We’re going to look at a bunch of prehistoric figures today! And as these things go, yes, they’re all over the place again. Some really good ones, some…real ones. At least one really rare one so that’s fun. With four out of the five, we are looking at figures from sets and series that have already been visited before, so that saves some time on the background!
Papo Carnotaurus
First up, a larger figure of Carnotaurus, brought to us from Papo. Released as item number 55032 in 2013, this figure is still available. I generally don’t care for the style of Papo (being either too monstrous or too JP-but-not-quite) but this figure isn’t too bad for me. There are of course many other Carnotaurus figures and I either do or did have many of them. I am probably most intrigued by the dynamic pose of the figure, showing a broad stride with the head coming in at an angle, as if attacking fighting. It of course has many of the usual Papo ornamentations and very detailed sculpt, but it works for a dinosaur figure like this. I can’t really say how accurate it is relative to the actual skeletal material (the head and arms do appear a bit big). It still has the usual Papo hyper-monster look, but it works here. Recommended for people that don’t mind the Papo style, but of course there are many options out there.
Innovative Kids Groovy Tubes ‘Gone Extinct’ Smilodon
I have looked at a figure from the Gone Extinct book set before (it was the Dodo) but of course there are several figures in the set. Some of them are unique, and a few are even pretty good. And there are those that were pretty much givens ofr a set like this, regardles of quality. This Smilodon is one of those. If I’m being forgiving, at least I can say that the figure looks nice and bulky, and with the shortened limbs looks less like a more modern Panthera cat and more like a stocky cat-like animal. That said, it’s still kind of off looking. And of course, it has the silly tiger-stripe look to it (I do not recall but I believe it is referred to as a saber-tooth tiger because of course it does. On its own, of course, the figure is probably not worth searching for, but the whole set together is interesting enough. Of course, it was short-lived and is pretty difficult to track down.
Kaiyodo Dino Expo 2002 Acrocanthosaurus
I took a quick look at the Dino Expo 2002 set from Kaiyodo not that long ago so there isn’t a whole lot more to say here. I will point out that this reissued Acrocanthosaurus figure, originally from the Dinotales Series 3, still looks pretty good. And like a number of secret and special figures of reissued dinosaurs, particularly their theropods, they chose to give it a repaint in grey and white (like the Allosaurus in this post and the Tyrannosaurus seen here). It’s still a really nice figure, and being a special of course makes it a little more worth tracking down–that said, there’s a third version of the figure as well, another mostly-white figure with yellow highlights, released as a special figure with a Dinotales book…so even the special figures can have harder to find special figures!
DinoMagic Fizz-N-Surprise Therizinosaurus
Already looking at another figure from the DinoMagic Fizz-n-Surprise series (where I’d looked at the Velociraptor before). This time, it’s a Therizinosaurus, in all its colourful and weird glory. The figure is not quite as odd and off-putting as the ‘raptor, but it still more cartoon than animal. They seem to have put more effort into it–giving it feathers and at least a semblance of a therizinosaur. Some unique additions around the head (maybe inspired by Papo?) and of course it’s a pretty rough sculpt. Better than the Velociraptor but still not really one to get overly invested in as a figure to track down. There are some in the Fizz-n-Dinos that are at least unique enough to warrant the hunt but…yeah, not this one.
Dawn of the Dinosaurs Lessemsaurus skeleton
Finally, a skeleton of a dinosaur that has never been see as any other kind of figure or toy. This is a Lessemsaurus skeleton from the Dawn of the Dinosaurs set (seen previously here with the Saurosuchus). As noted then, the set came out with a Dino Expo that explored Triassic finds from Argentina, a series of small, single-piece figures obtained as gashapon capsules. This one is more interesting as the first information about the set didn’t include or even reference this skeleton figure. It was only later, searching through Japanese auction sites, that I came across this extra one–I was fortunate to to stumble upon it, and therefore have the whole set. Really, I’m lucky to have the whole set anyway; they were not available for very long, and of course the limited availability kept them from being widely circulated even further. Definitely a great little curiosity for a collection (although a reconstructed animal would have been preferred to a skeleton), and it’s unlikely we’ll see another figure of any kind from this family of sauropods (the sister to the clade that contains all of the most familiar of these giant dinosaurs) but hopefully I’ll be proven wrong someday. Too bad as I’d guess this one would be nearly impossible to get hold of.
