D is for Dino-viroment!

So, we're having a big 'ole local day for local people here at Small Scale World today, and if you don't like it; you might end up in a pie! There have been various events locally over the summer with some connection to toys, of which this is the most tenuous of linkages, but dinosaurs are a case apart!

First you need to deliver your dinosaur - and you thought they came in eggs!

A relatively life-size Triceratops is probably the star of the show, outside the parade of shops at the far-end of the High Street (where the equally huge hippopotamus was last year) and looking like he was fresh out of the paint-shop. He also looks like a harmless vegetarian despite the horns.

Sainsbury's get a Parasaurolophus (sounds like a 1970's Greek shipping magnate, or a charater from Tin Tin!) in whom you can see the ancestral features of modern birds far more clearly than you can in a triceratops, which just looks like a spiky cow! I mean; whatever this might evolve into, it'aint gonna' be a crocodile or a tortoise, is it?!

Nasty little raptor hanging round outside the bike shop during the day, Deinonychus patrols the furniture store at night - small enough to wander-off with, and let's face it, a lot of suburban gardens would be improved with the addition of a nasty little raptor!

A much smaller Stegosaurus in the window of the dance-apparel shop at the back of the high street is a late tick on the card the kids can pick-up to help them follow the dinosaur trail and entre the competition.

Another nasty little raptor, a Dilong Paradoxus, is hanging-out in the main shopping precinct, which in Fleet's case is more of an arcade, but without the beauty of a Victorian glass-roof or the lovely turned, planned, wood mouldings you used to see in such structures.

The Tyrannosaurus was very disappointing and not very Rex, being both the smallest model employed in the trail and having had its moth stuffed with brochures; you would walk past it if you weren't looking for it.

However - in complete contrast; I'm not normally a particular fan of the flying dinosaurs, but as far as models go, and as far as the other animals in this summer 'event' goes, this is a stunning model, and seeing a realistic one changes one's approach to them; it's like an intercontinental ballistic bird! And the parallels with the flying machines in the recent Batman movies aren't coincidence - there's nothing new under the sun and Pteranodon was under there first!

They - apparently - ARE delivered by egg! In the Bath!

There's another raptor; a proper Velociraptor, it's worrying how many of them are raptors really, suppose the come alive at night, I've seen that museum movie!

A kerthunkasaur! This one calls itself Ankylosaurus, why it feels the need to do that when I've given it such a thoughtful moniker is anyone's guess, but there's no accounting for taste! The huntin' shootin' fishin' brigade immediately put a silly hat on it!

Someone from the organisers must have had a word, as the hat was gone by day-3, but I think it's fair to say kerthunkie' hasn't recovered from the experience yet, it's looking quite traumatised . . . is there a dino-therapist in the house?

As this isn't a toy soldier post per-se and my critics have hopefully already gorn-orff in a huff, I may as well have a small rant while I'm at it . . .

. . . these are fun, and I like them, I'm sure they will bring a few (what? 0.02%?) extra customers (at the expense of a neighbouring town's High Street?), and the kids will love them, but, just because something is fun and exciting, is not a good enough reason to indulge in it for 'its' sake.

For instance, sex is (or can be) both fun and exciting, but, were one to indulge in sexual activity in the High Street, by oneself or with a partner, with or without the partner's acquiescence, one would - quite rightly - be arrested. The length of the list of charges following-after the inevitable 'Common Indecency' being dictated by the number (and level of acquiescence) of the/any partner/s!

There must be warehouses full of these and last year's wild animals and the nutcrackers and other such things (which leads one to the horrible thought that giant effing-Disney characters are probably somewhere down the line!), manufactured out of glass-matt-reinforced, two-part epoxy-resin plastic; an almost totally un-recyclable material, with a large carbon-footprint and which doesn't retain its full material-integrity for long under the elements; fraying at the points and crumbling to glass powder and micro-polymer to be washed into the environment by rain - a fate which befalls quantities of the sanding/fettlings from the manufacturing phase!

Anyone who has paid any serious attention to what the weather has been doing over the last 18-moths, five years, fifteen years, is probably now minded to believe the 99% of climate scientists who are - themselves - of grim-mind?

If we go on, just blindly sating our appetites for easier transport, for novelty, for entertainment, for frivolous-consumables, for turning mad ideas (a warehouse full of fibre-glass dinosaurs would have been a mad idea not that long ago) into reality, we will fail to save the planet from  . . . err . . . us?

Deaths from Asthma and other lung/breathing condition in London, in LA, in Kolkata would suggest it's already too-late for tens of thousands of our fellow pink-monkeys.

How about, we get the kids in local schools to make (or help make - with adult crafters) the dinosaurs, or last year's (mostly threatened species) wild animals - FOR the High Street - out of recycled products such as [as in my childhood] chicken-wire over wood formers, loo-rolls, card packing, carpet tubes, cereal boxes &etc., using eco-friendly paints and adhesives? Just a thought!