Back in the 1990s there was a publication called “Dinosaurs!”. Publisher De Agostini would introduce to us the dinosaurs and their world in many issues. One special dinosaur would get a titlee story, there were stories about other dinosaurs and prehistoric beasts, a 3D – poster in the middle of each issue and on the last side my former idol Dr. David Norman would answer questions about features and lifestyle of the fascinating animals.
Only now, a few months ago, I found out that there was a figure line closely resembling the painted dinosaurs from the particular issues. I got myself some of them by a trade.
One of these was Pelecanimimus, an Ornithomimid from the lower Cretaceous of Spain, as tall as a man. He is regarded as one of the oldest representative of the Ornothomimid group. Compared to the descendands like name-giving Ornithomimus, Pelecanimimus had teeth. And he had a strange extension at the head protruding backwards out of the skull. Maybe it was for intimidation.
This little neat figure is 5 centimetres (1,9 inches) tall and 10,2 centimetres (4,1 inches) long.
It differs from the normal representations of theropods back in the nineties, when big players like T.rex or Allosaurus ruled the theropod figure territory. This little figure probably was a welcome relief from this dominance.
For balance it has to lean on the forearms, but interestingly this does not really attract special attention, since the overall vivid posture and sculpt is really succesful for a figure from this time.
Of course it´s not scientifically correct. It lacks feathers, the hands are not pronated. On the other hand, there is a nice throat pouch and the extension of the skull is there as well. The jaws look as if the animal is gnarling at something .
The colour is orange – tan and yellow at the belly which suits the animal quite well, although it´s also a little boring.
Overall, this is a really nice figure to own. I only know one other Pelecanimimus figure by Kazunari Araki, which is a lot better of course. But De Agostini Pelecanimimus does not claim to be a model figurine, it is a toy rising from the publication “Dinosaurs!”, which was clearly addressed at children. And so is this figure. It´s one of the first hinting at the dinosaur-bird-relationship. From me it gets 3,5 (4) out of five stars.
Scan lots on ebay to find one. Or maybe someone on the Dinosaur Toy Forum knows other sources.
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do you mean “are pronated”
Pronated means faced down while not pronated means faces eachother
To be fair, Pelecanimimus still hasn’t been adequately described (or photographed) so this could very well be an accurate portrayal.
I agree with the author of the article that an improved version is the pelecanimimus of Favorite, that does not mean that I would like to have that figure in my collection.
Does it have a base plate?De Agostini models(like cars,battleships,etc) usually come with that.
I do not know from a Base Plate.
Reminiscent of Triple A–nifty in its own universe sort of way.