The Dinosaur Toy Blog

Size matters. Apatosaurus is the archetypical dinosaur, probably the most famous icon of palaeontology. Many companies have released it as a figure; Schleich did it for the third time now after their 1997 Apatosaurus, who was a blue, heavy, tail-dragging behemoth with a dull mien and its somewhat better baby.
Schleich 2008 Apatosaurus, too, is a massive piece of rubber. It is one of the biggest dinosaur figures ever, longer than Carnegie Brachiosaurus and taller than Carnegie Diplodocus.
And despite (or because) the headstrong, a little old school interpretation (although the tail is held upright), it is one of the best Apatosaurus figures out there.

The details: Schleich Apatosaurus is 51, 4 cm long, 15, 4 cm tall and 10 cm broad. Its lavender colouring with the bright grey underside fits the figure quite well. For Schleich, lavender is a very unusual choice, the company is known for boring green and brown paintjobs.
What makes this figure so special is its heaviness. Both neck and tail were being sculptured very thick and the body is very fleshy and bulky, too, so that the overall look reminds me of the “The Future Is Wild” giant turtle.
Skin and flesh folds were accurately sculptured, giving the figure a vivid look. The Apatosaurus has been captured in a slowly walking pose, which makes it not as static and monumental as some other Schleich figures are.

The head is neat: Sadly looking deeply black eyes reflect the light, making the mien very lively. The muzzle reveals overlapping upper lips, a plausible idea for the look of the figure. But Apatosaurus was a high browser, pulling off twigs and branches from conifers with fyke – like teeth. So the lips of the figure are probably not very lifelike. The nostrils are probably too far back at the snout. This interpretation has become obsolete, since science now found out that most sauropods had their norstrils on the very front of their heads. Macronarians even are thought to have had fleshy nose sacs over the skull openings nowadays. Whether Apatosaurus as a Diplodocid had those too, will remain unclear.

The stem legs are strongly and heavily built. They end in paddling pool feet, each equipped with five toes. The first two toes on each foot are big claws, the other three toes are more like toes of an elephant.

Schleich Apatosaurus will always be a controversial figure. Either one loves it or one does not. There is no shrugging “I don´t care” or “Well, quite okay” about this one. I personally love it and recommend it to every Sauropod freak out there who has enough space on his shelves and money left to adopt it. You can get it at any virtual or real toy store.

Available from Amazon.com (here)

If you like retro marine reptiles, this one’s for you. The Carnegie Collection Mosasaurus is clearly based on some archaic paleoart, so it really shouldn’t be taken too seriously – if you try to focus on every wrong aspect with this figure surely you will give yourself a headache!

The sculpt – accuracy aside – is very nice. There’s tons of skin detail, and the “frills” are very nicely sculpted too (it’s funny though; mosasaurs were depicted long ago with these frills because some tracheal cartilage fossilized oddly and paleontologists at the time decided that what they saw was a frill that would end up running the entire length of the back!). There are larger crocodilian-like scales on the belly. The teeth are nice and individually sculpted. There’s a hint of tongue in the mouth. The eyes are very nicely sculpted. The pose is odd; the head is raised up and the tail is raised and curled much like a squirrel’s. The limbs are all flipper-shaped; most modern reconstructions have them more rounded.

The color scheme is nice, if not a little too bright. It’d done in all greens; light green on the stomach gradually turning into a dark leafy green on top. The mouth is a peachy color and the teeth are all white. The eyes are yellow with black slit pupils, and there is a dark green rim around each eye, making them stand out even more. There are nicely done diagonal stripes on the body and tail.

Overall this is a very classic and retro figure. If you are a fan of lines like Marx and Invicta, you will probably like this figure. It’s certainly a fun one to put by more recent mosasaur replicas! Sometimes available on Ebay here

Ever since Walking with Dinosaurs came out a decade ago, Liopleurodon has been famous. However, this Liopleurodon figure was made a good ten years before walking with dinosaurs, so, luckily for us collectors, it wasn’t “inspired” by the WwD version like every other liopleurodon on the market today (I’m looking at you, procon and safari….).

(Herbert, here, is about the same size as the schleich “herman” figure)

This Liopleurodon is twenty years old. For being such an aged figure, it has stood the test of time very well. The sculpt is fantastic. The eyes and the nostrils are placed far up on the snout, just as they should be. The rear flippers are larger and thicker than the front ones, just as they should be; many companies even today still get that wrong. The flippers are also all pointing backwards, with slight wrinkles behind each one. The teeth are randomly sized and fang like, just like they were on actual pliosaur skulls- I wonder why most companies make them all uniformly sized and placed. The teeth also extend a little bit past the end of the jaws, that’s always a plus! The tail is long, straight, and tapering. The body is nice and straight too; it wouldn’t have been able to curve itself much in real life. The head has a very gentle expression, partially due to the fact that, just like all other invictas, this figure has a closed mouth.

Apparently, the only reason invicta started to paint their dinosaur figures was to compete with other companies producing lesser-quality but very colorful painted figures. For apparently having the paint just thrown on it in order for it to sell better, this Liopleurodon‘s paint job is surprisingly nice. I’ve heard that the paint applications on other painted invicta figures have been crude and obscure a lot of skin detail; I guess it’s good that there wasn’t much skin detail on this one to begin with! The figure does suffer some problems with paint though; the teeth aren’t painted very well and the paint flakes off easily ( a few moves around my marine reptile shelf gave him some scuffs on his belly – the paint on painted invicta figures seems nearly as delicate as the paint on bullyland’s figures!). The colors, as you can see, are a nice greenish blue on the back with a creamy belly. Where the blue meets the cream, there is a mottled pattern. The eyes are black with a tiny white dot in them to simulate light reflecting off the eye. The paint on the rest of the figure is extremely shiny by itself (no white dots needed!), and it makes it look wet. The teeth are plaint white. As if you didn’t already know, this figure was first made in a light green unpainted plastic, while this one is made of a more rubbery transparent plastic.

This Liopleurodon has held the title of best pliosaur figure for twenty years- it seems as though it only might (might!) be outcompeted next year by Safari Ltd’s new Liopleurodon. Whether this is or not, this figure will always remain a classic that’s great in any collection!

Sometimes available on Ebay here

Suchomimus was a large theropod dinosaur that lived a few million years before one of it’s famous cousins, Spinosaurus. Considering how it’s closely related to such a famous dinosaur, I’m surprised more replicas of this really cool dinosaur haven’t been produced.

This Suchomimus by kaiyodo is easily the best on currently available. The sculpt itself is very good. It’s very gracile, with ribs slightly showing and muscles slightly bulging. The spinal ridge along the back is very well sculpted, with fine little spines running down the length of it. The claws are separately sculpted which is surprising considering the small size of this model. There’s very nice wrinkles behind the limbs and on the neck, with equally as nice smaller wrinkles all over the body, giving this piece a good sense of texture. The head is very nicely sculpted; but it’s a little too big. The crest, the teeth, the eyes, and the nostrils are all sculpted wonderfully. There is a problem with the skull though; there isn’t a large “fish trap” indentation at the end of it. There is also a base included with the figure, it looks kind of like a dry riverbed. However, the pegs on the figure’s feet don’t fit very well into the base, so oftentimes it talls out off of it. To fix that problem all you need is some glue, but I like to have the option of taking the figure off of the base.

The paint job is extraordinary for such a small figure. It’s done all in fiery reds, yellows, and oranges, with very well done black stripes. The claws are an ashy grey, and the spines on the spinal ridge are a creamy white. The eyes are yellow with separately painted black pupils, I’m surprised they managed to pull that off at such a size. There’s at least one other paint variation of this figure, it’s a more natural tannish color but it isn’t nearly as striking as the paint on this version, and this version is usually cheaper too!

All in all, this is an extremely well done figure, and easily is the best Suchomimus figure to date. It’s great sculpt, striking paint job, and cheap price all make this a figure that is definitely worth owning for any dinosaur collector.

Sometimes available on Ebay here