Review and photos by Charles Peckham, edited by Suspsy
I’m really happy that Recur exists and is making toy dinosaurs. I’m a big fan of CollectA and Safari Ltd., but I realize that they are cost prohibitive to a lot of collectors, and while I enjoy cheap knockoff toys (I don’t care for the term “Chinasaur”), part of me always hesitates to give them to kids, knowing that the original toy they got the design from is probably 70 years old, and was scientifically inaccurate then.
Schleich isn’t exactly wanting for criticism on this board. Plenty of paleo fans and collectors – myself included – tend to be underwhelmed or outright repulsed by the variety of ugly-looking toys Schleich produces in the name of educational purposes. Not all Schleich products are bad, though, and at least a few of their prehistoric line figures have managed to surprise collectors – even if was almost by accident.
Larami’s Museum set is looking pretty dated now, but it’s a charming playset all the same and one of the more memorable imitators out there.
It’s said that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery; by that metric the dinosaur toy industry has been incredibly generous towards the leading toy brands.
When the prologue (and later, trailer) for Jurassic World: Dominion dropped, it was met with a lot of grievances from our community. To be fair, there was a lot to gripe about, from anachronistic animals mingling together, to the sloppy anatomy typical of the franchise.
Diplodocus is without question one of the most famous dinosaur species, not least because its history goes a fair way back in the science of paleontology. In 1877 Samuel Wendell Wilson in company of his mentor Benjamin Franklin Mudge led an expidition for Othniel Charles Marsh (this name may ring a bell with a much wider range of people) and discovered first fossils of Diplodocus.
The star of ‘Battle at Big Rock’ is back to bat under Mattel, with a slight makeover in play features and paint job.
Allosaurus was once a king of dinosaur media, second only to Tyrannosaurus in books and film. Featuring in multiple major productions such as The Lost World, One Million Years BC, and (debatably) The Valley of Gwangi, the “other lizard” ended up getting overshadowed during the 90s and 2000s with the advent of the Jurassic Park franchise and its more novel assortment of “villain” theropods like the cunning Velociraptor and the gigantic Spinosaurus.
Yangchuanosaurus is a genus of metriacanthosaurid that lived during the middle and late Jurassic in China. In appearance it would have looked very much like Allosaurus. Yangchaunosaurus shows up in the collectable market periodically and several figures represent the species, including the Safari Dinosaurs of China figure and a recent model by PNSO.
Over the years, despite having a large amount of fossil material behind it, Centrosaurus has very little in terms of figures that aren’t named Monoclonius. Fortunately, recent times have brought this near forgotten species to the forefront. Beasts of the Mesozoic leads this by creating three, two juveniles and an adult.
Once upon a time, there was a hadrosaur that was believed to have had a head crest that resembled that of the mythical unicorn. So unique was this head crest that it was affectionately dubbed the unicorn dinosaur and would be a source of inspiration for countless artist worldwide for decades.
Skorpiovenator is a genus of late Cretaceous abelisaurid known from the Huincul Formation in Argentina. It was described in 2008 and the genus name means “scorpion hunter” due to the abundance of scorpions dwelling around its dig site. The species name, bustingorryi, was given in honor of Manuel Bustingorry, whose farm the dig site was located on.
In the world of paleoart and paleomerch, it’s very common to see artists and toymakers draw inspiration from the imagery of other creators. Often this can be a good thing and a chance to reinforce contemporary understanding – consider how many vintage toys drew from Charles R Knight and Rudolph Zallinger – but sometimes it ends up becoming flagrant theft of another’s hard work.
Approximately 73 million years ago, Shendong Province of China was a land of rich floodplains that abounded in dinosaurs of all shapes and sizes. These included the ankylosaur Sinankylosaurus, the titanosaur Zhuchengtitan, the diminutive leptoceratopsids Ischiceratops and Zhuchengceratops, and the larger ceratopsid Sinoceratops with its royal frill.
Mattel’s take on Jurassic World’s giant sea reptile is back as big and beautiful as ever, with a few new interesting quirks up its plastic sleeve.
When Mattel began announcing their upcoming releases in the wake of acquiring the Jurassic World license in 2018, one of the first and most exciting toys to catch my eye was the giant Mosasaurus, an impressive “real-feel” articulated toy that could eat Hasbro’s earlier attempts at the genus for lunch.
In the last two decades many new and exciting discoveries have been made that added an impressive number of new ceratopsians. It seems as if each of the new species discovered and named are trying to outdo the other with each new one looking more exotic than the last.Names such as Medusaceratops, Diabloceratops, Regaliceratops and so on, all have that catchy ring to them that conures up exotic looks.As outlandish as these new ones are they still have a lot of catching up to do in the popularity department especially mainstream recognition.And when it comes to ceratopsians, two icons stand out over the rest both in popularity and recognition: Triceratops and Styracosaurus.
