Today
is my sister’s birthday and one of the things we always had in
common was a love of dinosaurs. We’re eight years apart, so we
didn’t share a lot of interests (aside from annoying each other),
but I think dinosaurs were one of the few things we really bonded
over. Weird Al was another, so you can tell she’s pretty much an
okay person.
Anyway,
that makes me want to write about dinosaurs.
Dave
Barry – one of my literary heroes and a huge influence on my work –
once observed that kids like dinosaurs because they’re the first
thing that they discover that are too big for mommy and daddy to tell
them what to do. Bill Watterson made a similar observation in one of
his Calvin
+ Hobbes
strips.
I
don’t think my interest in them had anything to do with that
because in my younger years I didn’t have any trouble doing what my
parents told me to. That’s the flip side of the number of toys I
had.
Actually,
that’s a good point. Sometimes when I write about the toys I had
when I was a kid I feel a little guilty, like having the USS Flagg
and the Terrordrome are things to be ashamed of. I hate to think that
I have been affected by our country’s moronic anti-wealth and
anti-success movements, but maybe I have. But I was a great
kid until I got to be about ten. Up to that point I never got in any
trouble, I did what I was told, and I kept mostly quiet and to
myself. I deserved and – more importantly – earned every toy that
I had. Including a decent number of dinosaur toys.
The
first dinosaur toy I remember owning wasn’t really a toy at all. It
was one of those wooden models where you punch the pieces out of a
piece of balsa wood and then put them together. I had fun putting it
together. I loved
puzzles. Heck, I still love puzzles. But once it was together it was
just this kind of crappy looking wooden tyrannosaurus rex skeleton. I
believe I had a triceratops as well. These were not good toys.
I
also had a few incredibly dangerous rubber dinosaurs. There was a
brontosaurus made of the densest, thickest rubber you’ve ever seen.
I’ve had mallets that were more forgiving. The body probably
weighed ten pounds and the tail was sharp enough to stab somebody.
Not just in the eye, as is the common toy safety concern. No, this
thing could probably have penetrated flesh. And the teeth were
vicious, too. Despite the brontosaurus’ stature as the most
commonly known of the herbivores, this toy featured sharp little
teeth that were often involved in dares. Many of my friends’
fingers probably have little indentions in them to this day.
I
guess the next significant dinosaur toys were the Dinobots. Like any
good 80s kid I love Transformers, but they were never my thing. While
I was a great kid and did get a lot of toys, there were limits. I got
to pursue one toy line at a time full-on, with occasional pickups
from other lines. So I had a few key Transformers – Prime,
Megatron, Bumblebee. But when the Dinobots came out I lost my little
mind. I wanted all of them. I think I got Grimlock for Christmas one
year and I know I had Swoop. I wore that Grimlock the heck out. I
don’t know exactly when I lost that Grimlock, but I remember that
his parts were just flopping around from being played with so much.
Let
me rephrase that.
All
of the joints were very loose from being transformed so many times.
Grimlock
was one of the best of the G1 Transformers. Both modes looked great
and
he had the little sticker that revealed his allegiance when you
rubbed it with your finger. He was one of the few Transformers at the
time that was like a fully articulated action figure rather than just
a robot with limited articulation. Swoop wasn’t as exciting, but
the Dinobots as a group were so good that the next iteration of
Transformers – Best Wars – all
turned into animals. I don’t actually know that the Dinobots
specifically influenced that, but they did set the trend of robots
that transformed into something other than mechanical stuff.
In
1988 Tyco released the Dino Riders – the best dinosaur toy line
there is, was, or likely ever will be.
![]() |
From DinoRidersWorld.com |
I
was 12 when the Dino Riders hit and in my parents’ view getting too
old for toys. I remember walking through Richway and Lionel Playworld
and seeing those boxes with the wild images of humans and aliens
riding these amazingly accurate dinosaurs that had been weaponized
with futuristic technology. It was dinosaurs, science fiction, and
aliens all wrapped up in one franchise. You can read more about it in
Kalan’s Best Cartoon Ever (of the Month)
about the Dino
Riders
cartoon series.
I
honestly can’t remember how, but I ended up with some Dino Riders
toys. It always bothered me when stuff wasn’t the same scale as GI
Joe. Dino Riders were significantly smaller than Joes. This was to
allow for the dinosaurs, as Joe-scaled dinosaurs would have cost a
fortune. I might put together a whole different post about action
figure scale in the 80s. But the Dino Riders were still great little
figures. They had good articulation and great sculpt and paint jobs.
And the dinosaurs were fantastic.
They
key to the dinosaurs was that the armor and weapons could be removed
entirely, leaving the dinosaurs mostly unmarked. There were no bits
of machinery or huge peg holes left behind to accommodate the
additions. The guys who designed this line understood that they
needed to be dinosaur toys, too.
I strongly recommend you go to DinoRidersWorld.com right now and check out this amazing website's database of Dino Riders toys, cartoons, print ads, and more!
I
think the last great dinosaur love of my life were the Triceratons
from Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird’s Teenage
Mutant Ninja Turtles.
I loved that race of alien warriors and was thrilled when Playmates
released a pretty good Triceraton action figure. I bought four of
them and customized each one to look different so that I could have a
squad of them. My favorite Triceraton story was about the Turtles
finding an insane Triceraton wandering around in the sewers, leftover
from the attempted invasion. It’s a really heart-rending tale and
one of those that has just stuck with me ever since I read it. I’m
still holding out hope that we’ll see a live action Triceraton in a
movie one day.
Side
Note: Yes, Ninja Turtles toys came after Dino Riders. I mostly
collected Ninja Turtles on the sly and used my own money to buy them.
Of
course, Stephen Spielberg’s adaptation of Michael Crichton’s
Jurassic
Park
launched a whole new dinosaur era. If you weren’t there you cannot
even understand how much dinosaur merchandise was around. Dinosaurs
were everywhere.
I’d have to sit down and really think about it, but I’m pretty
sure that Jurassic
Park is
one of the biggest phenomenon of my lifetime. Avatar
had nothing on it.
And
yes – of
course
there was a toy line.
By
that time I was fully out of toys and as much as I loved Crichton’s
novel and the movie, dinosaur toys were not in my budget. Luckily I
had a little sister. And she was crazy insane-o for all things
Jurassic Park. She had all
of the toys and they are, quite frankly, some of the best designed
toys I have ever seen. I think they are often overlooked due to their
connection to a huge Hollywood franchise, but the Jurassic Park
dinosaurs were outstanding. The larger toys featured rubber skin over
armatures and had this great feel to them. They also featured the
most gruesome thing I have ever seen on a toy – removable bite
marks! The dinosaurs had jagged wounds in them with exposed muscle.
There were rubber plugs in the shapes of the wounds that could be
removed to simulate damage.
It was totally gross and awesome.
The
smaller ones were just plastic, but all had cool action features that
didn’t interfere with the aesthetics. The accompanying human
figures were boring and nobody cares about them. Not even the Jeff
Goldblum one.
My
mom may have given away most of my toys and let the rest fall into
ruin, but she managed to hang onto all of my sister’s stuff.
Probably because she’s afraid of her. Because of this, we got to
play with all of the old Jurassic Park dinosaurs last time we visited
my parents. They’re still excellent toys. So much so, in fact, that
Hasbro has launched a small selection of new Jurassic Park dinosaurs
as insanely overpriced Toys R Us Exclusives. They have the same
features as the originals, with some minor improvements. If they
weren’t so expensive I would have bought them all.
And
now we’ve come full circle with Fisher-Price’s Imaginext line of
dinosaur toys that are exactly
like Dino Riders:
These
came out a few years ago and believe me when I tell you that Lil’
Troublemaker got every single one of them between his birthday and
Christmas. And they’re awesome. Just like the old Dino riders, the
dinosaurs are mostly free of clutter and become regular old dinosaur
toys when you remove the armor pieces. Unlike Dino Riders, the
Imaginext figures are the same scale as all other Imaginext toys,
which means they can interact with DC superheroes, Spongebob, Toys
Story, and any other figures that are under the Imaginext banner.
I
guess that’s about it. Lil’ Troublemaker hasn’t shown a
particular affinity for dinosaurs yet. He’s way more into
superheroes and Ninja Turtles. Maybe we’ll get a new Triceraton.
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