PNSO: New For 2021

[Antey]

@Psittacoraptor There is a clear visual distinction between this and the prototype. The blending on the head is much better on the prototype pics, and stripes are much sharper and cleanly applied on the prototype as well. It reminds me of what happened with the Allosaurus (the head specifically) as well, and well many others. I don't think anyone is taking the much cheaper CollectA Deluxe Iguanodon and holding them to the same standards. There is a steep cost difference. However I can also easily see why one would prefer it though, because it is vastly cheaper (in my situation), also has cheeks, and a correct skull for the genus it represents anatomically.

However going off the discussion between @Faras and @Carnoking, there does seem to be a pretty jarring difference between the domestic market prices and those international (approx $36, and $59.99 is a pretty big jump). At the base price I would consider the quality more in line with what it costs, and it is only slightly more then the CollectA Iguanodon (both Happy Hen Toys and Dejankins sell it for around $20, which are my go-to retailers in the US, not sure if Dan's Dinosaurs has it, but I doubt it would be much different), plus the addition of the box, and paper materials. It could be because of seller fee's (as far as Amazon goes, don't know about Aliexpress) and other import costs, etc, tacked onto it, but without knowing exactly why myself and others are paying for nearly double the price, I just can't accept this kind of quality, while at this kind of price point. My standards are going to be higher, and I want something that is more reflective of the prototype. Again I don't see why that is far fetched either, as both the Lambeosaurus and Parasaurolophus cost much less then this does, but also had far better applied and faithful paint apps, when compared to this Iguanodon. And from what @Faras said the Parasaurolophus was slightly cheaper, likely because it didn't carry the printed materials and box with it.

In fact come to think of it, both Happy Hen Toys and Dan's Dinosaurs carry PNSO products that also share similar pricing to Amazon's models. @HappyHen and @Dan could either you perhaps please help to clarify what's going with the increase in price for those outside the domestic market? I think I asked @HappyHen before but I think it was just in regards to the pricing of the minis. I'll have to do some digging, because I can't recall all what I asked and they responded with. I'll have to do some digging for that.
Edit: Alright found my earlier question to @HappyHen. It was in regards to the minis. And this was their response as well. They did mention something about international shipping costs going up and affecting the pricing, but to what degree I wonder?

Maybe the whole point is that the US and the EU are closing themselves off from Chinese goods with barriers and duties?

[Shonisaurus]

From my humble personal point of view, PNSO and online stores around the world from my humble opinion could give us the option to buyers to obtain the figures at more affordable prices by selling them without boxes and without identifying brochures, the prices would go down and that would be very positive for the PNSO brand, for the current online store, eBay, Aliexpress, Amazon or private stores throughout the world and especially for buyers. It would be a solomonic solution and the consumption of PNSO products was skyrocketing. As long as they were well protected with bubble packaging, they could be delivered to each buyer for much more attractive prices and the same can be said for other brands of dinosaurs or other expensive prehistoric animals.

I think that all this would greatly favor the demand and consumption of PNSO figures without having to sacrifice quality to make figures at a lower price.

[Antey]

From my humble personal point of view, PNSO and online stores around the world from my humble opinion could give us the option to buyers to obtain the figures at more affordable prices by selling them without boxes and without identifying brochures, the prices would go down and that would be very positive for the PNSO brand, for the current online store, eBay, Aliexpress, Amazon or private stores throughout the world and especially for buyers. It would be a solomonic solution and the consumption of PNSO products was skyrocketing. As long as they were well protected with bubble packaging, they could be delivered to each buyer for much more attractive prices and the same can be said for other brands of dinosaurs or other expensive prehistoric animals.

I think that all this would greatly favor the demand and consumption of PNSO figures without having to sacrifice quality to make figures at a lower price.

Alas, you do not represent all the nuances of business. Boxes and other junk, against which you will protest greatly complicates the life of pirates. It is very cheap and cost effective to make a copy. But making a bunch of accompanying material - boxes, posters, brochures is not profitable for pirates.
The previous version of Doyle's story is an example. It was launched by the Malays and it costs a penny. you can buy it for $ 20 right now. "Without box"

[Antey]

Indeed, comparing Collecta Iguanodon and PNSO Iguanodon is a bit like comparing apples and oranges. But if we were to ignore price difference (sorry, I am going to compare the orange to the apple - can't help myself: I am not very rigorous where logic or consistency is concerned), the PNSO model has many advantages over the much more crude Collecta model, in my view, which I will not elaborate on here, because it has been done by many already. (But one point people make about the Collecta model being the better model because of its cheeks seems incorrect, if I look at the hypotheses floating around.) Anyhow, questioning wether the PNSO Iguanodon is worth the price is not relevant anymore in my case, because I just bought it. If they would only cut the crap (posters, booklets full of kiddie stuff, 'luxury' boxes, etc) and lower the price at least $10 or $15, we would almost all be happy. And although I know that the paint application amounts to a relatively big portion of the total cost, the simple paint app on this figure surely is not more expensive than on the models which are not in the 'Museum Line'.

do not consider it flattery, but you give the impression of an adult - a specialist in your field.

[Faelrin]

@Antey I wouldn't know to be honest. I don't pay attention to that sort of stuff typically. I mostly just stick to what goes on the forum here, and very few other places, mostly tied to my personal interests. Maybe someone that does could chime in however?

[Psittacoraptor]

@Faelrin @Sim I apologize in advance, this will be a long post.

I compared the PNSO iguanodon to Collecta's because it was called superior by a few users on the previous pages. As for the paint application and look of the model, I don't think there's much value in discussing that any further, as it's mostly subjective. I just want to address the argument that one model is better than the other because of aspects of "accuracy", such as name or cheeks.

Much of it has to do with how I personally view paleontology and "accuracy" in general. I think in the reconstruction of extinct animals there are objective aspects, and less objective, interpretative aspects. For example, one objective aspect is dating. We can use the molecular clock and count the mother vs the daughter isotopes of a given element, and our result, the age, is an objective numerical value. Then we can look at things like taphonomy, e.g. aspects like deposition and paleoenvironment. The rock can be examined to see whether the animal was buried in an arid, lacustrine, marine etc. environment. This is also objective.

When it comes to things like assigning a fossil to a group, genus, class, species or whatever, things become less objective. If we see that a dinosaur fossil fits the general anatomy of say a dromaeosaurid or iguanodont, things are still rather objective and straight-forward because the general definitions are still clear. Finer classification into species and genus is where it becomes less objective and more interpretative, because the rules can be quite muddy. If we could travel back in time, we might discover that some dinosaurs now classified as separate species or even genera could interbreed, and what we interpreted as species-distinguishing features were interspecies variations. While not dinosaurs, the Dmanisi hominis come to mind here. Many of the fossils found at the site would have been classified as separate species if found at separate locations, but they were found at the same place, suggesting they belonged to the same group. Scientists don't quite know what to make of the all the variation found among the fossils, and after 20 years no clear taxonomy has been established.

Therefore, I won't treat Paul's 2008 classification of Iguanodonts as unquestionable truth. Fossil taxonomy is questioned, adjusted and changed all the time. Paul himself says in the first sentence of the paper that the criteria for dinosaur genera are inconsistent. I mean, parts of that classification in the very same paper are now considered invalid (Dollodon)! Should we really use a taxonomy already considered partially outdated and invalid by other authors as the only way of looking at this dinosaur group? I looked through the paper, and some of the criteria used for classification leave quite a bit of room for interpretation. E.g. "gracile" vs "robust" build. I'm not saying it's wrong, or that I know better, I absolutely don't. I'm saying I wonder how metrics like "gracile" and "robust" are measured and if someone else would have interpreted them differently. Hence, if PNSO wants to call what Paul called Mantellisaurus Iguanodon, and they have a sound reason for it, fine by me. It sparks discussion, and calls into question things some apparently consider objective truths when they aren't.

And finally, there are aspects like lipped vs lipless or cheeks vs no cheeks, which are for the most part entirely speculative. Call these educated guesses, hypotheses, interpretations or whatever, but they are not objective or accurate. There are arguments for either side, and, while some arguments are stronger than others, until conclusive evidence is found I won't call either "accurate". So, for me, cheeked or cheek-less is not more or less accurate. As with the name, if one manufacturer presents a different interpretation that diverges from the majority – great! Science is all about questioning and retesting ideas and assumptions. If one day we find conclusive evidence that iguanodonts had cheeks, then this model will be inaccurate. But at this time, with the evidence we have now, this aspect of it is as accurate or inaccurate as the cheeks on the Collecta Iguanodon.

Edit: Boy, this reads a lot longer than it seemed typing it, haha. I apologize to everyone who bothered to read through this wall of text. It's just something I've been wanting to post for a while. My fingers have been itching every time I read the word "accuracy" in certain contexts. Feels good to finally have it out of my system.

[dinofelid]

(But one point people make about the Collecta model being the better model because of its cheeks seems incorrect, if I look at the hypotheses floating around.)

Do you remember any particular sources? The model has gotten me curious about this issue. I linked earlier to the DinosDragons youtube video on the PNSO Triceratops which referenced the paper at https://anatomypubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/ar.23988 -- that paper suggested a revision for the attachment of a certain jaw muscle, which in at least some ceratopsians seems like it could then be wide enough to block off the teeth during chewing, but figure 8 from that paper seems to show the muscle wouldn't block off most of the teeth for hadrosaurs, so I'd guess the same would be true for iguanodonts. Is that guess wrong, or are there papers speculating that inflexible reptile-style lips on hadrosaurs/iguanodonts would be sufficient to prevent food from falling out of their mouths while chewing even in the absence of anything else like a muscle or membrane, or is there some different proposed explanation that's not muscles, lips, or membrane-style cheeks?

[Bread]

Boy I do miss those days where I could buy the PNSO model without the box and knock off a good $5.

[ZoPteryx]

(But one point people make about the Collecta model being the better model because of its cheeks seems incorrect, if I look at the hypotheses floating around.)

Do you remember any particular sources? The model has gotten me curious about this issue. I linked earlier to the DinosDragons youtube video on the PNSO Triceratops which referenced the paper at https://anatomypubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/ar.23988 -- that paper suggested a revision for the attachment of a certain jaw muscle, which in at least some ceratopsians seems like it could then be wide enough to block off the teeth during chewing, but figure 8 from that paper seems to show the muscle wouldn't block off most of the teeth for hadrosaurs, so I'd guess the same would be true for iguanodonts. Is that guess wrong, or are there papers speculating that inflexible reptile-style lips on hadrosaurs/iguanodonts would be sufficient to prevent food from falling out of their mouths while chewing even in the absence of anything else like a muscle or membrane, or is there some different proposed explanation that's not muscles, lips, or membrane-style cheeks?

The paper you link, which is indeed the leading research on the subject, doesn't comment extensively on the presence or absence of cheeks as that was not its primary purpose.  In the old model of ornithischian jaw musculature, cheeks would have absolutely been needed to house the unique muscle arrangement stretching between the upper and lower jaws (A in the figure below).  The new and likely more accurate arrangement presented in the paper is simply a more robust version of standard dinosaurian jaw musculature (B).  While the new arrangement does not absolutely require fleshy "cheeks", it does not refute them either.  Given that ceratopsians and ornithopods show features typical of herbivores with cheeks (primarily: inset tooth rows, dental batteries, tooth wear consistent with oral processing), I think it's most parsimonious to assume at least these ornithischians* possessed a cheek-like arrangement.  But alas, definitive proof won't arise until a mummified specimen with extensive facial integument is discovered.



*At least some ankylosaurs possessed cheeks based on the armor arrangement in their cheek-region

This graphic by Jaime Headden shows what is likely the safe minimum for cheek tissue in an ornithopod with the new muscle arrangement.

[SRF]

Boy I do miss those days where I could buy the PNSO model without the box and knock off a good $5.

For us Europeans the increase in prices comes in three ways: prices of PNSO figures in general went up because resellers like My Online Toy Store and others on AliExpress couldn't offer them anymore for less than what PNSO charges for them in their own store. With that, the option to order them without the box was also cancelled. And on top of paying the full (increased) price for a figure with box we're paying extra VAT, which for me adds 21% on top of an already increased price.

To make a comparison: the Carnotaurus and Qianzhousaurus are now both a year old releases. Back then I've paid around 29 Euros for each of them. Now the same figures would cost me 43 Euros each. At the same AliExpress store! The same applies for about every figure I've purchased up until last summer. Now of course PNSO isn't responsible for the fact that EU customers are since then confronted with additional VAT charges, but this increase is about 50 percent, not 21.

PNSO really has to come up with something special to make it worth my money. So far I've only purchased Andrea since the introduction of the extra VAT charges in the EU. And that's only because I really really réally wanted to replicate that painting with the T. Rex pair from PNSO.

[Antey]

@Faelrin @Sim I apologize in advance, this will be a long post.

I compared the PNSO iguanodon to Collecta's because it was called superior by a few users on the previous pages. .....

Feels good to finally have it out of my system.

You are absolutely right! The concept of a biological species is the cost of Linnaeus's taxonomy. This is the 18th century. Modern cladistics is forced to use this concept and even then in a limited way. Evolution is a continuous process, therefore intraspecific morphological diversity is an example of the process of speciation that is taking place before our eyes. Should PNSO be blamed for inaccuracies?

[Faelrin]

@SRF Wow I know you folks got hit hard when those changes happened, but that's much worse then I thought.

[SidB]

@Faelrin @Sim I apologize in advance, this will be a long post.

I compared the PNSO iguanodon to Collecta's because it was called superior by a few users on the previous pages. .....

Feels good to finally have it out of my system.

You are absolutely right! The concept of a biological species is the cost of Linnaeus's taxonomy. This is the 18th century. Modern cladistics is forced to use this concept and even then in a limited way. Evolution is a continuous process, therefore intraspecific morphological diversity is an example of the process of speciation that is taking place before our eyes. Should PNSO be blamed for inaccuracies?

If I understand you correctly, @Antey , you point out a 'tension' that is inescapable - evolution is a continuous process, sometimes moving very slowly, other times more rapidly, for several reasons. Yet we try to pin the butterfly onto the board: that is, give a precise definition and description to a moving point, the individual taxon. We must attempt this as it is part of how we classify the objects with which we move through time. Analogously, that's like time as an instant (nunc stans) and time as a flow (nunc fluens). We can't escape this phenomenon that is both an actuality and a seeming contradiction. That's the principle. Fortunately, since change occurs slowly enough, we do endeavor, more or less successfully , to come up with relatively stable descriptions of what constitutes a species, keeping in mind the variability factor.

I've ordered the new PNSO Iguanodon, and will wait to see what the sculptor's explanation is for the choice of the head sculpt. Should be interesting.

[Abobo]

A taste of things to come?

PNSO Tsintaosaurus (Reconstruction)

[BlueKrono]

Now that I would go for.

[stargatedalek]

Should PNSO be blamed for inaccuracies?

When it's something known to be inaccurate, and they claim to be a science art company, yes, yes they should be.

[Kaustav Bhattacharyya]

Another T.rex is required based on the "Scotty" specimen. The Triceratops is really incredible.

[Duck]

Should PNSO be blamed for inaccuracies?

When it's something known to be inaccurate, and they claim to be a science art company, yes, yes they should be.

If they didn't claim to be a science art company, would you still judge the accuracies?

[stargatedalek]

Should PNSO be blamed for inaccuracies?

When it's something known to be inaccurate, and they claim to be a science art company, yes, yes they should be.

If they didn't claim to be a science art company, would you still judge the accuracies?

Would I make note of them? Probably. But I wouldn't hold it against the products like I do since they are.

[Bread]

A taste of things to come?

PNSO Tsintaosaurus (Reconstruction)

Now this interest me. If this is indeed a future figure, don't get too comfortable with the coloration, PNSO's products differ from their artwork drastically.