Monday, November 23, 2009

Definitely Dinosaurs!

Definitely Dinosaurs! The classic Playskool dinosaur toys of the mid-eighties. Warning about the link: don't expect scientific accuracy. Psittacosaurus is all kinds of wrong. And after they slapped a sail on the back of their Spinosaurus, they stopped trying. The snout is waaaay too blunt. I don't understand why companies go to the trouble of making toys like this and then stop just short of making it reasonably close to the real thing in design. I mean, I don't expect perfection, but Spinosaurus should not look like Allosaurus with a sail. It should look like Spinosaurus.

Here are a couple of old commercials for the toys:




Oh, if only my parents had pushed me into child-actor auditions. I could have been one of those obnoxious little turds. They probably got paid in toys, which to me would have been worth the deep psychological scars of being a child actor.

If Definitely Dinos are a little too tame for you, alls I gotsta say is "teeth, claws, muscles and jaws!!!!"


Anyone know of any more recent toys that put feathers on their theropods? I mean toys meant to be played with, not models. I can understand video games, like the new Jurassic: The Hunted, skimping on feathers for budgetary reasons. But I don't see why we can't give the children of the world the luxuriously feathered Velociraptors they deserve.

4 comments:

  1. well in the defense of the definately dinosaur spinosaur, it came out 15ish years ago, and if you look through any dinosaur book of that era (except gregory paul's incredibly cutting edge [for that time] book) that's what spinosaurus looked like. it was the finding of baryonyx in that same era that lead to the realization that the whole family had a croc style head.

    i had a few of these as a kid, as back in the 80's they were the only version of many of those dinos around... no other toy company bothered with spinosaurs, polacanthus, or psittacosaurs (all figures i bought with my hard earned allowance).

    definately by today's standards their dated and lame, but you kids today are spoiled :P

    there is the tune of me as an old man in the rocking chair "you kids don't know tough! why, when i was your age my spinosaur action figure had a blunt snout!!!..." LOL

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  2. I used to have some Definitely Dinosaurs among my dinosaur collection when I was a kid. I had Spinosaurus and Psittacosaurus like you've mentioned as well as Ankylosaurus, Deinonychus, Struthoimimus, Anatosaurus (Anatotitan), Protoceratops, Triceratops, and Polacanthus. But not Tyrannosaurus, Apatosaurus, and Ultrasaurus, unfortunately.

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  3. Traumador - Thanks a ton for the clarification on Spinosaurus! Though by my incredibly strict toy standards, I expect toy manufacturers to have psychic abilities. And by my incredibly strict standards for paleontologists, I expect FULL SKELETONS every time.

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  4. My thoughts as a child watching these commercials went thusly:

    "OMFG fully articulated dinosaur toys want want want!!!'

    (and then...)

    "CAVEMEN?!? Goddammitsomuch!!!!!"

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