Noidea's Dinosaur Things

[Noideaforaname]

Hello there! I've been lurking for a while now and decided I really ought to join the fun.

Keeping this first post short and sweet: Utahraptors!



Wild Safari (1996) - a well-loved childhood toy. While I much prefer action figures to static ones, I dig how this is effectively a toy of Raptor Red.


Beasts of the Mesozoic - the kind of toy I always wish I had. For one thing, it can stand on its own two feet unassisted! 

Dromeosaurs have always been my favorite group of dinosaurs, and seeing them go from bird-lizards to lizard-birds only made them all the more endearing.

[DinoToyForum]

Welcome!

Those figures neatly encapsulate the striking change in both the appearance of 'raptors' and the quality of their toys over the past three decades!

[Halichoeres]

Welcome to the forum! That is a great bracketing of nearly three decades of Utahraptor reconstructions. Looking forward to seeing more of your collection.

[Noideaforaname]

Thanks! My collection is mostly going to be rather new or quite old since I've only semi-recently gotten back into buying dino toys.

And to further date myself:

TY Beanie Babies were a thing. Cute little collectibles and a lot of insane investment hype that sours the nostalgia....



Toothy the Tyrannosaurus sports a curious mix of feathers and a tripodal stance. It's genuinely impressive how he's actually standing and not just plopped on his butt.

The aforementioned "insane investment hype" means I was dweeb enough to keep those tags. How embarrassing. Enjoy the cutesy poems!



Tooter the Parasaurolophus -- depicted, surprisingly enough, as a quadruped. It's worth highlighting that this batch of Beanie Babies, unlike earlier assortments, make use of a variety of felt material that adds a bit of tactile appeal that's maybe not all that evident in the photos. It also helps Tooter look less like a uniform tan blob.



Hornsly the Triceratops is mostly made of a neat heavy scale fabric. Also, those aren't lips, the inside of the mouth is just oddly puff out.




Swoop the Pteranodon (heh) - his entire back side is actually green!



The bean bag buddies had their own Garbage Pail Kids-style parody in Meanies, by The Idea Factory. A bit hard these day to find any info on the line or company that isn't an auction. They covered a fair range of topics: gross out humor, puns, Star Wars, holidays, other popular toys, and even celebrities. Very much a time capsule of the late 90s.

Which brings us to.... Velocicrapper.

This hits a bit different now that we get things like Bite Club Triceratops or Hammond Collection Ellie Sattler (nevermind the poop emoji), but a defecating dromeosaur was quite a shock in a more prudish age.
Incidentally, he originally had a tag with a silly limerick, but what kind of silly billy keeps those??

And now to segue to another pair of prehistoric plushies....


Ice Age's Maelstrom and Cretaceous, from Nanco. I'm not quite sure what the original availability of these two were; I actually won them at an arcade, and their tags mention that they "may not be sold at retail."



I had always assumed these two were sea crocodiles of some sort, but apparently they're supposed to be an ichythosaur and a pliosaur? Ice Age isn't aiming for accuracy, but still, color me incredulous.

Of mild interest:

Purple's jawbone is outlined

While Greenie's rearmost digits lack a nail

[crazy8wizard]

My local museum has the Pteranodon plushie on a shelf in the prep lab!

[Libraraptor]

Hello and welcome to the forum!