About Me

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No Fixed Abode, Home Counties, United Kingdom
I’m a 60-year-old Aspergic gardening CAD-Monkey. Sardonic, cynical and with the political leanings of a social reformer, I’m also a toy and model figure collector, particularly interested in the history of plastics and plastic toys. Other interests are history, current affairs, modern art, and architecture, gardening and natural history. I love plain chocolate, fireworks and trees, but I don’t hug them, I do hug kittens. I hate ignorance, when it can be avoided, so I hate the 'educational' establishment and pity the millions they’ve failed with teaching-to-test and rote 'learning' and I hate the short-sighted stupidity of the entire ruling/industrial elite, with their planet destroying fascism and added “buy-one-get-one-free”. Likewise, I also have no time for fools and little time for the false crap we're all supposed to pretend we haven't noticed, or the games we're supposed to play. I will 'bite the hand that feeds', to remind it why it feeds.

Wednesday, December 18, 2024

P is for Prehistoric Paint-Your-Own

Checking the 'Paint Your Own' Tab, I see we have seen quite a few PYO dinosaurs over the years, and none of them seem to be the same, although I'm sure many of them get more commercial, decorated issues too . . . a comparison job for another day! In the last few weeks I've encountered two new lots, and bought one sample, so here's a quick report.
 

I'm pretty sure I shot this set in Smyths, as part of their small early-learning/craft section as you enter, four reasonable sculpts and six paints including all three primaries, only a fiver here, and Google says they can be found in Giant Tiger and Walmart over the pond.

 
These were in The Range, where we've seen PYO dino's before, but these are new sculpts (or new packaging?) and there were three sculpts, different from the previous pair. A T-Rex and Dippy/Bronty type were left on the shelf, but I got the third . . .

 
 . . . a Kentrosaurus or Chungkingosaurus, I think? It's not stipulated!

One of the new style of two-halves, glued together in the factory, soft polyethylene hybrid PVC replacement polymers, it's a lot of dinosaur for a pound-fifty, reasonably well-detailed/sculpted, and while a bit big for a Christmas-stocking, would fill a small hole under the tree!

Paints are a rather more specific set of pre-mixed shades heading toward the kingfisher school of decoration! But the brush is actually quite good, with a well-formed soft-bristle head, although the shaft is cheapo-styrene.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Have you painted one of these yet? I suppose you could get a nice looking piece if you used the correct colors.

Hugh Walter said...

No, I haven't, yet! But I did go back and get the other two yesterday, soon after Blogging them, i just though "Why did you only get one when they are next-to-nothing each?"!

H

Anonymous said...

Do we really know what color dinosaurs were?

Hugh Walter said...

Good question, a few years ago I would have said no, but I think the Chinese now, are getting such fine samples of skin from some of their deposits, that some guesses at colour can be made. Equally, decades ago the answer would have been 'like lizards' (some of which are quite colourful), but lizards survived, and we now know dinosaurs became birds, and many are now equally known to have been feathered, especially the latter ones, so if we look to birds for colour ideas, you have everything from Kingfishers, hummingbirds and parrots, through the black-white-greys of gulls, penguins and seabird, to the little brown jobbies in our woods, gardens and hedgerows? Schleich, Papo, Toyway and Co., are doing some very interesting colourways/markings, and even some of the cheaper dinosaurs now come with very clever schemes which have been given some thought . . . That set of six which appeared under several brands a few years ago, here on the Blog, are a good example!

H