dinosaurnostalgia

[dinosaurnostalgia]

Random thoughts about Dino-Riders, episode 1

When I was a kid there were a lot of tv-shows based on toylines. These are often looked down upon as nothing more than cheaply produced, badly animated, lazily written 20-minute toy commercials. I remember being underwhelmed by some of them as a kid, but one toy-line based tv-series became a favourite of mine and I re-watched the VHS-tapes again and again. That was Dino Riders.

It's a shame that the toyline ended after only three waves of toys and that the series only ran for 14 episodes. The franchise started strong but didn't seem to get popular enough to produce more content, such as a live action movie or a proper comic book series (there's a short 3-volume comic book series that I've never read because I've heard it's shitty). It's a shame but in a way I think this is for the best. The toyline and show are short but at least they ended before the quality dropped.

Ever since I started this blog, I've been wanting to write about the franchise because it was such an integral part of my childhood dinosaur craze. I'm going to write about each individual episode and talk about the toys when they appear on the show.

Episode 1 – The Adventure Begins

We start the series by establishing its premise as a scifi-story by showing a space battle. Or more accurately, a space chase. The ship attempting to flee its pursuer belongs to a species of human-looking aliens called the Valorians.

It is unclear whether Valorians are related to humans (possibly what the human species would evolve into in thousands of years to the future?) because the series never mentions it. But they definitely knew about humans and our origin at Earth.

The hostile aliens are called Rulons. They appear to be a mixture of different races, all humanoid but with animal-like heads, possibly to symbolize their more ruthless, inhumane nature. They are space colonist, seeking planets with intelligent life and enslaving their inhabitants. The leader of Rulons is on board their mothership. Frog-headed, raspy-voiced Krulos rules over his people with an iron fist and impulsive mind, making his recklessness and ambition become his own downfall. We later learn that the ship he is chasing here is just a small party of couple hundred Valorians, the last few free of their kind and he has already taken over their entire home planet. Why is he, the leader of the entire Rulon empire, partaking in the hunting down of what is to him just a handful of runaway slaves? My guesses are that either he is a vindictive little shit and wants to see the Valorian race fall personally or he is invested in getting a hold of the Plot Device item that Valorians have on their ship; a crystal-looking thing called Space Time Energy Projector (S.T.E.P for short).

The Valorians are led by a man named Questar. He is the blonde He-Man looking dude with a red headband. I have... opinions about him, but more about those later. Realizing that they can't escape their enemy by relying on the ship's engines alone, he gives an order to activate the S.T.E.P. As the name suggests, the Plot Devide Crystal can make the ship travel through not only space but through time. At first the Valorian space ship lacks sufficient power to trigger time travel, but a surprise helping hand appears from the Rulons, as they shoot a tractor beam to hold the escaping ship, giving it suddenly a boost in energy.

The S.T.E.P. activates and a wormhole through time and space is created. The Valorian ship is swallowed by the time tunnel. As the Rulons understand what's happening, Krulos panics and orders to disengage tractor beam. But it is too late and the Rulon mother ship is pulled along into the unknown.

S.T.E.P being new technology, Valorian ship is unable to make a clean landing, crashing onto an unknown planet teeming with tropical plants and prehistoric life. Fortunately, everyone seems to have survived the crashlanding, somehow (where are your seatbelts?). Questar orders a scout mission to learn what kind of planet they've found themselves in. For whatever reason, people he chose to participate in facing a strange and potentially dangerous world include Llahd, a child, and Mind-Zei, a blind old man. Admittedly, we later learn that Mind-Zei is not as handicapped by his age and blindness as one would expect, but still, I question these choices. Serena, Mind-Zei's grand daughter (and the token female character in an all-male franchise), remarks how she wishes he could see how beautiful the world is. He responds that he can imagine it and that he senses they're not alone on the planet.

At that moment, a young diplodocus and a monoclonius approach them. Pretty lucky of them that they happened to land near a herd of docile herbivores. Valorians recognize them as dinosaurs and come to the conclusion that they must have landed on prehistoric Earth. This here is why I think Valorians must be linked to the human race somehow, because they have knowledge of our birth planet and its history, including the names of all the species of animals that lived here.

Yungstar, an adventurous young man, is excited at the thought of dinosaurs existing and calls Llahd to come along with him to get a closer look. They chase the baby diplodocus, running right to its angry mother. Before Yungstar is stomped into Valorian pancake, Questar approached the angered animal, using telepathy to communicate with it, soothing the beast with reassurances that they mean no harm. Having formed the first bond of friendship between Valorians and dinosaurs, they eagerly accept Earth as their new home.

Here the strong telepathic skills of Valorians are first introduced. Not only does telepathy allow them to communicate with animals, it lets the animals express their feelings back. They don't capture the dinosaurs by force and tame them, but instead befriend them and form mutually beneficial relations, where the dinosaurs are helping the Valorians purely voluntarily and can leave whenever they feel like it. Empathy towards all living creatures does seem to be an integral part of Valorian culture. But this opens some questions. We later learn that Valorians are not vegetarians (at least, not back in their home planet). Where does the line go between animals that are friends and animals that are ok to eat? Also, some of the animals they befriend are carnivorous. Where do they get the meat to feed the deinonychuses, dimetrodons and quetzes? Or do they just send the predatory dinosaur friends out into wild to catch their own food with a warning to not eat any herbivore who is our friend? Anyway, I am glad that the ”good guys” have carnivore friends too, I'm tired of dinosaur shows that demonize meat eaters.

Meanwhile, the Rulon mothership is desperately trying to receive an answer from the rest of the armada, not knowing that they have been whisked away through time. Their crash site is among the volcanic fields, a lot less fortunate situation than Valorians landing next to Herbivore Paradice. A pair of deinonychuses approach the ship, curious but remaining cautious.

The ship detects unknown lifeforms getting closer. Thinking they could only be Valorians, Krulos orders them to be destroyed. For the first time in days, Rulons exit their ship and fire their laser weapons at the deinonychuses, who flee in terror. Seeing the dinosaurs the rulons figure out that they must have gone back in time to prehistoric Earth. It's interesting that Rulons too have the knowledge about the history of Earth, but it's possible that instead of learning it from humans they learned it from Valorians after they were conquered. Krulos curses Questar and figures that the only way for him to get back to his own time is to steal the S.T.E.P from the Valorians. For that purpose he decides the build an army of dinosaurs.

We then get a montage of dinosaurs being hunted and captured. The contrast to the Valorians taming their dinosaurs with friendship is clear. The fear and anger of the animals as they are tied down to be brainwashed is heartbreaking. I heard that when the tv-series was on a concept level, there was a suggestion that the dinosaurs would have names and could talk. I think it works much better the way it is, with them being silent, nameless animals. People are emotionally quite sensitive for the ways humans are depicted treating animals in fiction. We have the moral responsibility to take care of our pets and domestic animals, and so, cruelty to animals who can't speak for themselves hits harder.

The triceratops toy we had belonged to my sister, I have adopted it now. I am surprised how well its armor has survived. The rubber band that held the harness in place has of course broken, the cover for the hole you put the batteries in has been lost (triceratops had walking function) and the two Rulons that came with the set have also gone missing. But it's still impressive to me that the rest of the armor survived unbroken, since the majority of the armor for these toys tended to break in our hands. I wish they had been made from sturdier plastic. The trike is not among my favourite molds. It's a boring, gray colour and the shape of the head is kinda wonky. I think the torosaurus made a better ceratopsian mold. Trikes being bright orange in the animation and dull gray in toy form is unfortunately a common trend is this franchise. Many dinosaurs were originally planned to be more vibrantly coloured and then for some unknown reason released as a duller colour than prototypes of the toys.

Still blissfully oblivious that their enemies have followed them to Earth, Yungstar and Llahd ride their deinonychuses in the jungle for fun when they bump into a tyrannosaurus. Yungstar sends the kid to get backup while trying to lure the t-rex further away from camp. It is a bit strange to me that Valorians can use their telepathy to befriend any other dinosaur, even carnivores like deinonychus and dimetrodon, but somehow a t-rex is beyond their communication range, a creature so primitive and ravenous that it couldn't be reasoned with. I'm not a fan of this monsterification of large carnivores. They're just animals. Sure, the t-rex might be hungry but so were the deinonychuses before they were tamed. I also find it a bit strange that tyrannosaurus was the only big carnivore in the franchise, there was never an allo or a cerato or something similar. I would have wanted to see the Valorians at least try to tame the t-rex instead of immediately treating it like an enemy.

Now that the tyrannosaurus has been introduced, I have to talk about the toy disappointment. The t-rex was the toy I wanted the most as a kid but knew I'd never get because it was big and expensive. Then a boy at the same daycare I go to told me he got it and I was so jealous. But when he brought it to the daycare to show us, I was really surprised to see that instead of the beautiful green and orange beast shown on the animation, toy ads and even on the freaking franchise logo, the toy was a dull gray colour. It wasn't the first time I had noticed that the released toys differed from the show and prototypes but I think this one disappointed me the most. The green and orange t-rex was so iconic and it was all over the merch, so I don't know what they were thinking changing the toy to a boring gray.

Yungstar's attempt to distract the t-rex wasn't going that swimmingly, as he ended up trapping himself at a cliffside, but fortunately the backup arrived in time and he was saved. Meanwhile Krulos spies on them with his binoculars and upon witnessing that Valorians can't tame the t-rex, he demands to have the creature captured. Rulons test the armor and weaponry mounted on monocloniuses and deinonychuses, but Krulos won't order an attack on the Valorian camp without the power of a t-rex.

Valorians get to work to build a wall to keep tyrannosaurus out. One Valorian named Gunnur has trouble communicating his instructions to the dinosaurs as he tries to guide them with verbal commands like plow horses. Questar instructs him to use telepathy instead, to which Gunnur complains that machines make more sense to him than overgrown lizards. It's interesting to note that using telepathy to communicate with animals may not have been that common of a thing among Valorians back in their home planet. Perhaps only those who worked with animals did so and people like Gunnur who used to work with machines don't find it intuitive.

The building project is interrupted when Questar hears the sounds of laserguns. He had expected the crew of his ship to be alone on this planet so this is cause for concern, especially since the lasers are green. Valorian laserguns produce red-coloured lasers, Rulon weaponry make green rays. A small detail, but it's surprising to have the usual ”red lasers=evil, green lasers=good” turned upside down.

The Valorians investigate further and spy on Rulons chasing some deinonychuses. The truth is revealed and they now understand that the Rulon mothership was pulled with them on the tractor beam. Gunnur and Turret follow the Rulons, the rest of the Valorians return to camp to bring the news and start planning how to deal with it.

Gunnur and Turret sneak into Rulon camp, where they see the brainboxed dinosaurs fitted with battle gear. They are spotted and laser fight follows. Fortunately Rulons are bad at aiming at a target that's smaller than an enormous dinosaur, and after performing some sabotage to distract the enemy, the two Valorians escape safely.

You'd think that Krulos would hurry to attack now that he knows that the Valorians have seen his dinosaur battle units and he has lost the element of surprise. But he is determined to ride a t-rex to battle and so the Valorians get a bit more time to prepare while Rulons are busy hunting for the top predator. By irritating the beast with lasers, the Rulons lure it to a trap and brainbox it. The t-rex never stops roaring and never closes its jaws until the brainbox is set on its skull. It is actually a rather disturbing effect how quiet it becomes as its eyes turn red to mark successful brainwashing.

At home base Valorians are making defense plans. We don't get armor manufacturing montage but I'm assuming that they are in quite a hurry to gear their dinosaur friends to match the Rulon army. Serena thinks they're ready for whatever will come but Mind- Zei warns not to underestimate the enemy.

The Valorians keep their preparations hidden, letting Krulos think that they are unaware of the coming attack (..it's kinda weird that Krulos falls for it, since the Valorian spies were spotted). Gunnur has learned to communicate with dinosaurs, perhaps all the old soldier needed to get that done was a call to battle.

The tension is finally broken when Rulons attack, using trikes, monocloniuses and pteranodons. Valorians reveal their armored dinosaurs and begin the defence. Valorians seem to mostly ride deinonychuses and monocloniuses, which is interesting because there never was a toy of a Valorian monoclonius.

Rasp, the serpent-headed Rulon, leads the pteranodon airforce. He is challenged by Serena, who manages to dismount him. I wish there had been a toy of a Valorian pteranodon and that Serena had come with that. Sadly, Serena came with brontosaurus, the most expensive toy in the franchise, so I never got a figurine of her as a kid.

The bones of Rulons must be made of sturdy material, because Rasp survives his fall. Once he figures that he has landed on the roof of the Valorian space ship, he thinks it's his lucky day and with the help of his underlings he enters the ship in search of the S.T.E.P. However, they find the crystal has been removed from its dome. Mind-Zei enters and calmly confronts the enemy.

Underestimating a blind man, Rasp tries to attack him to force him to reveal where the crystal is hidden. Like your average overpowered blind person in a kid's show, Mind-Zei effortlessly judoflips Rasp and his minions around before sending them out of the ship through a convenient trap door (patent by Scrooge McDuck).

Hammerhead, a shark-faced Rulon, challenges Yungstar to a deinonychus duel. Throughout the series he seems to have some sort of rivalry going on with Yungstar but we never find out why he hates the guts of this one Valorian specificly. Yungstar's deinonychus wins the match by performing freaking moon physicks and jumping over the other dinosaur. I know deinonychuses were often depicted as fast, agile and bouncy predators but I find it hard to believe it could jump over a dinosaur of its own size while wearing heavy armor and a passanger.

Before the deinonychus duel can continue, Krulos finally cruises in with t-rex. The Valorians bring in their biggest fighter, the diplodocus, but even with its help they end up having to retreat. Questar figures that the only way to defeat the tyrannosaurus is to un-brainbox it. He calls for Serena to come pick him up so he can take better aim from the air.

The plan works. It seems that brainboxing doesn't erase the memories of the creatures enslaved by it, because immediately after having its mind freed, the t-rex turns to the Rulons in anger, chasing them out of the Valorian camp. This is not the only time un-brainboxing is used against the t-rex, it proves effective several times in the series.

Valorians celebrate their victory, though Mind-Zei reminds them that while they won a battle, the war continues. Since they owe their survival to their new prehistoric friends, Questar declared that instead of calling themselves Valorians, they are from now on known as Dino-Riders.

The screenshot is unfortunately blurry, but during this ending we very briefly see a most rare species; couple female Valorians. It annoyed me as a kid that with the exception of Serena, we almost never see any women among the heroes. Well, we also don't see female Rulons, but they are weird aliens anyway so who knows if they even have two separate sexes. It always bugs me when toy producers think that dinosaurs are ”boy toys” and so any dino franchise must not alienate the target audience of boys by having more than one female character. Dinosaurs are very much enjoyed by both girls and boys.

Lastly, I'd like to address the reasons why I dislike Questar, since the ending of this episode is a good example of why he rubs me the wrong way. Sure, he was the one who came up with the un-brainboxing strategy. But there was no reason to call Serena down from the sky and get up to take the victory shot himself. He could have just as easily communicated the idea telepathically to Serena and have her use her lasergun to do it. But that wouldn't have been enough to support his image as Great Irreplaceable Heroic Leader. I saw it a lot as a kid in cartoons that had fighting between good and evil – the cult of a great leader without whom the good side is doomed and useless. Every single victory must at least partially be the handiworks of the Great Leader. I just think it undermines the intelligence and capability of the rest of the cast. Besides, I much prefer a lesson that the good side wins because they work together and their system is well built rather than they just got lucky and had a Very Good Leader. Questar isn't a bad character, he's just way too flawless and polished to my liking and I don't like how the narrative of the story tries to force me to admire his leading skills when I can't help but be critical of them. If I was a Valorian leader, I wouldn't have stolen Serena's glory, because a swifter un-brainboxing is more important than me personally dealing the shot that wins the battle.

[dinosaurnostalgia]

Random thoughts about Carnegie Dinosaurs

One of my early memories as a dinosaur fan was a visit to the local science center Heureka when they had borrowed dinosaur animatronics from somewhere. I don't remember if I was five or six, but I was definitely still in preschool.

I only have vague memories of the animatronics because I ended up fleeing the hall they were in because I was too scared. The hall was dark, filled with scary roars and the dinosaurs were way too big and intimidating to a tiny kid. I remember there was a parasaurolophus, standing upright in a kangaroo-like pose as was the common depiction back then. My big sister remained in the hall after I had left and later told me there had been a simulated earthquake with shaky floors.

The gift shop I remember more vividly because I was very excited at seeing so much dinosaur stuff. I ended up getting a poster and the Dino Rider struthiomimus. This was also the first time I saw Carnegie dinosaurs. I got the deinonychus pack, my sister got the protoceratops in a nest (my parents probably wanted to only buy us the smaller and cheaper dinosaurs). Before Jurassic Park made raptors popular, deinonychus used to be the token sickle-clawed dinosaur. Unfortunately I took my deinonychuses to preschool with me and lost them there. I have recently purchased a replacement for this childhood toy.

Despite only having one Carnegie dinosaur as a kid (and losing the one I had quickly), I have great fondness for these figures. Which is odd, because they're not the greatest to play with. They're stiff, with no articulation and sometimes in poses that makes playing difficult such as the protoceratops mother being glued to her nest. Also, sometimes the paint job on the dinosaurs' eyes and teeth were a bit messy. Like proper museum souvenirs, they were meant to be purely decorative. But I still loved them.

A kid in my neighbor had so many Carnegie dinosaurs and I often admired her collection. I was especially envious of her pachy because in my childhood it was difficult to find any pachy toys and the light gray and black colour scheme looked so pretty. In general, I think it is the vivid colours that set Carnegie dinosaurs aside from the more dull coloured dinosaur toys.

I only have a small collection. Some day I may expand it more. It's interesting that the para is still in the old fashioned kangaroo-pose but the corytho is depicted more accurately on all fours. Of all the pieces in my collection, the pteranodon is the one where the stiffness of the plastic annoys me the most - all pterosaur toys should have wings that you can flap. I think the maiasaura is a newer mold than the one that was around when I was a kid but I had to get it because maiasaura was one of those dinosaurs that I always read about in dinosaur books but never saw any toys in stores. Plus, it comes with babies. Really wish the babies were detachable from the nest but they're Carnegie dinosaurs so, no adaptations to the molds to make them more playable. The same "I read a lot about this dinosaur as a kid but never saw them in toy form" thing is what made me purchase the oviraptor. Obviously I also bought the pachy that I dreamed of so much as a child. I think that's what a lot of my toy collecting is; reliving childhood memories or fulfilling the wishes for toys I saw but never had.

[dinosaurnostalgia]

Dinosaur Easter Surprise Eggs

Couple years ago I saw Kinder eggs with Jurassic World art on the cover. I was immediately flooded with nostalgic memories of Easter Surprise Eggs. Heck yeah, dinosaur eggs! Imagine my disappointment when I got home and instead of a dinosaur toy I got a fidget spinner. You advertise dinosaurs on the cover and you give me a fidget spinner?! I want my money back!

Surprise eggs aren't what they used to be. Yeah, even back in my childhood there were the cheap ones that has shitty prizes like stickers and Kinder, as much as I loved the chocolate, was a gamble; sometimes you'd get an awesome toy like a little tin knight on a horse and sometimes you got a mini jigsaw puzzle. But then there were the Big Eggs that were guaranteed to have a specific kind of toy in them. They were about twice as big as Kinders and, unlike Kinder, the chocolate was tasteless, waxy junk. But I still wasted so much pocket money on them.

For two or three years there was a Big Egg with dinosaurs. It had an unimaginative name, "Dinosaurus" or "Dinosaurs" or similar, so I'll have no luck trying to find info about this line. It had an orange wrapper with two dinosaurs on it. One of them had just laid an egg and looked like she was either embarrassed about the situation or in pain after laborous egg laying. Here's my best attempts to recreate the wrapper

The dinosaurs in this egg were made of rubber that was quite sturdy but still somewhat movable. Though some batches were stiffer than others. The base colour of the plastic was either green, yellow or orange and sometimes you could get a dino that was just this base colour but more often there was another colour on the dinosaur's back. The highlighting colours were these:

For green base: white, purple, blue.

For yellow base: light green, orange, purple, dark pink

For orange base: red, olive green, pink, purple

These dinosaur molds have been used many times for other toys and erasers but I'm only interested in the ones that come in these specific colour combinations. Everything else is fakies for me.

The very first dino egg I got had the green and white plesiosaurus in it. My sister got the exact same one. It always annoyed me when batches of eggs weren't mixed well in factories and you ended with lots of the same surprise next to each other. Once there was an animal themed egg that I bought from the same store one egg every day and ended up with like ten horses because their batch was all horses.

I don't know if it's possible for all the dinosaurs to come in all the colour variations since some of them seem to heavily prefer some colours. For the longest time I thought this spiky ankylosaur-like creature only came in yellow-dark pink combo but I have now seen a picture of a green and white one.

Until I find a specimen that proofs me wrong, I think dimetrodon only comes in base colours without highlight. I assume the sail might make spraying the paint evenly difficult.

I was very surprised when I got an ichtyosaur as a kid. Despite being in every dinosaur book, these animals were rarely seen as toys back in my childhood. My childhood one (which I lost unfortunately) was a green and white one and it was the only ichtyosaur toy I ever had.

When I showed these to my wife, she thought they were dolphins.

My absolute favourites, the lambeos. Lambeosaurus was my favourite crested hadrosaur but I never saw any toys of them for sale. To be fair, there aren't that many figures of them for sale these days either. Parasaurolophus keeps stealing the stage as the Token Hadrosaur. These were my only lambi toys as a kid.

I expected the usual non-dinosaurid animals to be in the eggs, such as dimetrodons, pterosaurs and mosasaurs but mammoths being included kinda surprised me. I had a yellow and light green one that I've lost.

These mosasaurs were some of my favourites. They had great playability; you could snake their bodies and tails to make them swim, flap their flippers and chomp their jaws to have them attack their prey. I still often keep them by my laptop as fidget toys. The mold seems to occasionally differ at the jaws, sometimes they are given teeth, sometimes just a tongue. I consider all mold variants to be acceptable as long as they come in the right colour combos.

I remember vividly the time I got my green and purple pteranodon. I went to R-Kioski, local corner store, with my sister to buy chocolate eggs. She picked one with jewelry inside, I picked the dino egg. We pretended to be an archaeologist and a paleontologist digging for treasure and finding ancient jewelry and a miraculously survived dinosaur egg. I love pterosaurs so I was overjoyed to have one hatch from my egg.

I had a green and purple T-rex as a kid but I lost it. I liked that these also had an open mouth that you could use to bite other dinos.

The stego mold isn't my favourite, it's very basic, but I'm happy to have managed to gather three different variants. The yellow and light green one is from my childhood collection.

The trike mold is the weakest in my opinion, it's supposed to be always viewed from profile so you don't notice that they've molded the two horns together into a single unicorn horn.

Besides easter eggs, I've seen these molds and these colours come out as toys under other names. There used to be a guy who sold them on eBay in plastic jars under the name Tim-Mee Dinosaurs (...misnamed, since these are in fact not Tim-Mee Dinosaurs) but they're gone now. I've seen Imperial sell them on card, either with each dino in its own bubble or together in one big bubble. I took a screenshot of one so that I can remember the packaging.

Unfortunately someone else bought this one before I could arrange someone in the US get it for me (curse you, US only shippers). It had the green and purple T-rex of my childhood, a green and white ankylosaur and, most importantly, a variant of lambi that I don't yet have.

Because of the many colour variants, this series gives me a lot to collect but it's also very frustrating to eBay hunt for. The surprise egg didn't have a distinct name, it's been several decades since they came out, they're small and cheap so a lot of kids probably threw theirs away instead of selling them at flea markets and there's only so many pages of searches of "small rubber dinosaur" that one can endure before growing tired. But I will keep my hope up that I'll be able to expand my collection some day.

[dinosaurnostalgia]

Random thoughts about dinosaurs being classified as birds and about the evolution of animals in general

When I was a kid dinosaurs being classified as birds was a theory, nowdays it seems like this is widely accepted in paleontology and zoology. Or at least, the most vocal dinosaur nerds make it seem like it is so. I'm not a scientist, so I know that my thoughts on the subject are of little value, but there are few questions that "dinosaurs are birds" raises in my mind.

If dinosaurs are birds, why are they not talked of as prehistoric birds then? Why do books and studies still refer to them as "dinosaurs" or "animals" rather than "prehistoric birds?" If they truly belong in the class Aves, why are they missing many of the characteristic traits of this class, such as lack of teeth? What classifies an animal belonging in a specific class even if it doesn't have all of its traits? What, specificly, makes an animal a bird?

To me it would make more sense to think of dinosaurs as a class of their own, not birds, not reptiles but a third secret thing; dinosaurs. It's very clear that birds evolved from dinosaurs but were they really birds themselves or a link in evolution toward the birth of the class of animals known as birds.

This made me think about the evolution of animal classes. With individual animals you can sometimes see a clear path of evolution, such as the evolution of horses with slight increase in size and lessening of toes in every step and in the end you have what we consider by modern standards a horse. But how does that work when we are talking about entire classes of animals? There has to have been some intermediary stages between fishes, amphibians, birds, reptiles, mammals and all the extinct vertebrate classes but where does one draw the line of one class having turned into a completely new one? When is a type of animal so distinct from its ancestors that it's consider not just a different species but a different class entirely?

If dinosaurs are birds, then what was the first bird (I know it's not Archaeopteryx, even though my childhood books talked about this animal as a missing link between dinosaurs and modern birds) and how did it differ from the animals it descended from? Why was it considered changed enough to be not just a different species but also a different class?

[dinosaurnostalgia]

The Crazy Pachy Lady

If someone asked me what my favourite dinosaur is (...and not what my favourite prehistoric animal is, therefore forcing me to choose from just Dinosauria...), I'd have to say it's probably Pachycephalosaurus.

After taking the group shot I realized I had forgotten to include my De Agostini Pachy. She's made of such a cheap and flimsy rubber that she can't stand on her own.

Pachys weren't that popular among dino toy producers when I was a kid. Well, there were many dinosaurs that I saw plenty of pics of in my dinosaur books but saw in toy form rarely. Crested hadrosaurs (with the exception of Paras that you did see occasionally). Orhithomimids. Small noodly carnivores like Compys. And Pachys. I've always loved their dragon-like skulls, there's just something majestic about them and I find them more interesting than the Big Four that you see most often in dino toys (the Big Four being large carnivores, sauropods, Trikes and Stegos). It wasn't until the Jurassic Park sequel introduced Pachys in Lost World, that Pachy toys started to become more popular.

These two were the only Pachy toys I had as a kid. I was very disappointed with the green one, because it looked nothing like the pictures in my books, it's bald head has barely any crown of spikes around it and in general, it looked pretty awful. But for the longest time it was the only Pachy in my toy box. Then one christmas I received the brown toy on the left. I call her Patchouli.

Dino Riders were an big part of my childhood and I will be eventually writing more about them, both about the toy line and the series. But for now, I want to talk about Patchouli. I loved Dino Rider toys, with their beautiful glass eyes the animals looked more lifelike and less "monstrous" than many of the dinosaur toys in my toy box. The second series of toys introduced the Pachy and I wished it for christmas. I have forgotten about many toys I received as gifts but few stand out and I remember so vividly teh moment of opening the box with Patchouli and seeing her through the clear plastic window of her packaging.

Patchouli remains to this day my favourite Pachy toy. I love her colours, her noble-looking golden eyes, her beautiful stubby horns, I love how much she resembles the illustrations in my childhood books, the pictures that I admired but could never have in toy form until that christmas. I also like that unlike many newer Pachy toys, her feet are pretty small and she still balances just fine even when lowered into a headbutting pose. There are way too many new Pachy toys out there with enormous clown feet just to make them stand. The only thing that seems a bit odd about Patchouli is her tail, which is flat like a beaver's. I think it must be designed so in order to balance the weight so that she can stand in balance even when she's wearing her armor.

Now, after talking about the most beautiful Pachy toy I own, I must also talk about the ugliest one.

Demon Pachy will eat your soul!

I call her Glasya-Labolas, after my favourite Goetic demon. I don't usually buy large dino toys, I prefer the smaller ones that are easier to scale with one another and store. But when I saw Glasya-Labolas for sale on eBay, I had to get her.

Who designed this thing? Why are her eyes blood-red? Why is her throat covered in blood? Why does she remind my wife of E.T.? I don't know. But in all of her hideousness I can't help but like her. I imagine my Pachy herd summoning this demonic Pachy in the dark of the night, praying for protection against carnivores.

[dinosaurnostalgia]

Random Thoughts about the first set of Jurassic Park toys

If a franchise has dinosaurs in it, is it by default suitable for kids?

Of course not. So I find it a bit strange that Jurassic Park toys dominate the dinosaur toy markets even though the movies are definitely not for kids. Sure, it's not the first time a not-kid-friendly thing got toys made out of it. There were toys made for freaking Aliens.

That being said, I have rather fond memories of my own Jurassic Park toys.

I think my favourites were the Coelophysis figures. My father had taken my sister and me to a toy store to give him hints what we might want for christmas. That's when I saw Jurassic Park toys for the first time and begged my father to get me the Coelophysis pair. I had always loved small noodly carnivores like compies and such but there weren't really toys made of them back when I was a kid, so most of the time all I could do was admire pictures of them in books. The Coelophysis were expensive so my father said I'd better look for something else. But then he surprised me and I got them for christmas anyway.

These toys were great for playing. A wire runs through their body so that you can bend their necks and tails into any pose you want. I definitely tied mine into knots way too often and you can see the result; paint wore off badly and the gray one's feet snapped off. I later bought a new pair to replace the ones I played until they broke, trying to be more careful with them. The new gray one also has its ankles bent, the plastic unfortunately is not very sturdy in these. I think the green one was my favourite as a kid, because it was in a crouching pose so I could make it crawl and dig into tunnels.

The Pteranodon is harder plastic, also suffering from paint flaking off. It can turn its head, open it's beak and there's a button on its back to make its wings flap a bit similar to Dino Rider pterosaurs. The mini Pteronodon came with a Grant figure that I've lost.

I also had a water squirting Dilophosaur (also suffering from bent legs) and a Dimetrodon that I've lost. But the toy I liked best after the Coelophysis was the raptor.

It was made of sturdy, hard plastic that wouldn't bend. It still balances perfectly, standing without support. It had a gimmick where it would lower its head and open its jaws if you pressed the legs together. However, I played with mine outside in a sandpit and my raptor was buried in sand. Sand got inside the mechanic and it no longer works unless I push the neck down with my finger. Despite teh mechanic being broken, this was a great toy. Kids don't need dino toys with fancy gimmicks or new poses, something basic like this works best; a dino that stands on its own, faces forward so it can interact with other toys, it's limbs are articulated and you can open and close its mouth. Perfect. Best raptor toy ever.

The only part that I found a little questionable as a kid was the very pronounced pubic bone.

Even as a kid I knew that dinosaurs had a little bump in their butt caused by either pubic bone or ischium. I'd seen the skeletons and knew that there was a bone that jutted outward from their pelvis like that. But in no other toy was it ever this, well, visible. Scientifically accurate or not, it looked a bit unfortunately placed.

[dinosaurnostalgia]

Why "Pterosaurs aren't dinosaurs and shouldn't be lumped in with them" kinda annoys me

I do understand where people who like to emphasize certain dinosaur-looking prehistoric animals not being dinosaurs come from. They are bothered by people not knowing what dinosaurs actually are and want to correct the false impressions people may have. Let's face it, people who aren't dino fans probably don't know that animals like pterosaurs, plesiosaurs and dimetrodon aren't dinosaurs. So, I get it, people want to spread information.

But quite often I hear people cry that pterosaurs aren't dinosaurs and shouldn't be lumped in with them in situations where it just comes off as unnecessary and smartassery. Like, "You said that this is a dinosaur documentary but some of these animals aren't dinosaurs, nön nön nöö." Yes, I know that they're not dinosaurs. But do you really expect me to say "Look at this documentary about animals that existed between Triassic and Cretacious periods!" As unprofessional as it may be, it's just easier to say "dinosaurs" when talking about these groups of prehistoric creatures.

It's a bit similar to the "tomatoes are fruit, actually"-remarks. Yes, everyone knows that tomatoes are technically fruits. But if someone asks you to bring them some fruit from the store and you bring in tomatoes, you know that the smartass line of "But they're fruits, sweetie!" is just annoying.

The same way that we call tomatoes vegetables even though scientifically they are fruits, I have a habit of saying "dinosaur" when I mean all prehistoric creatures that lived among them, purely for convenience's sake.

Also, everyone always asks me what's my favourite dinosaur. No one ever comes to me and says, "What's your favourite animal that lived between Triassic and Cretaceous periods?"

It's Rhamphorhynchus, by the way.

[dinosaurnostalgia]

Random Thoughts about frills and crests on dinosaurs

A while ago I watched Jurassic Park with my wife, not having seen the movie in ages. I was reminded of the hype that the movie got when it came out, how we were amazed by this brand new animation technique that created such realistic looking dinosaurs (at least, compared to the dinos we had seen in movies prior to JP).

I went to see the movie in a theater with my father. I was one year younger than the age limit permitted, but because I was with a parent, I was allowed in. My mother had warned me that the movie might be too scary for me, but I was determined to see it. I loved dinosaurs, how could I be afraid of something I loved? I was a dumb kid. I made it through the T-Rex scene, occasionally peeking between my fingers, but the Dilophosaurus scene turned out too scary for me. My father asked if I wanted to leave home mid movie and I said yes.

I later wondered why I could endure the T-Rex scene but not the Dilo. I think it was because the T-Rex, while big and intimidating, was still behaving like an animal. Its behaviour with the car was like that of a crow that has found a puzzle box with a treat inside, curious and trying to solve the puzzle of how to open the car. The Dilo on the other hand exhibited behaviour that made no sense for an animal. At first it too seemed just curious and playful but then out of freaking nowhere spread a frill and started to scream as if it was afraid of the human in front of it. The whole scene read like a threatening display, even though we could clearly see from the dinosaur's earlier behaviour that it wasn't afraid of humans. It behaved like a serial killer, wanting its prey to be scared, succeeding in spooking one small kid in the audience.

Now that I'm adult I'm no longer scared by the Dilo scene but the frill still bothers and annoys me. It was added to the movie in order to make the Dilo more intimidating and scary, but whoever designed it forgot to study the animal it was inspired by; the frilled lizard. Do frilled lizards display their frills to their prey before attacking it? No, the frill is used to scare away predators and to intimidate rivals.

The Dilophosaurus's frill may be 100% fictional, but many dinosaurs had frills, collars, crests, sails and such. I remember reading dinosaur books as a kid and learning about all kinds of theories about the purpose of these bodyparts. That Stegos would use their plates to regulate heat, Paras would use their crests to make sounds and Ceratopsians used their frill (is it called frill? Or crest? Or collar?) for mating displays. Some of these may be decent theories but sometimes I think paleontogists should look at existing animals in zoos to look for the most likely reasons an animal would develope a frill or a crest. To me it seems that most of the time these bodyparts are used like the frilled lizard uses its frill, either to make the animal look bigger and scarier to turn away predators or to intimidate rivals.

The Parasaurolophus crest being used for communication fascinated me, because it differed from the usual "intimidation tool/courtship decoration" usage of crests and frills. The crest is hollow and I remember seeing a documentary where a guy made a replica of it with tubes and demonstrated what kind of noise it could make. So it seemed a more likely theory to me than some of the wilder ones out there (there was a claim the crest was hollow in order to cool the brain, so many heat regulation theories back in the day).

The theory of a bodypart being used for mating display seems odd to me when the bodypart is identical for both males and females. For most animals, if a bodypart is used for mating display, only males have them. I personally think Ceratopsian frills make more sense as a protective plate making the neck less vulnerable. But if they were for mating display, why would females also have them? Or were they part of a "mating dance" where a male first displays his frill and if the female likes him she'll respond by bowing her head and showing her colourful frill?

[dinosaurnostalgia]

Introduction

There are probably a ton of dinosaur themed blogs on Tumblr. For discussing paleontology, fangirling media franchises, sharing art and such. My blog is mostly personal memories and random thoughts, mostly coloured heavily through a nostalgic lense.

This blog is not for those who seek to talk about the most recent paleontological discoveries. Don't get me wrong, I am interested in and acknowledge the value of the work done by professionals. But I think when it comes to the topic of dinosaurs and prehistoric animals in general, there is also entertainment value in stuff that is not scientifically accurate. Obviously I am biased by my own nostalgic memories of Burian's paintings, Harryhousen movies and toyboxes full of Imperial dinosaurs.

I can try to explain my love for scientifically inaccurate dinosaurs by describing one of my other interests - that of medieval bestiaries. These books often depict real life animals in quite imaginary ways. My favourite is the pelican, the Bird of Charity that, in the eyes of someone who has never seen the real bird, turns into a swan-necked eagle-like creature that tears open its own chest to revive its dead chicks. Obviously no one in their right mind reading medieval bestiaries would believe that's what real life pelicans look and behave like, but one can still be very fascinated by the legends told of these animals in olden times.

To me vintage dinosaur art, media and toys are like reading a bestiary of a different time. I am fascinated by the ways that dinosaurs were imagined to look and behave like back in the days of my childhood and earlier. To me they are legendary creatures much like the animals of bestiaries. I know they didn't exist, but I still like to let them exist in my imagination, right next to dragons, vampires and self-wounding pelicans.