“Ho, ho, ho there, fellow dinosaur lovers! Yes, it is I, Dr. Bella Claus, at your service once again! And where would I be without my loyal and trusty steed, Bethdolf?”
“I told you not to call me that, Doc!”
“Oh, come along, Beth, you were the one who refused to wear the elf hat again.
Most paleontology enthusiasts are familiar with ammonites, the predatory mollusks with muscular arms and calcium carbonate shells. Most ammonites’ shells were disc-shaped coils (planispiral) that contained chambers, some of which afforded buoyancy, and one of which housed the squishy parts of the animal. One lineage of ammonites went a little wild with their shell coiling, producing some very strange shapes.
Schleich can be seen as the equivalent of McDonald’s in that, despite the sometimes lacklustre quality of their products, they are still the most globally successful of all the companies specializing in PVC scale models of extinct and extant fauna. Take for example their 2012 Tyrannosaurus rex mould.
As a person of Polish decent with a love for Triassic fauna I was elated to see that CollectA was producing a figure of Smok wawelski, a Triassic archosaur found near Lisowice village in Poland. And hot on the heels of their excellent Lisowicia too, another Triassic animal from the same fossil site.
Nearly 60 years after Mold-A-Rama imprinted itself as an icon of American toy memorabilia, The Field Museum of Chicago collaborated with Mold-A-Rama to produce a brand-new prehistoric creature in classic plastic form.
Mold-A-Rama figures have been an icon of dinosaur toy collecting for decades. Originally conceived in the 1950s by Tike Miller for personal use, the first official molding machines were revealed to the world at the 1962 Seattle World’s Fair by Automatic Retailers of America.
Review and photos by EmperorDinobot, edited by Suspsy
Being a completist, I, Emperor Dinobot have to make some difficult choices once in a while. You see, in my yet-to-be-finished display, I am building a sort of aviary, where all pterosaurs big and small can roam around my room’s ceiling.
Genyodectes serus (Greek for “late jaw bite”) is a genus of theropod belonging to the Ceratosauridae family and lived in South America during the early Cretaceous. It is only known from an incomplete snout described by Sir Arthur Woodward in 1901. Genyodectes was the second dinosaur ever discovered in South America and despite its fragmentary nature, would remain the most complete theropod known from South America until the 1970’s.
You’d think a creature like the dire wolf would have a few more toys to its name. Canis dirus (now reclassified as Aenocyon dirus) is almost unheard of on the prehistoric toy market, even though the genus made its introduction to paleo merchandise over fifty years ago.
Review and images by bmathison1972; edited by Suspsy
Signatustudio is a line of animal replicas made by artist J. Miguel Aparicio out of Spain. Most of his models are in the 1:20 scale and represent the fauna of Eurasia, including the Iberian Peninsula, the Mediterranean, Tibetan Plateau, and Euro-Siberian regions.
CollectA continues to impress with the reveal of ten new prehistoric products for 2023, several of which have never appeared in figure form before! Of particular note is Koolasuchus, as it is not only the first prehistoric amphibian from CollectA, but the first prehistoric amphibian from any company in years!
The final set of Safari’s first forays into dinosaur miniatures features a charming blend of aesthetics, and also serves in retrospect as a tribute to a dawning hobby and its burgeoning artists.
In 1994, Battat was commissioned by the Boston Museum to produce what would become one of the most praised toy lines in dinosaur collecting.
