The best figure of every species, according to Halichoeres

[RobinGoodfellow]

Thanks for the ID, SBell. Yep, Sim, that's my only Invicta! Twenty years older than the CollectA and still far better.

Thanks for the confirmation, guys!  Yes, there's a number of other figures too that are far better than much newer figures of the same animal.

But there are also a lot that are...not. Have you seen the Invicta 'Stenonychosaurus' =(Troodon)? It's terrible. As one example.

There are many reasons why a collector loves or hates a model.
As you can see on this forum, every collector has a different idea about collecting.
Halichoeres likes the  scientific accuracy; others guys like the hyper-realism in a model.
Some collectors like the rarity while others like vintage models.
There are guys collecting every single dino from a specific company ( as Invicta Plastics ).
Others collect all models of a specific species ( only Triceratops from different companies).
Someone likes only a model in a specific scale ( only 1:40 models ).
There are resin-kit fans while others like to customize pre-existing models.
And all of them are right 

Have a nice day 

[Sim]

Thanks for the ID, SBell. Yep, Sim, that's my only Invicta! Twenty years older than the CollectA and still far better.

Thanks for the confirmation, guys!  Yes, there's a number of other figures too that are far better than much newer figures of the same animal.

But there are also a lot that are...not. Have you seen the Invicta 'Stenonychosaurus' =(Troodon)? It's terrible. As one example.

I agree with you SBell.  When I said, "Yes, there's a number of other figures too that are far better than much newer figures of the same animal." I was thinking of older figures from other companies too!  I've never liked the Invicta Stenonychosaurus/Troodon.

[Halichoeres]

I know  .......
I made all my dino-orders in Germany or UK.
Even Geoworld is difficult to find in my country (and Geoworld is an ITALIAN company    )
German people are strong collectors and an order from Germany to Italy takes 1-2 weeks, not too much and the shipment isn't too expensive 
Japanese items (Kaiyodo and Favorite)) are almost impossible to find    . Battat too.

I'm not sure about shipping to Italy, but dejankins.com sells both Geoworld and some of the Favorites. I remember hearing someone talking about customs fees to Italy being unusually high--maybe that was you? I have noticed that some eBay sellers will ship everywhere in Europe but Italy, for whatever reason.

And all of them are right 

Hear, hear.

Thanks for the ID, SBell. Yep, Sim, that's my only Invicta! Twenty years older than the CollectA and still far better.

Thanks for the confirmation, guys!  Yes, there's a number of other figures too that are far better than much newer figures of the same animal.

But there are also a lot that are...not. Have you seen the Invicta 'Stenonychosaurus' =(Troodon)? It's terrible. As one example.

I agree with you SBell.  When I said, "Yes, there's a number of other figures too that are far better than much newer figures of the same animal." I was thinking of older figures from other companies too!  I've never liked the Invicta Stenonychosaurus/Troodon.

Baryonyx is a good example of this. The Carnegie is 18 years old and the Invicta is even older, but they're both better than anything I can think of that's been produced since (both CollectA versions, GeoWorld, Schleich). I'm cautiously optimistic about the Papo--without JP to work from, they'll have fewer encumbrances on the road to a reasonable reconstruction.

[RobinGoodfellow]

All the orders  from a Country inside EU (Germany, UK, France ..) are tax free.
For any order outside EU ( i.e. from USA or JAPAN ), I have to pay Customs tax.
Customs Tax is 22% of the price + a fixed tax of 10 Euro. 
Quite expensive.
I need to place an order outside EU ONLY if I can't find that item in any other way.... 
I can find Geoworld on Amazon UK.
About Favorite, I must import them directly from Japan because German shops don't sell Favorite.... 
I like Kaiyodo but I do not collect it for that reason 
This is the hard life of an European collector..... 

I know  .......
I made all my dino-orders in Germany or UK.
Even Geoworld is difficult to find in my country (and Geoworld is an ITALIAN company    )
German people are strong collectors and an order from Germany to Italy takes 1-2 weeks, not too much and the shipment isn't too expensive 
Japanese items (Kaiyodo and Favorite)) are almost impossible to find    . Battat too.

I'm not sure about shipping to Italy, but dejankins.com sells both Geoworld and some of the Favorites. I remember hearing someone talking about customs fees to Italy being unusually high--maybe that was you? I have noticed that some eBay sellers will ship everywhere in Europe but Italy, for whatever reason.

[Sim]

The Italian customs tax sounds awful!  That's one more reason I'm happy my parents decided to leave Italy, and live in the UK which is where I was born and I've grown up.

RobinGoodfellows, the UK site Dinosaur Time sells Favorite figures.  They have the second series: http://www.dinosaurtime.co.uk/Shop/Dinosaur-Toy-Models/NEW-Favorite-Dinosaurs.html and some of the first series left: http://www.dinosaurtime.co.uk/Shop/Dinosaur-Toy-Models/Favorite-Dinosaurs.html

[RobinGoodfellow]

The Italian customs tax sounds awful!  That's one more reason I'm happy my parents decided to leave Italy, and live in the UK which is where I was born and I've grown up.

RobinGoodfellows, the UK site Dinosaur Time sells Favorite figures.  They have the second series: http://www.dinosaurtime.co.uk/Shop/Dinosaur-Toy-Models/NEW-Favorite-Dinosaurs.html and some of the first series left: http://www.dinosaurtime.co.uk/Shop/Dinosaur-Toy-Models/Favorite-Dinosaurs.html

Thank you.
I know DinosaurTime.
I bought all my Favorite Second Series from that web shop.
But I don't like that site.
They messed up with my orders.
The second time (with a big order) they didn't send me a model I ordered; I received it a month later...
The third time they sent me two wrong models I did not order.
I wrote to DinosaurTime two times but I received no answer from them.
So I decided not to shop with DinosaurTime ever again...

But thank you for the info.   

[Sim]

I've ordered from Dinosaurtime a few times, 4 at least I think.  They made mistakes in two of my orders and both times I sent them an email letting them know and both times they immediately apologised and sent me the missing figure.  You had a much worse experience than I did with them, I'm sorry to hear about that RobinGoodfellows.  Well done though on still getting prehistoric figures you like despite the obstacles for people living in Italy!


Sorry for going off-topic, Halichoeres!  This reminded me of something on-topic I wanted to say!

[deleted defunct image]
Jurassic Hunters Ornitholestes. The nose horn is pretty speculative, and the color scheme is improbable, but it was this or the Chap Mei--not a lot of options with Ornitholestes. The sculpt isn't bad, really. The tail is much too short, so although by overall length this is 1:10, if you discount the tail it's more like 1:8 (that might not sound like much, but at large scales that starts to matter).

The nose horn on Ornitholestes restorations comes from Greg Paul's interpretation of a broken area of bone that appears to bulge upwards on the snout of the Ornitholestes specimen.  This led him to suggest in his 1988 "Predatory Dinosaurs of the World" that Ornitholestes has a nasal horn.  This interpretation was rejected by palaeontologists in 2003 and 2005, that indicated that the upward flare of bone was due to post-mortem crushing of the skull.  Greg Paul's updated illustration of Ornitholestes in his 2010 "Princeton Field Guide to Dinosaurs" doesn't have the nasal horn.

I find it a bit surprising how far Greg Paul's now defunct nose horn idea has reached.  When I was around 9 or 10, I remember reading it had been discovered Ornitholestes has a nose horn.  When I was around 20 or 21, I read it's no longer believed Ornitholestes has a nose horn!  For a long time, when I thought of Ornitholestes I would tend to think of the rather striking one from Walking with Dinosaurs which had a nose horn.  Now what Ornitholestes is thought to have looked like has changed a lot!  No nose horn, feathers due to being a coelurosaur, and sickle claws.  It looks like a dromaeosaurid but at the same time it doesn't!: http://scotthartman.deviantart.com/art/Ornitholestes-48798087

That ended up being longer than I anticipated!

[Halichoeres]

Customs Tax is 22% of the price + a fixed tax of 10 Euro. 

Yikes.

Sim, on Ornitholestes: yeah, I balked at first on getting the GeoWorld version, because it differs in so many respects from the real animal. But then collector's compulsion got the better of me...plus it was so cheap! FaunaFigures.com was having a sale. The only other one is this guy:

which does at least have feathers, sort of, and a tail closer to the real length. I didn't know that about the toe claws, that's interesting--I actually thought that was a mistake on the part of Chap Mei. Looks as though it might actually be closer to Ornitholestes than the GeoWorld one, nose horn notwithstanding. EDIT: Chap Mei still got the foot wrong, of course. The sickle claw is on the wrong toe!

Mistaken ideas can go a remarkably long way before they're corrected. And even when they're corrected, people hate being wrong so much they'll fight it anyway. And I'll end any sociological disquisitions there lest I violate forum rules.

[Sim]

That's really weird that the Chap Mei one has the sickle claws replacing the dewclaws!  They came close, but not close enough!

I know of two other Ornitholestes toys, which are obviously based on the WWD Ornitholestes,  a brown one and the one by TS Toys - they should be among the first images in a Google image search for "ornitholestes toy".  Doing that Google image search also brought up a 46cm long "Ornitholestes" toy I haven't seen before.  Going back to how far Greg Paul's mistaken nose horn idea has gone, all 5 Ornitholestes toys have the nose horn!!

[Halichoeres]

That's really weird that the Chap Mei one has the sickle claws replacing the dewclaws!  They came close, but not close enough!

I know of two other Ornitholestes toys, which are obviously based on the WWD Ornitholestes,  a brown one and the one by TS Toys - they should be among the first images in a Google image search for "ornitholestes toy".  Doing that Google image search also brought up a 46cm long "Ornitholestes" toy I haven't seen before.  Going back to how far Greg Paul's mistaken nose horn idea has gone, all 5 Ornitholestes toys have the nose horn!!

I'd forgotten about the TS Toys version! The brown one was a new one to me. Neither of them strikes me as a particularly marked improvement. Just a little different stylistically.

Friggin' Greg Paul.

[Halichoeres]

Back to our regularly scheduled programming: Tetrapods of the Triassic, revisited!


Some of these have been featured before, but I'll highlight some relatively recent additions:


Cynognathus of unknown manufacture. This is just baaaarely not a monochrome (I usually like my figures to come with paint). It is stamped with "China," the name Cynognathus, and a number, which might mean nothing but might mean it came from a larger series. It's not amazing, but it's about the right general shape, and it doesn't have scales. Anybody have a Play Visions Cynognathus they don't want? This one is about 1:15.


Dinosaur Train Proganochelys by Learning Curve. More cartoony than I like, but not nearly as goofy as the dinosaurs in that line. Someday someone will make a good rendition of this sadly neglected animal. This one is about 1:13.


Geoworld Jurassic Hunters Coelophysis. Obviously not as good as the Kaiyodo, but as far as I know it's the best one at this scale. Tail's a little short, but it's appropriately lithe and has a plausible color scheme. About 1:10.


Marching back to the shelf with Deltasaurus and Tasmaniosaurus.

[SBell]

Your Cynognathus is from Mech--they have been bin figures for a long time, over 20 years. The set has 24 or 36 figures in it, something like that. The PV version is the same with some reddish blotches on it.

There is also a smaller version, that is essentially the same.

[joossa]

Yay, new shots! 
I like the Coelophysis. And like you have stated, we need more high quality Jurassic and Triassic figures!

[Libraraptor]

That Cynognathus is Panini.

[RobinGoodfellow]

That Cynognathus is Panini.

http://dinotoyforum.proboards.com/thread/1900/help-identify-little-figures

[Halichoeres]

Your Cynognathus is from Mech--they have been bin figures for a long time, over 20 years. The set has 24 or 36 figures in it, something like that. The PV version is the same with some reddish blotches on it.

There is also a smaller version, that is essentially the same.

Huh, I'd never heard of Mech! Know any place where the whole line is detailed? Maybe in Dinosauriana? Thanks for the ID. Looks like, pertinent to Libraraptor and RobinGoodFellows comments, this mold has been sold under lots of different names. Thanks for the info, guys!

I like the Coelophysis. And like you have stated, we need more high quality Jurassic and Triassic figures!

And how!

[Halichoeres]

Amniotes of the Triassic, continued!


From Czech manufacturer Sellanomer comes the Gimiki's Journey line. I don't know if this is based on a TV show or a movie or what, but it's a line of nothing but baby prehistoric animals. I'm not sure if this was intentional, but nearly all of the species I have from this line actually have known juvenile remains, which I based my scale calculations on when possible. This Eudimorphodon is about 1:3-1:4 scale as a juvenile. I don't usually buy baby dinosaurs, but when they're the only game in town...


Also from Gimiki's Journey, Mussaurus, which for some time was known only from juveniles. Now that adult remains have been described, someone please make a figure of them! This is about 1:2-1:3.


With contemporaries for size reference (okay, one animal in this photo is not an amniote).


At a smaller scale, the Bullyland Liliensternus, 200% better than the CollectA version, which this replaced. About 1:15-1:20.


Bullyland Paratypothorax, currently the best toy aetosaur. I was lucky to get this one in flawless condition in a trade. About 1:15.


Dawn of the Dinosaurs (unknown manufacturer) "Frenguellisaurus" (junior synonym of Herrerasaurus). This is the larger resin version, about 1:20 scale. Replaced the CollectA version in my collection.


From the same line, the capsule version of Exaeretodon. Shows an interesting melange of mammalian traits, including nipples. If we assume that the mammary gland condition of monotremes is plesiomorphic, then this animal probably did not have nipples. At least on paper, it's only one step less parsimonious to assume that monotremes lost nipples secondarily--hard to be totally sure with a two-taxon statement. I nevertheless persist in thinking Exaeretodon and other early synapsids probably didn't have nipples. About 1:25-1:30.

[dead image]
Finally, my most recent addition, the Bullyland Batrachotomus. Really an imposing figure, and I'm happy to have it despite the fact that it's a little beat up. It's pretty difficult to find in better condition than this. Nominally 1:20, but I haven't measured it.


And one last group shot, with, again, one non-amniote.

[Mitko]

What species is the small blue-headed red-bodied dinosaur just above the Herrerasaurus? Looks very good.

[Halichoeres]

What species is the small blue-headed red-bodied dinosaur just above the Herrerasaurus? Looks very good.

It's Coelophysis (Kaiyodo Dinotales series 5). It is a fantastic little figure. There's also a version in bright oranges and yellows.

Someone else's photo:

[Mitko]

After a quick search I ended up finding it priced between $15 and $25+. It says it's rare but no Coelophysis for me... for now. I'm a bit jelous of you having it.