General category for all posts
The Magical Creatures box set, with the figures spread out. On first appearance, definitely more...pastel...than the Mythical Beasts. I'm sure that's coincidence. Because this is the one with the horse-like animals... Well what do you know? Another Groovy Tubes set from Innovative Kids. And just like the last one, this set is going to look at another Mythical/Fantasy set. This time it is called the Magical Creatures (as opposed to the aforementioned Mythical Beasts). Both sets feature novel interpretations of…
Starlux is such a classic company for figures like these. This one took quite a while for me to track down too. One of the earliest Edaphosaurus figures, definitely one of my oldest ones. Today's post I am going to look at a figure that was one of my personal grails...and I was happy to eventually get it. It is, as the title says, another Starlux figure, the Edaphosaurus. This figure was first produced in 1983, making it one of…
A ToyTrio today and it's...diverse. Again. Which is probably an accurate reflection of the animal figures in the house to be honest. I'm going to just jump right in. CollectA Mini Box Dinosaurs 2 Brachiosaurus The mini Brachiosaurus is a decent little figure, although I think every maker struggles with how, exactly, to pose them to look dynamic. The they make it like this one. Here we have another figure from a CollectA Mini Dinosaurs box. Set 2 this time…
Back again with another Clades post! Earlier this week we looked at a group of so-called primitive fish. This time around, it will be some so-called primitive mammals, the monotremes. As a group, they are (probably? maybe?) the most basal living group of mammals. At the very least, they are united by some shared characteristics--like other mammals they produce milk for their young, but they're young are born from eggs! This may be their most familiar trait. It turns out…
I am back with another Clades post. This one is exciting because it features one of my favorite fish groups! It's also daunting because I have a lot of representatives of this group (unlike most of the ones I've done) which means more to say. And also trying to sort out photo presentation... As it says in the title, it is the clade Chondrostei, the modern sturgeons and paddlefish (and of course a variety of fossil relatives...none of which are…
Sometimes a Toy Trio has a theme, something that links them together. Maybe it's a taxonomic theme, or a geographic theme, or maybe their respective companies have something in common. And sometimes, the only connection is 'animal figure that is in my collection'. This trio is one of those latter ones. These are seriously all over the place. Just like the actual collection! RalPartha Beastmasters Megalictis Small pewter figure of a giant extinct wolverine-like weasel? Of course! So, in the…
Gallimimus in all of its two-tone glory. But the figure itself is pretty active looking overall Surprisingly, after all of this, I don't think I've covered much from the various Jurassic Park/Jurassic World toy lines. Part of this might be that I don't have a tonne of them; shocking, I know, but I wasn't really into collecting them during the first movies; and I've only gathered a few here and there with the more recent ones. But of the ones…
A bunch of dinosaur heads! Note the range in size--because there is no way these are all to scale! Instead of trying to find appropriate human figures I'm leaning into it with our Jurassic World trio checking them out in the garden. We're back with yet another Run the Set, this time the Safari Ltd Dinosaur Skulls toob. You may recall way back near the beginning of this blog I wrote an individual post about just one of the skulls,…
Today is another Toy Trio, this time featuring a really...really...weird assortment. I suppose if we want to connect them, they all have a Japanese origin of some kind? Let's go with that. Kaiyodo Dinotales S6 Doedicurus One of the classic 'Ice Age' animals--a mammal that found out about ankylosaurs and said, "I can do that" Our first stop is another excellent little figure from the Kaiyodo Dinotales series. This Doedicurus figure is number 102 in the original Dinotales series--and by…
The view from the front of the figure is not its best angle... Ah, Schleich. For a company that was so integral to my collecting, for so long, you'd think it would have come up more. Alas, it has not--possibly because I have found new homes for the vast majority of what I once had. Interestingly, I have discussed another figure from this particular line before, the Giant Ground sloth, also from the 1:20 Prehistoric Mammals line. Like the sloth,…
As always, Colorata does a great job capturing the life appearance of their fish This post is going to look at another figure from the Saltwater Fishes box produced by Colorata. This will be the Dolphinfish, AKA Mahi-Mahi, number in the original set. It's interesting that, given that I have hundreds of Colorata figures (they're a little like popcorn or potato chips, hard to stop at one!) I have had five randomly picked, and including this dolphinfish, three of them…
Here we have another ToyTrio, with a chance to revisit a figure from an earlier, revisit a set I mentioned once, and visit a set I'm very fond of for the first time! Safari Cambrian toob Vauxia These photos probably look very similar to the ones from my Porifera clades post. There's not really much to be done with just this figure on it's own. This first one is a look again specifically at the Vauxia figure from the recent…
