D is for Dinosaurs, Lots & Lots of Dinosaurs!

And we arrive at the first post from Jon Attwood's latest and huge donation, which will be the last dinosaur post for a few days (already another one in the queue!), and because there are lots of animals to come in Jon's posts, I will try to alternate between donation and other posts for the next few days.

Because Dinosaurs are one of the unsung corners of the collection, which, apart from a few small scale and novelty types, have only really started accruing in the last 15 years, they all need a huge sorting and attributing session, likely to take a week or two, which won't happen for a while, and I can't pretend to be an expert on any of it, consequently I thought to do these as thematic shots, by way of an overview of what's out there, particularly of the Hong Kong / China variety, and to thank Jon properly for them by at least featuring them all here once, as while we will see them all again one day, they will be sorted into sets, by brand/maker . . . hopefully!

 

Here are me'fave's, the Dimetrodons, which, as I mentioned the other post ago, are not technically dinosaurs, but rather, to quote Wikipedia "a genus of non-mammalian synapsid that lived during the Cisuralian age of the Early Permian period, around 295–272 million years ago", in other words, among the first larger animals out of water, but not the first, and possibly warm-blodded?

 

Although there were also small ones, and two similar species - Edaphosaurus (large grey above), and Secodontosaurus are among the toys, which should be leathery, not scaled, but I just like them for reasons of childhood fancy and nostalgia! The pale gape-mouth/spotted pair which are a classic 'chinasaur', are actually dated 2001, but probably shot from old tools? the teeny-tiny one is marked Koka China which would seem to be a branding?

Triceratops, Styracosaurus and similar Ceratopsians, among other favourites from childhood, as there were quite a few different ones and they all looked suitably wacky, and of a mind to not be a carnivore's lunch, or not without a damaging fight! Always stand up to bullies! The blue one second from right is marked Chasmosaurus.

A couple of Protoceratops on the right and lots of Kerthunkersauruses, more formerly known as the Ankylosauria, I have always called them Kerthunkasaurs, because Ankee . . . ancky . . . Annekey . . . the real one is too hard to spell!

The bright green one looks like an infant or bath toy, could even be a pet toy, but no squeak, while the four small ones in the middle would look to be from the same maker, but two species, and have the look of erasers, but are polyethylene. The big Proto' with the red head is a lovely sculpt, well decorated, with a nod to modern birds such as the Pheasants? Or, yes, some monkey's arses!

 

Pterosaurs, when I was a little kid, there were really only two of these in all the books Pterodactyl (it's OK with this one, spellcheck gets it!), which all four of these are, and the dog-headed one with a parrots beak, now there are loads, but not many toys, and few really-good toys as they don't lend themselves to posing! But these are all quite good, compare with the various eraser Pterosaurs, which all look like comedy vampire-bats!

Stegosaurs, didn't we all have a soft spot for these, I'm sure half the reason we liked them was because they had a whole driveway of crazy-paving on their backs. You don't see much crazy-paving these days, but when I was young it was everywhere, the ultimate recycling of not so crazy paving!

 

The second largest (green with red plates) is marked SH, which I think is Shing Hing, still around, they did that four-nation tub of 'army-men' in Smyths a few years ago. While the dark one back-right, is called Tuojiangosaurus on his belly, but is using a classic Steggy' tool, the true Tuo' should have spikes or narrow, tapering plates?

 

Sauropods, due to their immense size, they are nearly always a compromise on scale/size, even from good, branded makers, and while the palaeontologists have classified loads of them, we tend to think of Dippy's, Brote's and the other one, and wasn't one banned, but has it come back again, and did two switch name or classification and, and, and, they are really big aren't they?

 

I like the biggest one (marked Apatosaurus) with the head turned on the horizontal. The two long ones are variations of the same tooling, and both also marked SH for Shing Hing.

 

Parasaurolophos, one of the duck-billed dinosaurs, again when I was a kid, the more normal duck-bills tended to be modelled, but now this one with its hollow trumpet is everywhere! And again the red-headed one is particularly smart-looking, while the one bottom-right, with a flap of connecting skin, clearly establishes himself as a different species/subspecies within the genus. he also looks related to the Silurian Sea-Monsters from Dr Who!

 

I couldn't remember what the bumpy-headed ones were called (like I ever knew!), but googling 'Grape headed dinosaur' gave an instant 'Pachycephalosaurus', and I think the various plate-heads are related carnivores, the double crest/crown one is Dilophosaurus, if Gooogle is to be believed!

 

It's confirmed by the bellies of the large green one (Toy Major) and the generic brown one next to him, if you won't trust Google! Face-on to their left is the peach/cream Corythosaurus,

 

You know my view on Spinosaurs, just cheap Dimetrodons! The two little ones look like they could be freebies from the Dino-mag we looked at a few posts back? And two paint-treatments of the same sculpt at back-left.

 

Carnivores; the two biggies at the back are marked Deinonychus on their Chinese bellies, and are paint-variants of the same uncommon, but quite realistic sculpt. And while there was T-Rex and Allosaurus when I wer't'lad, now there are lots of these Carnosaurs.

 

No names on them but various takes on Velociraptor, almost unheard-of in my childhood, they may have been in the books but I don't remember them, now made famous by the Jurassic Park movie-franchise, they are everywhere! They have also been bigged-up in other ways, by the filums, and were actually quite small.

 

Latecomers and oddments include a nice duck-bill (back-left) with an unmarked spiky-fellah in front of him, with a similar skeleton, a cartoony chap and another Pachycephalosaurus to their right, who missed his family picture!

 

Which leaves three dragons! The two larger just marked Made in China, the smaller green one unmarked, but looking like a Pokemon or Anime/Manga character of some sort, with very stylised spikes?

 

Sorting 2020

Just before they went in the car to storage!

 

Many thanks to Jon for all these, they will all be sorted into the master collection (shot above) at some point, and sorting was done as I went, as certain groups made themselves obvious, the gape-mouths with their '2001' mark, were a largish group for instance, so we will return to them as those groups, another day!