Yes, I Have a Dino Drawer

Looks like I don't have dinosaurs out of my system just yet.  When I was taking the pics for my Jurassic Park posts, I did a lot of rooting around through my previously mentioned dino drawer and came to realize that some of the oldest figures I own are of dinosaurs.  I guess that's kind of fitting.  Then I decided I wanted to show some of them off, and before I knew it I had most of my drawer emptied and photographed.  So here they are!

This is Dinny.  He's probably one of the top 5 oldest toys I have.  There's a big dinosaur statue here at the Calgary Zoo named "Dinny the Dinosaur" that looks nothing like this guy, but I must have liked the name, because I've been calling him Dinny for as long as I can remember.  He's a classic example of a cheap dinosaur figure that doesn't look like any specific dinosaur.  I mean, he's probably a parasaurolophus, but he also looks like a carnivore.  He's always been a meat-eater to me.  Say what you want about cheap dollar-store-type dinosaur toys - they're made to last.  This guy is well-used, around 30 years old, and he's still in pretty great shape.

What a parasaurolophus should look like.

These guys are from an unknown line (they have "U.K.R.D." stamped on their stomachs).  While a little old-school, they're still pretty nice.

Aside from my Jurassic Park T-Rex, this guy takes up the most space in my dino drawer.  He's the same mold as the Dino Riders apatosaurus, but he wasn't part of the Dino Riders line.  He's from Tyco's "Smithsonian Institution" series and he isn't motorized, but his head still looks side-to-side if you hold him the right way, and his legs are articulated.  It's still a good-looking dino figure after all these years.

I picked up these two while I was still in hardcore "Spitter" mode from Jurassic Park.  The Valentine's-looking dilophosaurus is from the Carnegie Collection (still one of the better lines of dinosaur figures).  I'm not sure where the other one is from.  Could be U.K.R.D; could be something else.

Speaking of the Carnegie Collection, these two figures from that line are a mosasaurus and a saltasaurus.  My wife an I have a running gag with the saltasaurus:  One day I was babysitting the little girl next door and playing with her dinosaurs (she was a cool little girl).  My wife asked what the long-necked toy dino was, and I said, "that's a saltasaurus".  She said, "assaultasaurus!?" and started hitting me with it.  We found one of our own later on, and now we hit each other with it from time to time.  It's our thing.

This corythosaurus is from Safari Ltd.  Another line of highly-detailed dinosaur figures, these guys rival Carnegie in terms of quality.

From high quality to low quality!  I found these two at a dollar store, and I thought a spinning ankylosaurus was too wicked to pass up.  I got the other one (a chasmosaurus, I think) just so the ankylosaurus would have someone to challenge.  They come with ripcords to send them spinning into battle against each other, in case I had to mention that.

More cheap dinos that I've either bought, found, or won over the years.  Two of these guys are from a hotel arcade in Disney World (I got them with some army men; they helped inspire my AMAMOTM posts).

This guy's another prime example of a carnivorous-looking herbivore.  I think I always knew he was supposed to be a plant-eater, but I never used him as one.  Actually, I think he was usually some kind of demonic pet for my villains.

More dinosaurs that I don't remember getting, but have had for ever.  They're made of a soft, bendy plastic, and I seem to remember many a bath-time spent with them.  The apatosaurus is an odd-looking one.  He seems to have some kind of finned tail and it looks like he was deliberately sculpted that way. Even as a kid I thought that was strange, but it helps set him apart from my other dinosaur toys.

This one is very bare-bones, which is ironic seeing as how he's hollow and has no bones.  He's actually from a named line though, called "Giant Mighty Monsters".

I can't remember where I got this glow-in-the-dark pterosaur.  I seem to think it was some kind of restaurant, but who knows?

More cheap-looking dinos.  Some of them may be erasers.

No we're getting really cheap!  This lot has one seriously underfed-looking brachiosaur, and you'd be forgiven for thinking that blue triceratops was a used piece of chewing gum.  I mean, he could very well be the ugliest toy in my collection, but he's so hilarious I keep him around.

And speaking of ugly...  This guy was found in a sandbox years ago.  He looks like he's had a rough go of things since, you know, birth.  He's one messed-up looking dino.  He's got that "carnivore-that's-actually-a-herbivore" look, but he probably spends more time trying to eat his shadow or his own face.  Again, this is a "so-ugly-he's-hilarious" figure, so I keep him around.  He's still better than that blue triceratops, though.  At least you can tell this guy is supposed to potentially represent a living thing.

This next group is from a line called "Definitely Dinosaurs" by Playskool.  The larger one is a protoceratops named Cera, and it (she?) originally came with a different caveman than the one I have.  This is obviously one of those silly lines where dinosaurs and cavemen lived at the same time.  The cavemen (called "Cavesters") kind of looked like muscular cave-babies, but at least this one has a moustache to toughen him up.  His name is Thrax.  The smaller dinos are a subset from Wendy's restaurants.  This line aims a little younger than others, but they're still nice-looking dinosaur figures.

These glow-in-the-dark dinosaurs have been in my collection for ever, and I think they still pop up in dollar stores from time to time.  I remember making the stegosaurus fly by flapping his plates.  And you can add these guys to the "carnivorous herbivores" group.

I believe this guy is an amargasaurus from Chap Mei's Dino Valley line.  Chap Mei figures are cheap, but they're actually pretty decent.

Not all of the dinosaurs in my dino drawer represent real-life creatures.  There's some fantasy stuff in there too, like this juvenile "V-Rex" from the toys on Peter Jackson's King Kong.  "Vastatosaurus Rex" is supposed to be what tyrannosaurus rex would have evolved into if it had survived extinction, which is kind of cool.  Apparently it's name means "ravager lizard king".  Junior here came with a King Kong figure to pry his jaws apart, and a little Ann Darrow to terrorize.  Maybe I'll try to track down an adult one some day...

Crawler Rex is from a subset of Toy Biz X-Men figures set in the Savage Land.  He came in a two-pack with this "Savage" Wolverine, who certainly lives up to his name.

Reptar from "Rugrats".

Dino Warriors was a short-lived toy line that never came out where I live.  I traded for these two from a seller down in the States, though I wish I could have picked out my own as my blue-skinned humanoid guy has gimpy eyes.  The humanoid is a Darkthral Tracker, and his dino is a Trackerzaur.  The Threatolops shown in the second pic comes with a human Neoman Warrior, who I still have, but I couldn't find him in time to take these pics.  This line could have been big, but...  It wasn't.  Man, I've really gotta touch-up that Darkthral's eyes...

These are from the Plasma Dinosaurs line by Mega Bloks.  Just like the more popular Plasma Dragons, these dinos came in eggs with soft plastic goo inside, and their parts could be swapped with the other dinos and dragons.  The names of these three are Hammerskull (the parasaurolophus), Raptillion (the allosaurus), and Ramtail (the ankylosaurus).  I guess the hybrid of the three could be called "Hammeraptaillion".

Variations of these Dino Eggs have been around for years.  Technically the alligator isn't a dinosaur, but he's still cool looking and these are my only two Dino Eggs that aren't broken.  They're both from the Royal Tyrrell Museum in Drumheller, Alberta.

Some cartoony looking dinosaurs.  Yes, there's even a two-headed one.

I originally saw this transforming dilophosaurus in Drumheller, but I wasn't able to buy him at the time. I finally found him again years later in a dollar store, and I snatched him up right away.  He's a decent-looking dinosaur in his beast mode, and his robot mode looks pretty good from the front.  It's kinda freaky from the side, though (it would also be freaky if the dino head could still spit while in robot mode).  He is a dollar store toy, so he needs to be transformed gently.  Of course, I'm just happy I was actually able to track him down.  He's from a line called "Dinomech", and there's at least one or two other dinos to be found.  I remember seeing a velociraptor that I didn't pick up, but I probably should have, because I haven't seen them since.

Can you find Snake-Eyes in this pic?  He's almost invisible!

So *wheeze, wheeze*, there it is *wheeze*, my dino drawer.  It's not EVERY dinosaur from the dino drawer, but enough to effectively sum it up.  This took a lot longer to write than I expected.  At the very least, I'm glad I got Dinny up on the blog.  Now I'm going to go lie down.  *Wheeze*.