Marx Prehistoric Times

[stoneage]

You might try asking Joe DeMarco.

[stoneage]

Does anyone have more information about the marbled brown variants?  How rare were/are they?
The dinosaur collectibles book says they are by Superior from Marx molds and come from the 1980s. Right?

Okay, I've consulted with my Dinosauriana Compendium Disc.  The Superior Dinosaurs were only sold in Rulers of the Earth playsets.  There was a Large, Medium and Small playset.  These figures came in green, gray and brown.  The figures are made from a soft brittle plastic which is more pliable then Starlux but still breakable.
There are 17 prehistoric figures not counting cavemen.  The large molds: Rex, Bronto, & Krono.  The medium molds:  Allo, Stego, Trach,Ankylo, Pterano, & Hadro.  The second series: Moschop, Mega, Wooly, Styraco, Struthio, Iguano, & Parasaur.  There are also figures in black, red, deep forest green and yellow that they don't know their source.  The largest set uses the One Million BC Marx type mountain.They also had some original rock formations of their own.  Their were also two sets of brick red, cream colored cavemen as well as trees with black trunks, fronds, and Mark style booklet.







   

[Libraraptor]

S @stoneage Thank you very much!

[BlueKrono]

Does anyone have more information about the marbled brown variants?  How rare were/are they?
The dinosaur collectibles book says they are by Superior from Marx molds and come from the 1980s. Right?

They're not as rare as they're sometimes made out to be. There were three marbled colors made: brown, gray and green, and all are moderately common. The rarest mass-produced colors are probably the metallic green and chocolate milk brown.

[Libraraptor]

I love their marbled mold, every piece is unique, like in the Linde figures.

[Dinoguy2]

Does anyone have more information about the marbled brown variants?  How rare were/are they?
The dinosaur collectibles book says they are by Superior from Marx molds and come from the 1980s. Right?

They're not as rare as they're sometimes made out to be. There were three marbled colors made: brown, gray and green, and all are moderately common. The rarest mass-produced colors are probably the metallic green and chocolate milk brown.

Interesting. I had a set with marbled figures when I was a kid but I don't recall any brown ones, just gray and green I think. unless I'm misremembering.

These marbled ones were the result of melting down and re-using factory rejects, right?

[Crackington]

D @Dinoguy2 I seem to remember reading, possibly in Prehistoric Times, that Marx had very high quality control standards and rejected a lot of their toys, particularly if there was a run of colours leading to the marbling effect.

They didn't melt the figures down but buried them in a large dump in New Jersey. People even prospected this dump, much to nearby neighbours annoyance, digging for the old figures. Some of these have later ended up on eBay etc!

[Dinoguy2]

D @Dinoguy2 I seem to remember reading, possibly in Prehistoric Times, that Marx had very high quality control standards and rejected a lot of their toys, particularly if there was a run of colours leading to the marbling effect.

They didn't melt the figures down but buried them in a large dump in New Jersey. People even prospected this dump, much to nearby neighbours annoyance, digging for the old figures. Some of these have later ended up on eBay etc!

I remember reading about that dump, I kinda wish I could go prospecting out there! These marbled ones aren't Marx but one of the inheritors of the Marx molds though, and I thought I remembereda factoid about the marbling being from intentional plastic recycling rather than defects (all of themwere pretty uniformly marbled).

[Crackington]

Thanks for that D @Dinoguy2 On a closer look at the models in the photo, they don't appear to have spent several decades underground!

[stoneage]

S @stoneage Thank you very much!

Your welcome,  as a Marx collector I found the formation very interesting.  I owe you, as do many others, for all the great figures you've helped me acquire over the years.

[japfeif]

Hey everyone,
Just as a reminder, the 4th edition of Dinosaur Playsets: An Illustrated Guide to the Prehistoric Playsets of Marx and MPC is out & available now! Brand new 2020 edition!!!!!

Updated improvements to earlier edition include MORE content, more playsets not available in earlier editions, and printed on GLOSSY paper rather than matte, with all enhanced color photos of EVERY prehistoric playset put out by Marx, and most of the ones by MPC.

And lots on other playsets that used Marx and/or MPC molds, original or knockoff (some of which have been discussed here), like Superior, Toy Street, Dapol, Winneco, Marx of Miami, Spaulding, etc.

Stop relying on outdated, incomplete, or just plain inaccurate sources for your references searches and questions on these iconic dinosaur playsets.....this is the most complete guide to the prehistoric playsets of Marx & MPC out there, period, and if you are a fan or collector of Marx and/or MPC dinosaur playsets and don't have this book yet...well, you should!   

Available on eBay usually, or thru Amazon!
Thanks all!
Jeff Pfeiffer

https://www.ebay.com/itm/Dinosaur-Playsets-REVISED-EDITION-2020-Marx-MPC-prehistoric-BACK-IN-STOCK/143932254930

[Halichoeres]

Very lucky to own two of the Nuremberg Toy Fair editions:

[japfeif]

Very lucky to own two of the Nuremberg Toy Fair editions:

Very cool....it's a coup to have ANY of these guys!
Here's my set....I actually think it may be complete, as I'm not sure if they made an Allosaurus & a Triceratops. At least I've never seen them.

[japfeif]

Does anyone have more information about the marbled brown variants?  How rare were/are they?
The dinosaur collectibles book says they are by Superior from Marx molds and come from the 1980s. Right?

They're not as rare as they're sometimes made out to be. There were three marbled colors made: brown, gray and green, and all are moderately common. The rarest mass-produced colors are probably the metallic green and chocolate milk brown.

Interesting. I had a set with marbled figures when I was a kid but I don't recall any brown ones, just gray and green I think. unless I'm misremembering.

These marbled ones were the result of melting down and re-using factory rejects, right?

Not really. While Marx did reject lots of weird-looking figures that didn't measure up to their "standards" (hence the vast figure graveyard in the Marx dump!),  as for the marbled dinos occasionally found in the playsets, no they were deliberate. On occasion, the Marx employees would actually experiment around and would take the plastic from rejected figures and melt it down & drizzle it into the molds, causing the dinos to have that "marbled" or "swirled" look. Then they'd use the dinos from that mold group & put it into the set.

The most commonly seen mold group that you'd see the swirled dinos in is the Small Mold Group (Triceratops, Cynognathus, Sphenacodon, the 2 Dimetrodons, & the 2 Plateosaurus). The next most commonly seen mold group to use swirled dinos was the Large Mold Group (Brontosaurus, Tyrannosaurus, Kronosaurus).  The other mold groups (Medium, Revised, & Second Series, comprising the rest of the dinos) could also contain marbled pieces but very rarely.

One thing though, when Marx put a Mold Group into a playset, they always used the ENTIRE mold group (with the exception of the Large Mold Group, which were simply placed in the playsets individually)...so if you find a marbled/swirled dino in your playset, you should find the entire mold group in that swirled pattern. If you only have, say, 1 or 2 marbled dinos in your set and not the entire Mold Group then it's a safe bet that some former owner has just stuck those marbled dinos in the playset at some point.

[Libraraptor]

Very lucky to own two of the Nuremberg Toy Fair editions:

Very cool....it's a coup to have ANY of these guys!
Here's my set....I actually think it may be complete, as I'm not sure if they made an Allosaurus & a Triceratops. At least I've never seen them.

Wow, congrats, @Halichoeres and J @japfeif . I only have the Plateosaurus from that Nuremberg Toy Fair edition. Very cool to see them all!

[Dinoguy2]

Does anyone have more information about the marbled brown variants?  How rare were/are they?
The dinosaur collectibles book says they are by Superior from Marx molds and come from the 1980s. Right?

They're not as rare as they're sometimes made out to be. There were three marbled colors made: brown, gray and green, and all are moderately common. The rarest mass-produced colors are probably the metallic green and chocolate milk brown.

Interesting. I had a set with marbled figures when I was a kid but I don't recall any brown ones, just gray and green I think. unless I'm misremembering.

These marbled ones were the result of melting down and re-using factory rejects, right?

Not really. While Marx did reject lots of weird-looking figures that didn't measure up to their "standards" (hence the vast figure graveyard in the Marx dump!),  as for the marbled dinos occasionally found in the playsets, no they were deliberate. On occasion, the Marx employees would actually experiment around and would take the plastic from rejected figures and melt it down & drizzle it into the molds, causing the dinos to have that "marbled" or "swirled" look. Then they'd use the dinos from that mold group & put it into the set.

The most commonly seen mold group that you'd see the swirled dinos in is the Small Mold Group (Triceratops, Cynognathus, Sphenacodon, the 2 Dimetrodons, & the 2 Plateosaurus). The next most commonly seen mold group to use swirled dinos was the Large Mold Group (Brontosaurus, Tyrannosaurus, Kronosaurus).  The other mold groups (Medium, Revised, & Second Series, comprising the rest of the dinos) could also contain marbled pieces but very rarely.

One thing though, when Marx put a Mold Group into a playset, they always used the ENTIRE mold group (with the exception of the Large Mold Group, which were simply placed in the playsets individually)...so if you find a marbled/swirled dino in your playset, you should find the entire mold group in that swirled pattern. If you only have, say, 1 or 2 marbled dinos in your set and not the entire Mold Group then it's a safe bet that some former owner has just stuck those marbled dinos in the playset at some point.

Thanks for the info! Not too surprising to hear the marbling was intentional, I think they look really good personally. I'm pretty sure the playset I had as a child was not real Marx but one of the mold inheritors, as I got it in the mid 80s and I think it must have been new at the time. Were these companies just carrying on the Marx "look" with the marbled sets?

[japfeif]

Does anyone have more information about the marbled brown variants?  How rare were/are they?
The dinosaur collectibles book says they are by Superior from Marx molds and come from the 1980s. Right?

They're not as rare as they're sometimes made out to be. There were three marbled colors made: brown, gray and green, and all are moderately common. The rarest mass-produced colors are probably the metallic green and chocolate milk brown.

Interesting. I had a set with marbled figures when I was a kid but I don't recall any brown ones, just gray and green I think. unless I'm misremembering.

These marbled ones were the result of melting down and re-using factory rejects, right?

Not really. While Marx did reject lots of weird-looking figures that didn't measure up to their "standards" (hence the vast figure graveyard in the Marx dump!),  as for the marbled dinos occasionally found in the playsets, no they were deliberate. On occasion, the Marx employees would actually experiment around and would take the plastic from rejected figures and melt it down & drizzle it into the molds, causing the dinos to have that "marbled" or "swirled" look. Then they'd use the dinos from that mold group & put it into the set.

The most commonly seen mold group that you'd see the swirled dinos in is the Small Mold Group (Triceratops, Cynognathus, Sphenacodon, the 2 Dimetrodons, & the 2 Plateosaurus). The next most commonly seen mold group to use swirled dinos was the Large Mold Group (Brontosaurus, Tyrannosaurus, Kronosaurus).  The other mold groups (Medium, Revised, & Second Series, comprising the rest of the dinos) could also contain marbled pieces but very rarely.

One thing though, when Marx put a Mold Group into a playset, they always used the ENTIRE mold group (with the exception of the Large Mold Group, which were simply placed in the playsets individually)...so if you find a marbled/swirled dino in your playset, you should find the entire mold group in that swirled pattern. If you only have, say, 1 or 2 marbled dinos in your set and not the entire Mold Group then it's a safe bet that some former owner has just stuck those marbled dinos in the playset at some point.

Thanks for the info! Not too surprising to hear the marbling was intentional, I think they look really good personally. I'm pretty sure the playset I had as a child was not real Marx but one of the mold inheritors, as I got it in the mid 80s and I think it must have been new at the time. Were these companies just carrying on the Marx "look" with the marbled sets?

Well, just to clarify, when I was talking in my earlier post about the marbled/swirled dinos, I was referring to actual Marx sets like "The Prehistoric Times" (#3389, 3390, 3391, 3392, et. al.), that normally didn't use swirled dinos, but the Marx employees would occasionally stick a Mold Group of them into the set when they drizzled the darker pigment into the mold as they were making the dinos. But these were still actual, legit Marx playsets that came out in the late 50s & very early 60s.

Now, regarding the dinos from these pics here, these brownish ones, as S @stoneage mentioned earlier, they are from an entirely different line of playsets from the late 80s (1987) put out by the Superior Toy Company from Chicago. These folks had access to 3 of the Mold Groups (Large, Medium, & Second Series, which contained the mammals) for a total of 17 dino figures and produced them in a rather brittle plastic in the very cool swirly patterns in the pics. Their dinos came in 3 colors...gray, brown, & green...and all were uniquely swirled & no 2 look exactly alike. 

Superior also had the molds to the 6 cavemen and the Palm Tree & Fern Group. The cavemen came in 2 colors...light tan and brick-red, and the palm tree & ferns all had green leafy parts with really dark brown (almost black) trunks/fern bases. These dark tree trunks & fern bases make it very easy to tell the Superior trees from the Marx ones. At first glance they all may be mistaken for Marx dinos & accessories but the very slick & brittle plastic and unique colors can ID them pretty easily. Superior also stuck in some terrain pieces, boulders & longish rocky bridges, that were very similar to (but not copies of) the ones used in Marx's "Commanche Pass" playsets.

The company put out 4 different playsets, all of different sizes with regard to the number of dinos and rocky terrain pieces. All the playsets contained 2 sets of cavemen, one in red and one in tan (12 total) and the Palm Tree & Fern group. All but the smallest set contained an informative booklet (basically a black & white reprint of the color booklet of the later Marx dino sets from the late 70s). And the 2 largest sets also contained a vinyl terrain sheet, and the very largest set also contained the large mountain section from the Marx "Prehistoric Mountain Sets"  from the mid-70s.  All the sets used basically the same box art for their playsets, except that each different set featured a photo of the actual playset in question on the box.

So in closing, there are TWO types of swirled/marbled dinos out there that used Marx molds...the original ones BY Marx that showed up in their own playsets on occasion, and the ones used in the much later Superior sets.

Hope all this helps!!!
Jeff

[Dinoguy2]

Does anyone have more information about the marbled brown variants?  How rare were/are they?
The dinosaur collectibles book says they are by Superior from Marx molds and come from the 1980s. Right?

They're not as rare as they're sometimes made out to be. There were three marbled colors made: brown, gray and green, and all are moderately common. The rarest mass-produced colors are probably the metallic green and chocolate milk brown.

Interesting. I had a set with marbled figures when I was a kid but I don't recall any brown ones, just gray and green I think. unless I'm misremembering.

These marbled ones were the result of melting down and re-using factory rejects, right?

Not really. While Marx did reject lots of weird-looking figures that didn't measure up to their "standards" (hence the vast figure graveyard in the Marx dump!),  as for the marbled dinos occasionally found in the playsets, no they were deliberate. On occasion, the Marx employees would actually experiment around and would take the plastic from rejected figures and melt it down & drizzle it into the molds, causing the dinos to have that "marbled" or "swirled" look. Then they'd use the dinos from that mold group & put it into the set.

The most commonly seen mold group that you'd see the swirled dinos in is the Small Mold Group (Triceratops, Cynognathus, Sphenacodon, the 2 Dimetrodons, & the 2 Plateosaurus). The next most commonly seen mold group to use swirled dinos was the Large Mold Group (Brontosaurus, Tyrannosaurus, Kronosaurus).  The other mold groups (Medium, Revised, & Second Series, comprising the rest of the dinos) could also contain marbled pieces but very rarely.

One thing though, when Marx put a Mold Group into a playset, they always used the ENTIRE mold group (with the exception of the Large Mold Group, which were simply placed in the playsets individually)...so if you find a marbled/swirled dino in your playset, you should find the entire mold group in that swirled pattern. If you only have, say, 1 or 2 marbled dinos in your set and not the entire Mold Group then it's a safe bet that some former owner has just stuck those marbled dinos in the playset at some point.

Thanks for the info! Not too surprising to hear the marbling was intentional, I think they look really good personally. I'm pretty sure the playset I had as a child was not real Marx but one of the mold inheritors, as I got it in the mid 80s and I think it must have been new at the time. Were these companies just carrying on the Marx "look" with the marbled sets?

Well, just to clarify, when I was talking in my earlier post about the marbled/swirled dinos, I was referring to actual Marx sets like "The Prehistoric Times" (#3389, 3390, 3391, 3392, et. al.), that normally didn't use swirled dinos, but the Marx employees would occasionally stick a Mold Group of them into the set when they drizzled the darker pigment into the mold as they were making the dinos. But these were still actual, legit Marx playsets that came out in the late 50s & very early 60s.

Now, regarding the dinos from these pics here, these brownish ones, as S @stoneage mentioned earlier, they are from an entirely different line of playsets from the late 80s (1987) put out by the Superior Toy Company from Chicago. These folks had access to 3 of the Mold Groups (Large, Medium, & Second Series, which contained the mammals) for a total of 17 dino figures and produced them in a rather brittle plastic in the very cool swirly patterns in the pics. Their dinos came in 3 colors...gray, brown, & green...and all were uniquely swirled & no 2 look exactly alike. 

Superior also had the molds to the 6 cavemen and the Palm Tree & Fern Group. The cavemen came in 2 colors...light tan and brick-red, and the palm tree & ferns all had green leafy parts with really dark brown (almost black) trunks/fern bases. These dark tree trunks & fern bases make it very easy to tell the Superior trees from the Marx ones. At first glance they all may be mistaken for Marx dinos & accessories but the very slick & brittle plastic and unique colors can ID them pretty easily. Sperior also stuck in some terrain pieces, boulders & longish rocky bridges, that were very similar to (but not copies of) the ones used in Marx's "Commanche Pass" playsets.

The company put out 4 different sets, all of different sizes with regard to the number of dinos and rocky terrain pieces. All the sets contained 2 sets of cavemen, one in red and one in tan (12 total) and the Palm Tree & Fern group. All but the smallest set contained an informative booklet (basically a black & white reprint of the color booklet of the later Marx dino sets from the late 70s). And the 2 largest sets also contained a vinyl terrain sheet, and the very largest set also contained the large mountain section from the Marx "Prehistoric Mountain Sets"  from the mid-70s.  All the sets used basically the same box art for their playsets, except that each different set featured a photo of the actual playset in question on the box.

So in closing, there are TWO types of swirled/marbled dinos out there that used Marx molds...the original ones BY Marx that showed up in their own playsets on occasion, and the ones used in the much later Superior sets.

Hope all this helps!!!
Jeff

Yes, thanks again! The Superior set must be the one I had, because I still have a few of the light tan cavemen.

[Duna]

Very cool....it's a coup to have ANY of these guys!
Here's my set....I actually think it may be complete, as I'm not sure if they made an Allosaurus & a Triceratops. At least I've never seen them.

Oh those look terrific! You are very lucky!

[Lyzzz]

Thank you so much! I'm writing my memoirs and was looking for a picture of these.
I was 4 in 1957; they were one of two memorable Xmas presents (the other was a portable record player).
I recall the colors as duller, but grey & green sound right. And I remember the landscape pieces.
They are, of course, long gone, more than half a century and half a continent away.
At moments like this, I love the WWW.