Within the unfortunately short time of its existence, Chinese company PNSO released two products in collaboration or commission for China Post. One is their glorious Mamenchisaurus, the other is a boxed set of “Seven Little Dinosaurs”. Unlike the “Six Little Dinosaurs” the seven do not depict juvenile dinosaurs but rather adult ones, though they are indeed not big figures.
The dinosaurs come in a premium big and white cardboard box with flip-top lid which on the inside shows a nice paleoart of all the figures in the set. Accompanying the figures is a booklet with more nice paleoart and descriptions for the species (in Chinese and English), including stamps for each species. According to our forum member acro-man (who kindly helped me acquiring the set) the stamps show the dinosaurs’ skeletons when illuminated under black light.
The seven species of the set are Huayangosaurus, Yangchuanosaurus, Mamenchisaurus, Tsintaosaurus, Gigantoraptor, Sinosauropteryx and Microraptor. A striking and in my opinion somewhat weird feature is, that the smallest species are very big in comparison, while the biggest species is kind of delicate and appears almost fragile. All figures are made from soft and flexible material but I am under the impression that slightly differnt materials where in use for different figures. However, all should be safely usable as child’s toys if one wants so.
In general all seven are finely sculpted, just the Mamenchisaurus looks a bit crude in comparison. Due to its small size of just 14 cm lenght this may be intended to allow for some optical texture when seen from a distance and it is nevertheless a nice and charming figure. Most intricately detailed is the Microraptor, though the shiny black (and blue green) paint application obscures most of this. The paint application in general is nothing too special on all the figures but believable. A small downer are the pure colored eyes without pupils on the Microraptor and Sinosauropteryx which bestow a zombie look on them both. In terms of accuracy the only negative points to my knowledge are the lacking primaries on the Gigantoraptor and the placement of the shoulder spikes on the Huayangosaurus which should be placed above the shoulder rather than behind. That being said all of the figures are well made and justify PNSO’s reputation.
Overall this is a very nice and collectable set. As it is sold only via China Post it is somewhat hard to come by, so if you are interested, contact our forum member acro-man.
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PNSO is gone?! Where can I read about this? I now bitterly regret passing up on several cheap baggies of what I assumed to be their overruns. For anyone headed to Tai Yuen in Hong Kong, look to the toy stores! One carries these treasures which I sadly passed on.
This is a set I’ve never regretted buying. So sad that PNSO is no longer producing their excellent models.
It really is tragic how PNSO up and imploded. Their products were fantastic.
I would like something like this. Unfortunately, I cannot get onto the forum with my laptop. Can anyone help me get back onto there?
Did you try to contact Dr Admin at [email protected] ? He might be able to hook you up on that forum issue.
How can I do that?
I can say that this set was sold to me by Acro-man for a very affordable price and it came to me a few days later.
For my part I recommend it are very well finished and very well made figures and especially the microraptor and Sinosauropteryx are painted as they should be in life according to the latest paleontological discoveries. Recommendable.