Who makes it? Sold by a company called Tedco, made by a company called COG Ltd, in their Dino Horizons line, as part of a series called Prehistoric Panorama…this Arsinoitherium was one of 6 mammals in the Prehistoric Mammals set (which was one of the 6 series made)
When did it come out? These were first released in 2008. 4 out of 6 from each set was later released by COG in a blind bag line called Prehistoric Creatures. It’s a whole thing.
Still available? I…don’t know. The Dino Horizons site doesn’t work anymore, and I don’t know if the Arsinoitherium was re-released or not. Maybe?
Where can it be found in my displays? I have a shelf full of small, put-together animals and other oddball figures. It goes there!
How does it fit in the collection? It’s a prehistoric mammal mini figure, so of course I’d have it. At the time, there were very few easy-to-get ones, and these ones are pretty good. Plus, who doesn’t like figures that you put together? On top of that, the full series of 36 animals was filled with lots of intriguing species, so I had to get them!
Any story behind it? This figure is from the good old days before even forums! I was part of email groups, and when this set was first discovered it sent ripples everywhere–not only prehistoric mammals, but Cambrian critters, prehistoric fish, weird reptiles, a bunch of pterosaurs…and 6 terrible dinosaurs that are really, really terrible. Did I mention that they’re terrible? Anyway, once they were tracked down, it was a matter of a phone call (!) to Tedco Toys, to make sure I’d get one of each. When I got them, I was actually shorted by a few that hadn’t arrived, which was super disappointing…but they made up for it by replacing a couple that were a little loose–that’s right, these are another set of figures that need to be built; softer PVC with simple builds with legs/wings, tails, and heads, but builds nonetheless. And at the time they each showed up in their own little plastic suitcase/keychain thing. I don’t have those anymore, but it was a neat touch (although a lot of packaging). The current version is just the usual plastic bag.
Notable remarks about this figure (a review that isn’t really a review): Let’s get this out of the way–as with all Prehistoric Panorama figures, the figure is adequate. The seams for the pieces are obvious, but in general fit together nicely. For this particular figure, it was clearly designed based on a modern rhino, even though an elephantine body or even a hippo might have been closer. But, it does have the giant nose horns, so rhino. This has also influenced the colour scheme, going with the basic grey of many modern giant mammals. The skin has also been done in a slightly wrinkled elephantine skin. The figure stands 3.5 cm at the shoulder, putting it at about 1:51 scale. A little small for many collections. Overall, it is a good figure, if a little uninspired in the interpretation.
Would I recommend it? I like sets like these, so of course I would (I really don’t not recommend much, do I?). That said, I don’t know how available these even are anymore; maybe a little more if they were one of the chosen 4 for re-release. Fortunately, there are now quite a number of Arsinoitherium figures out there, in a variety of sizes; some are harder to get collectables from Kaiyodo, others are toob sized and others are your more standard size figures. Prehistoric mammals for every need! But this set, and the whole series, is an interesting one to track down; at some point I’ll probably do a Run the Set for them anyway.
