 pcs) were Wild Safari (Pachycephalosaurus, Styracosaurus, Ceratosaurus, etc.) and Carnegie (Dimetrodon, Maiasaura w/ nest, Plateosaurus etc.) from a store that specialized in pre-teen children's things in 2005 when i was 14. i remember i was broke that time so my mom bought everything available in the store.

[Shonisaurus]

At that time I was already a young man who was on his way to maturity and I remember fondly the styracosaurus (I have both versions) and also the utahraptor, the diplodocus along with those two mentioned figures was another of my favorites. The one that I liked least was the ceratosaurus.

I remember that at that time I bought it in the Shop of the Museum of Natural Sciences of Madrid and I can assure you that it cost me a lot of money for all the sets of Wild Safari 1996. 

[sauroid]

At that time I was already a young man who was on his way to maturity and I remember fondly the styracosaurus (I have both versions) and also the utahraptor, the diplodocus along with those two mentioned figures was another of my favorites. The one that I liked least was the ceratosaurus.

I remember that at that time I bought it in the Shop of the Museum of Natural Sciences of Madrid and I can assure you that it cost me a lot of money for all the sets of Wild Safari 1996. 

wow. how old are you now Señor Shoni?

[Shonisaurus]

At that time I was already a young man who was on his way to maturity and I remember fondly the styracosaurus (I have both versions) and also the utahraptor, the diplodocus along with those two mentioned figures was another of my favorites. The one that I liked least was the ceratosaurus.

I remember that at that time I bought it in the Shop of the Museum of Natural Sciences of Madrid and I can assure you that it cost me a lot of money for all the sets of Wild Safari 1996. 

wow. how old are you now Señor Shoni?

Well, I'm 46 years old. I will be 47 years old on July 28. So I am an "old man" in the forum. 

[Gwangi]

Nope. At that age my mother was making me get rid of the dinosaurs I already had, and I didn't start collecting again until 2010.

[ItsTwentyBelow]

I have fond memories of my first encounter with the Wild Safari dinosaurs.

I'm 30 now, but I remember seeing them suddenly one day in 1997 or 98 (3rd grade) at my favorite learning toy store (Imagination Express, which is long since gone) in Issaquah, Washington.

My first reaction was "oooo NEW dinosaurs!" and then I remember saying to myself out loud "wow, these are quality dinosaurs!" which they were, on par with the Carnegies of the time. The shop had the whole first wave out on those clear plastic cubbie shelves, and I think I was allowed to get the Parasaurolophus and the Carcharodontosaurus that day. Still have those bad boys. Thanks Mom!

[Quen]

Despite my relatively middle-of-nowhere location, I still somehow ended up with a Discovery Channel Store in a nearby mall. My dad, a fellow science nerd, liked the store as much as I did, so we ended up there often. It was there that I first saw the Wild Safari dinosaurs. They came in box sets with an herbivore, a carnivore, and their respective babies. Even if they weren't the most detailed or accurate sculpts, they were still way better looking than the clunky tail-draggers and shark-toothed chinasaurs that made up the majority of locally available dinosaur toys. My favorites were the blue-green Tyrannosaurus and the blue-spotted Stegosaurus (which I've finally reacquired). I do think the bright color schemes of that set of figures still have some influence over my color preferences for figures today.

[Fembrogon]

Oh, my nostalgia for these figures is STRONG. The original yellow Allosaurus and Green Tyrannosaurus were among my most precious dinosaur toys as a child. Finding Wild Safari toys in stores - a rare occasion for me - was exciting in a way no other dino toys made me, besides the Carnegie Collection itself. I think I realized, on some level, that Safari was aiming to be a cut above the rest of the brands out there, even though many of them look a little simple or sloppy now.

[sauroid]

that's true. as a very young person during that time, seeing them for the first time "in person" i was overwhelmed/impressed/excited.

[Shonisaurus]

I remember that the first time I discovered safari dinosaurs and prehistoric animals was in 1989 if I remember correctly. In a central street of my city, in a train collection shop I bought three dinosaurs that were deinonychus, tylosaurus and maiasaura in that same year since I was a student at the time (I did not earn money) and for me apart from being affordable they were rare animals in my tiny collection that consisted only of the figures of Invicta and UKRD, apart from chinasaurs (truly the latter quite rudimentary) for me was a real find. 

At that time I did not buy the sauropods and I had to wait ten years to buy them since they were very expensive and I could not even allow that luxury.

[terrorchicken]

I first saw them at a local mom & pop toy shop near where I worked. I went nuts & bought like half the ones they had, then went back a few days later and bought the rest. Until then I only had a couple Carnegies and the only other dinosaur figures I was aware of were the Battats which i saw at one of those museum science shops that used to be popular at malls back then, but i didn't have the money to buy any when i was at there.
I ended up selling half of them eventually but kept a few of them for the nostalgia as I find most of them rather outdated looking now.

[Fembrogon]

This is my full collection from the 1996-2007 period*. As much as I fawned over this line as a kid, it took me a while to actually obtain a lot of them via gift or purchase.
*Amebelodon, Doedicurus and the Sloth are cheats, 'cause they're actually the new reissues.

1996-1999 series

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Most of these were gifted to me over the years, as a kid. The Triceratops I bought for myself from a local Michael's store. Discovering Michael's was a minor revelation to me, as a young burgeoning collector. 

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This set in particular was one I craved. There is/was a Chalkboard & Toy Town combined store local to me, which had a small section in a corner devoted to dinosaurs, etc. (first place I saw Papo figures ever). It was the only non-museum store for a long time that I could find Safari ltd. figures in, and they had a few boxed sets of dinosaurs, of which these ones comprised the third. At the time, I was on the hunt for a "nice" Ceratosaurus figure, and I had a really good feeling that the big one in back was some kind of Carcharodontosaur, so whenever we (rarely) stopped by the store, I made a bee line to that spot. Eventually I received one of these sets as a birthday gift.

2004 series

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These are mostly very recent acquisitions, despite their age now. Only Gorgosaurus and Hypacrosaurus were gifted to me back closer to their releases. Hypacrosaurus was actually pretty important to a lot of my games, as one of the admittedly few "nice" herbivores I had at the time.

2005-2007 series

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2007 and 2008 were pretty big years for Safari, weren't they? Safari was really kicking into gear on renovating their lineup. I had just started subscribing to The Prehistoric Times then, and it was pretty exciting to see all of the new toy previews featured.