T is for Toy Fair 2020 Reports - Iwako Dinorasers

Timely or not, this stuff will be available in one form or another for some time, and has been around for a while already, but we like our regular visits to Iwako and/or erasers and/or dinosaurs here, or at least I do, so it's timely enough for me!

Seen briefly in the initial round-up of the Toy Fair last Friday, so he may as well go first . . . this was a sample of a new sculpt, but only new to me as round here the Iwako stockists have only had the four sculpts seen previously.

This is a Parasaurolophus, and there are three colour-ways to find, each in a pastel body with contrasting darker spine - yellow, pink and mauve. Paperchase haven't carried the dinosaur sets at all, while the pick-bins in Hawkin's never had this as a singly?

The sets on display were numbered 40 and 52, but the 52 is numbered 57 in the Iwako catalogue, which may be down to differences between the Japanese domestic and Euro/Western export markets, we don'r get the Lego-likey sets either.

Also, the large Brontosaur is only available in the carded sets, not as a single figure. Other animals not seen locally yet include the Spinosaur (also three colour-ways) and the Ankylosaurus (two versions). Of more interest perhaps are the mini raptors and Archaeopteryxes, both of which seem to be the additional animals in the little eggs we've seen a few times here now?

They must have been added as copies to those mini-micro sets after Iwako added them to these carded sets? There is a whole page in the catalogue on how to spot fakes, and in chatting to the girls on the stand I think both the Wilko and The Works' versions (including the Christmas set on the Blog this year) are knock-offs.

A small display on the stand at Toy Fair 2020, I think they are both being stalked by a large yellow & white monkey, but it might have been a chipmunk!

I knew there had to be a second Tyrannosaur colour!

They're not rare and they never will be rare, but they are fun, they are well made and they are a global collecting phenomena, with a vast number of official colour-ways, the many possible combinations . . . and the copies to find; it's box-ticking on a grand (but equally - quite small) scale!

The 'collection' now; the Dimetrodon (which we may or may not have seen in an update) seems to be a discontinued model, as I've never seen it in H's Bazaar and it's not in the current catalogue? I would expect at least one colour variation?

If you can't find them try Green Elephant Trading for your nearest stockist.