Every now and again, something rather interesting pops up that you wouldn’t expect to be as good as you’d think. The toy sets you would see at supermarkets like Aldi and Lidl, often seen as cheap item makers, having something worth getting. Here, we examine the Joy City line on prehistoric animals, a counterpoint to there Dinosaur wave, which seems more typical chinasaur.
Review: Zhejiangosaurus (Vitae)
4.9 (9 votes)
While a lot of dinosaur names are quite a challenge for the laymen to be read and correctly spelled, the ones inspired by Chinese locations and names may even be a serious challenge to the dinosaur expert. Zhejiangosaurus comes as one of the easier names, but maybe one you do not really need to remember…..
Review: Apatosaurus (Monster In My Pocket by Matchbox, Series 6)
3.7 (6 votes)
Review and photos by Funk, edited by Suspsy
Monster In My Pocket was a line of small collectible figures in bright colours, all depicting monsters of some kind. The line seems to have had several series consisting of or including prehistoric animals, and the one here, the Apatosaurus, is from Series 6, which appears to have been released in 1993, during the “Dinomania” craze that followed in Jurassic Park‘s wake.
Review: Xiphactinus (Fauna Casts)
4 (6 votes)
Before there was Jaws, before there was The Meg, there was Xiphactinus.
Although sharks have been a constant nightmare in many pop culture’s films and stories, these fishes were not the only ones that have the reputation of being ferocious, and definitely not the largest.
Review: Plesiosaurus (Jurassic World Battle Damage by Mattel)
3.1 (11 votes)
Review and photos by Faelrin, edited by Suspsy
If you had to ask me what my favorite prehistoric marine reptiles are, there’s probably only about a handful or two of them compared to the dinosaurs that they shared the Mesozoic with (and which they often are assumed to be, unfortunately).
Review: Stegosaurus (Horizon)
4.1 (8 votes)
As far as my “knowledge” goes, Horizon was a small model making company of Chinese origin located in California. It ceased production in the late 90`s or early 2000´s and was famous for making high detailed models of movie characters, like Terminator, Robocop, classic monsters or Jurassic Park.
Review: Diprotodon (Lost Kingdoms Series A by Yowie)
3.3 (4 votes)
Marsupials are a fascinating group of mammals. With the ability to have multiple young at once and pouches to keep them safe. They have been around for millions of years, now restricted to Australia and South America. Australia once had the largest member of this class: Diprotodon, a giant Wombat relative the size of rhinos, they died out 50,000 years ago, just as the first Aborigines came to Australia.
Review: Tyrannosaurus rex (Dino Quest by Chap Mei)
1.3 (14 votes)
Review and photographs by Funk, edited by Suspsy
Can there ever be too many Tyrannosaurus toys? Chap Mei didn’t think so, and made several versions, that, while they differed in colouration and other details, all seem to have taken most of their anatomical cues from the way this genus was portrayed in the Jurassic Park franchise.
Review: Lisowicia (CollectA Deluxe)
5 (25 votes)
Time has eventually come, for one of the most impressive CollectA figures of 2020 to hit the European continent. And fittingly, it represents a European species.
In 2006 paleontologists Jerzy Dzik, Tomasz Sulej and Grzegorz Niedźwiedzki discovered large bones in a clay pit in Poland.
Review: Hawaiian ‘O’ o (Forgotten Friends Series A by Yowie)
3.5 (4 votes)
As a volcanic island chain, Hawaii is not known for it’s ancient fossil fauna, but it has a selection of modern extinct species. The ‘O’ o (or Moho, based on the scientific name) were a group of birds that were native to Hawaii, now all extinct, the last being recent enough to have recordings of it’s mating call (worth hearing, though prepare to be moved to tears).
Review: Majungasaurus (Jurassic World Sound Strike, by Mattel)
3.6 (12 votes)
Where abelisaurids are concerned the genus Majungasaurus is second in popularity only to Carnotaurus. It has a few things working in its favor. It lived at the very end of the Cretaceous period in what is now Madagascar and was the dominant predator of its ecosystem.
Review: Postosuchus (Jurassic World Savage Strike by Mattel)
3.9 (13 votes)
Review and photos by Faelrin, edited by Suspsy
The fauna of the Triassic period was highly diverse with many new branches of life, including those that would soon dominate the globe from the Mesozoic onwards, particularly the archosaurs. Early dinosaurs and pterosaurs themselves aside, perhaps one of the most popular of those Triassic era archosaurs is none other than Postosuchus, having been put in the spotlight thanks to the BBC’s Walking with Dinosaurs series in which it featured many years ago.