Author: Dinosaur Guy

Major Changes….

Um guys, you still there?

Guys?

Hello..?

tumbleweed animated GIF

Well, this is unsettling.

  As you may have noticed, I haven’t been posting all that much recently, and there are many contributing factors to that. Work, school, homework, the death of my dog, and just plain old writers block have all kept me from constantly posting like I used to. But actually, the greatest contributing factor to the reason this blog isn’t updating that much anymore is because I’ve been putting a lot of effort into my other blog, Ink & Paint Zoology. For the past few weeks, I’ve been clamoring to create a review for the animated film The Prince of Egypt for I&PZ, but everything from my job, college, and procrastination has kept me from finishing it. I’m not even halfway done! And it’s been like four weeks since I’ve put out anything substantial on either of my sites. And that’s when I realized something, Ink & Paint Zoology posts eat up so much of my writing time and energy. Each one is like a full on essay, and they just zap all my writing enthusiasm out.

  There were a couple of reasons I created that blog in the first place. First off, I wanted a place to post the book I’ve been writing, but thought that people would only see it if I reviewed more popular stuff on the side. But I also started it because I wanted a place to talk about animated films, cartoons, animals, and other stuff that interests me that I felt didn’t really have a place here. But lastly, I was kinda getting burned out talking about dinosaurs, and wanted something new to talk about so I wouldn’t loose interest on this blog. But writing posts for Ink & Paint is so time consuming. I can spend half a month writing a draft for a movie review there, and by then I’m just glad to be finished with the darn thing. It has gotten to the point that I really miss talking about dinosaur, since it feels like I barely do that anymore.

But the biggest problem I’m having with Ink & Paint isn’t the length of the posts (or the lack of views in return), but actually the fact that I don’t feel like I can give Ink & Paint Zoology a definitive voice. My personality is obviously seen within the texts of When Dinosaurs Ruled The Mind, but I’ve formatted the posts in such a way that I can’t really show any distinct writing style in them. No quirks, no insights, no definitive voice or personality, just straight up reviews. And that’s boring! They have no distinction! Nothing that helps them stand out from the crowd, nothing that would intrigue people who just stumbled across it to stay. No, my voice is here. This blog is distinct, this blog is my own. This blog is so much more me than anything I could write over there. I’ve created something here, and I don’t want to neglect it.

So for those reasons, I have decided to stop writing for Ink & Paint Zoology and will now focus all my efforts on When Dinosaurs Ruled The Mind. As much as I would love to refine my writing over there and try to make it better than it is now, I feel that this blog has suffered from me trying to juggle the two. This is the blog with the followers, the comments, the clicks, and the clear vision; I’d much rather save it than the other. Thankfully, judging by Ink & Paint’s minuscule page views, few people will be distraught by this change, if any. As for Masai Mara, my book I was trying to promote, I think I may just post it here from time to time. Thanks so much for your patience and I hope to produce more semi regular content for you to enjoy. When Dinosaurs Ruled The Mind once again has my full attention.

RIP Bardot (1999-2015)

(Note: not actually a picture of my dog, but this image bares an uncanny resemblance to mine)

Today, September 20th 2015, at around 5:30 A.M., my Yorkshire Terrier Bardot died at the age of 16. I’ve had her since 2003, and she was four years old at the time. She lived an unusually long life for a dog like herself, but her later years were very hard. She lost a lot of her fur, her eyesight and hearing dwindled, and she started walking with a hunched back. Past few weeks have been worse. She could barely move out of her bed, and in the last few days of her life she stopped eating and drinking altogether. She cried a lot, it sounded like she was in constant pain. I’m glad she’s finally at peace.

RIP Bardot, you will be missed.

EDIT: Thank you guys for all the support. I did need some time to process all this, which explains the lack of content recently. But I should be back on my feet soon. Thanks for the patience.

Well, this is happening (The Land Before Time 14: Journey of the Brave Trailer Review).

(This blog is not for profit. All copyrighted images belong to their respective owners and are used for review. New to the blog? Start on the introduction.)

Introduction : Remember Dinosaurs? They’re Different Now.

 

Guys, I’m speechless.

Seriously, I’m at a loss for words.

I don’t even know how to properly start this thing. I’ll try my best, but I don’t know.

Well, OK.

Yep, we’re getting another Land Before Time movie.

I’m not even sure how to react to this. Heck, for the longest time I didn’t even believe it. I thought the reason they stopped making Land Before Time movies was because Universal shut down their animation studios. So whenever I heard rumors or saw videos that reported that a new sequel was being made, I just chalked it up to some people getting faulty information from some Wikipedia or IMDB article. I didn’t think in a million years we would get another one of these films, and only a trailer would make me think otherwise.

And then I saw the trailer.

Oh crap. This….is actually happening.

In actuality, this is kind of old news, as the trailer came out a little more than a month ago, but I’ve only recently seen it and I’m willing to bet this is your first time hearing about it too. I am absolutely dumbfounded!

OK, so after fourteen movies spanning a period of nearly three decades, what could this movie possibly be about. Well, the basic formula for a Land Before Time sequel is for the main gang to come up with some reason to lead them out of the Great Valley into the Mysterious Beyond to have an adventure and probably get chased by Sharpteeth. Sure, different plot points and characters may mix things up a bit, but there will always be a moment where they go into the Mysterious Beyond and get chased by theropods. Always.

Except in the Seventh one, but that one had aliens or something so it kind of gets a pass.

So, judging by the trailer, it would seem that this movie is probably going to take a similar path. Although this time, the motivation seems to have something to do Littlefoot’s dad, who seems to be in trouble.

In case you don’t remember (or grew out of watching The Land Before Time before I did) Littlefoot was revealed to have a surviving father named  Bron (voiced surprisingly well by Keifer Sutherland) in the tenth installment (yes, tenth!) of the franchise. This was all the way back in 2003! 

It also seems like we’ll be getting an appearance from Chomper, who has been a recurring character from the franchise since all the way back to the second sequel, and Ruby the Oviraptor, who along with Chomper became a regular character in The Land Before Time TV series (which was also a thing in case you forgot). That show ended back in 2007.

So, with all the recurring characters from earlier installments of the franchise, this all got me thinking, who is this movie for? I mean, seriously! This movie is coming out nearly 10 years after the last installment of this franchise. Little kids today aren’t going to remember these characters from films that came out before they were born. People who grew up with the first movie have long lost interest, people who grew up with the sequels are too old as well, even kids who grew up with the TV series and where little kids then are now in no way in the intended age bracket.

Is this for the fans? I know The Land Before Time has a thriving online fan community who appreciates all the films as well as the TV show, but is that fanbase really big enough to make a movie for? Sure, they’re a sizable group, but they’re no bronies.

Any kid watching this with no knowledge of the other movies or TV series is going to go through continuity lockout, and I shouldn’t be saying that about a series of films for preschoolers, but that’s what happens when you make FOURTEEN goddamn films! The only way I can see this working is if Universal pushes the previous films and the TV  show on DVD by advertising them or putting them in the very front of DVD sections and then hoping that kids will beg their parents to by all thirteen of the previous movies or at the very least the parents who grew up with these films decided they want to share them with their kids.

You know what, that might actually work.

Anyway, what else is there to see in this trailer? Well, looks like we’ll be getting a new celebrity voiced guest character, this time in the form of a Pteranodon voiced by Reba McEntire.

And of course, she has a song.

To me, it’s just so jarring to hear such a recognizable voice come out of this character, even though I normally don’t have that much of a problem of celebrities doing voice over work (although I do greatly prefer professional VA’s). Heck, and her overbearingly Southern accent also just sounds funny to me as the voice of a prehistoric creature.

And strangely enough, Reba has voiced and sang as an anthropomorphic character in a Direct to DVD sequel of a much better animated movie before.

Dixie from The Fox and the Hound 2. I’ve seen way too many mediocre DTV kids films.

However, I think one of the more interesting things about the trailer is the moment they show off the Sharptooth of the film. These movies always like to mix up what kind of predators will be chasing the Gang of Five, and this time they appear to be Yutyrannus.

Woah, are these feathers on a large theropod dinosaur that I see?

I actually find this pretty exciting. I’ve waited for so long to see large fluffy theropods in mainstream media, and I’m glad The Land Before Time decided to step it up. I’ve noticed a lot of the newer LBT movies would add more recent discoveries when they portray the dinosaurs, but you also remember that these films have been made in an almost 30 year period, and that is thirty years of many major paleontology discoveries, some of which changed literally everything we thought we knew about dinosaurs. This leads to a world that has Charles Knight/Dinosaur Renaissance dinos from the 80’s, more realistically proportioned dinosaurs from the 90’s, and even feathered dinosaurs from the 2000’s. Sure, we may have a fully feathered carcharodontosaur, but in this universe the raptors still look like this…

…and the Triceratops still look like this.

What a strange hodgepodge mess of a world they created.

So, in the end, what do I think of this movie? Well first off I do believe it is completely unnecessary to make a new one. The kids who grew up with these movies are far too old now to enjoy them, and I think they’re going to have a hard time finding any current 4 year old who has seen all thirteen of the previous films and the TV series. But it doesn’t matter. They’re making it, it’s happening. The movie will probably be mediocre at best, and I think it’s better to just leave it at that.

Although it does bring up one good question, how ticked off do you think Don Bluth is that Universal is still making money off of a movie he made 30 years ago?

 

My baby! What are you doing to my baby?!

When Dinosaurs Ruled The Mind #68: Dino’s That Need More Love: Shunosaurus

(This blog is not for profit. All copyrighted images belong to their respective owners and are used for review. New to the blog? Start on the introduction.)

https://whendinosaursruledthemind.wordpress.com/2014/08/18/introduction-remember-dinosaurs-theyre-different-now/

 

Man, look at that old school looking fossil!

And I’m not just saying that cause it’s a dinosaur.

………….

Do you get that…does that make sense?

Oh, I get it. You’re calling it  fossil because it looks old, as in the illustration is out of date. But it’s funny because it’s also a dinosaur.

Thanks Ghost in a Jar, you always were good at pointing out potentially obscure comedy.

I’m a Rick and Morty reference.

 Shunosaurus is one of those dinosaurs that seems to be a staple in children’s educational dinosaur books, but doesn’t really appear all that much outside of that. It’s pretty easy to see why Shunosaurus would be featured in a lot of kids books; for one it’s a sauropod, which everyone knows are the coolest kinds of dinosaurs. But after a while to a kid all those hundreds of sauropod genus’ tend to look alike, especially in poorly illustrated kids book art. So, what makes Shunosaurus so special?

It has a club tail!

Yep, I remember as a kid seeing this dinosaur in a book for the first time, my mind was blown. To me it was like someone mixed a sauropod and an ankylosaur and made the resulting creature a real thing. I thought the idea of a sauropod with a club tail to be insanely awesome, which may be one of the reasons this particular genus is seen a lot in children’s dinosaur books.

But, why hasn’t this creature really appeared all that much in pop culture? It seems like just the kind of dinosaur cartoons and movies would love to sensationalize. I can hear it now…

MEET SHUNOSAURUS!! IT’S LIKE A BRONTOSAURUS AND AN ANKYLOSAURUS HAD A BABY!!! WATCH IT BASH THE BRAINS OUT OF PREDATORS WITH IT’S LETHAL CLUB TAIL!!!!

ONLY AT JURASSIC WORLD!!!

So, why hasn’t the media latched onto this awesome animal? Well, I could come up with a few reasons.

I think this dinosaurs biggest problem is that the creature comes from a somewhat obscure time and place when it comes to dinosaur time periods….Middle Jurassic China.

You see, to dinosaur popular culture; all dinosaurs either lived at the same time or place, or came from one of two eras:

Late Jurassic America…

….or Late Cretaceous America.

If the dinosaur can’t fight Allosaurus or T. rex, than what’s the point? The creatures of Middle Jurassic Asia are mostly unknown to the general public, and the ones who do vaguely know about them from the dinosaur books they read as a kid just see them as less cool versions of their favorite dinosaurs from more famous time periods and regions.

Sinraptor? That’s just Allosaurus lite!

Yep, Shunosaurus just doesn’t appear a lot in media because most people just wouldn’t know how to use him. The most hope we have of seeing this guy is in educational/edutainment shows, like Dinosaur Revolution.

Shunosaurus does make a pretty substantial appearance in said show. The creature is featured in it’s own segment displaying how dinosaurs may have had the ability to distinguish plants that are edible and plants that are poisonous apart from each other. However, this thinly veiled attempt at an educational angle was merely an excuse to show a Shunosaurus tripping balls after eating a hallucinogenic mushroom.

Yes, this really happens.

 

One of these days I really need to talk about this show.

Shunosaurus also appears in the anime/card game Dinosaur King as well as the IOS game Jurassic Park Builder, but really, these particular properties show off so many species of dinosaurs that really it would be surprising of this particular genus didn’t make and appearance.

Yep sadly Shunosaurus doesn’t really have a lot of onscreen credits, which I think is a shame since I think this is a dinosaur that the general populace would eat up if given the chance. But strangely enough, Shunosaurus wasn’t the only sauropod with a tail club. A close relative of this dinosaur also sported this feature, is seen much more in popular culture, yet rarely depicted with the club.

It was Mamenchisaurus.

You’d be surprised how hard it is to find an image of this dinosaur with it’s coolest feature.

So is say this: Shunosaurus should be in more movies and TV shows, and Mamenchisaurus should be depicted with the tail club a lot more than it is! Dinosaur Revolution has my back!

Ugh, I can’t believe I said that.

My next post on When Dinosaurs Ruled The Mind will be the return of another long lost series, Trope-osaurus. In it, we will answer the long pondered question: did dinosaurs roar?

When Dinosaurs Ruled The Mind #67: Jurassic World Toys

This blog is not for profit. All copyrighted images belong to their respective owners and are used for review. New to the blog? Start on the introduction.)

https://whendinosaursruledthemind.wordpress.com/2014/08/18/introduction-remember-dinosaurs-theyre-different-now/

 

Well guys, this is it.

My final Jurassic Park toy review.

It took like four months to finally get through, but I’m doing it. We are finally going to talk about the Jurassic World toys.

Man, to think I originally planned to do all the movies toy lines in just one post. That would have taken forever!!!

Just like all the other movies, the latest entry of the Jurassic franchise had an obligatory toy line tie in because everyone knows that kids love dinosaur toys. And this is true. But there is only one problem….

Kids don’t really buy toys today like they used to.

Back in the 90’s, toys were a much bigger business than they are today, and Jurassic Park took full advantage of that market climate. Today, however, kids seem only get really excited to buy a physical toy if you need it for a video game.

It’s a surprisingly lucrative business.

Now, i’m not saying kids don’t buy toys anymore, the huge aisles dedicated to the play things at retail stores is a testament to that. i’m just saying the demand isn’t nearly as huge anymore, which may be one of the reasons why Hasbro may have low balled this particular line…

Yep, the reviews are in, and the unanimous consensus is that these toys are sub par. Not terrible, but they certainly could have been better. And personally, I have to agree. I don’t own any of these toys, but playing around with them in the packaging and I can already see that the toys are below average. Heck, I think that even the 5 year old me would have been underwhelmed.

Underwhelmed, but I still would play the daylights out of them because they’re still dinosaurs. Who do you think I am?

But before we get into the main dinosaurs in the toy line, let’s take a look at the figures that caused the most controversy and outcry from the fans.

These are some of the Velociraptor toys that were among the first in the line to be released. At first glance, they seem like pretty average Jurassic Park Velociraptors with the scaly skin and no feathers yada yada. But take a second look at them if the problem wasn’t immediately obvious like it was to me. Go ahead, take a look right on their feet. See it yet?

They don’t have a sickle claw.

R U SERIOUS?!!!

How do you make a Velociraptor toy without the sickle claw? That is literally the feature raptors are most known for! It’s what makes a raptor a raptor! If I was given this toy as a kid I probably would have pretended it was a Herrerasaurus! This is beyond infuriating. It just makes you wonder what exactly they were thinking when designing it. Apparently, the sickle claw was omitted for ‘playability’, insinuating the toe claw would just get in the way. There are a few reasons why that doesn’t make sense. What about the other raptor figures in this very toy line that do have sickle claws?

See, was that so hard?

What about the raptor figures form the previous Jurassic Park films? Did any of them have to sacrifice the toe claw for simple ‘playability’?

And what about the million other raptor toys made? Do you think kids have less fun playing with them because that pesky claw keeps getting in the way?

Let’s be honest, has any toy ever had this problem?

So you can see already how these guys left a bad taste in the fans mouths. But sadly, things don’t exactly improve from here.

 First, let’s take a look at the Ankylosaurus.

Hmm, I don’t know if I’m crazy, but I swear I’ve seen this pose before….

No guys, seriously. I know I’ve seen this specific pose somewhere in artwork before. If you can find it, it would be greatly appreciated!

Now as for the toy itself, it’s pretty standard for an Ankylosaurus toy. Any Ankylosaurus toy with an action feature is going to have the tail swing, and this one is no exception. But not only that, but it also has this strange movement where the head and neck seems to….retract…into the dinosaurs…shell?

Um, no. That is completely impossible. This toy is treating Ankylosaurus as if it where some sort of giant prehistoric turtle, which no it was not! This is as crazy as a toy person whose main feature was retracting his neck and skull into this abdomen, it’s just not biologically possible!

Turtle, Turtle!

Well, on the bright side, despite that weird as heck head action, this Ankylosaurus is still more accurate than the one featured in the film. It doesn’t have those God forsaken side spikes!

Guys, this really needs to stop. Its 2015.

Alright, let’s move on to the Tyrannosaurus Rex.

The Tyrannosaurus looks basically like your standard JP T. rex, but there is something definitely off. IDK, I think it’s in the head.

GAH!! Too close!

Yeah, the head on the T. rex is very out of proportion, and the lower jaw just doesn’t seem to fit correctly on the upper jaw. The head just looks like a mangled mess. No other T. rex toys from the other films had this problem.

Something else that’s quite obvious from this picture is the quality of the plastic and the very glaring screw holes. Yeah, these toys just feel cheap and are just plain ugly at times. Not only that, but the toy designers/manufacturers make some pretty weird decisions regarding the toys themselves. Look that the large T. rex toy for example.

You see that tail on the bottom of the packaging? No, the tail doesn’t naturally bend that way. You have to actually physically reconnect the tail once you open the box. Not only that, but the tail is kind of loose fitting to begin with, and would probably only get looser as kids continue to play with it. And you know how kids love to loose lose parts of their toys…

This will be the situation within a matter of weeks.

Come on guys, seriously? This has never been a problem with toy dinosaurs in the history of like, forever. Is this just to increase maximum toy shelf space? That’s the only logical reason I can think of.

Man, these Jurassic World T. rex toys are so ugly, I actually think the best looking one is from the LEGO set!

At least it looks properly proportioned.

Ok, let’s move on to a dinosaur that certainly didn’t appear in this film, but had it’s hay day back in the last one.

Of course, with all his popularity from the third movie, Spinosaurus was bound to worm his way into this franchise again somehow.

Don’t think I don’t know what’s going on.

The Spinosaurusu toy here looks pretty identical to the noes from JP3, sans the color scheme, although seeing a toy like this on the shelves again does remind me how pop culture refuses to move forward in the light of new discovery…

Guys, remember. This is still a thing.

But really, what do you expect. It’s Jurassic Park.

Now, I’m not sure if I should even be reviewing this guy, since technically it’s not even a real dinosaur. But…

….here we are.

Ahh, Stegoceratops. The dinosaur that almost made an appearance in Jurassic World before Colin Treverrow’s son told him it was a bad idea (good on you, kid). Still, you see this guy briefly on a computer screen in the film…

What almost was…

…and the dinosaur even makes an appearance in the official Jurassic World tablet game, so you can tell that they had big plans for this creature at some point in production.

Now for the toy itself. In it’s defense it’s actually probably one of my favorite figures in the line. It’s sturdy, well sculpted, and definitely has a good feel to it. Too bad the sculptors put all their effort into a dinosaur that isn’t even in the film or is even an actual dinosaur at all.

 

I am not the first to point this out, but the skull of this toy does share quite the resemblance to the recently discovered ceratopsian Nasutoceratops, what with the forward facing horns and the lack of a nose horn. Whether or not this was intentional or a coincidence is uncertain, but it’s still a pretty cool piece of trivia.

Next up on our list in Allosaurus, who was actually a toy I was pretty excited for when it was announced (Allosaurus is one of my all time favorite dinosaurs). I do have to say that I am fairly disappointed by it, though. The sculpt is very ugly and very lazy looking, while the coloration brings to mind a certain burger eating fast food mascot.

Ba da  ba ba ba…

Yeah, I can’t help but feel slightly betrayed by this toy, as I’ve wanted more Allosaurus’ on the toy shelves for a long time. Heck, that unreleased 2011 Jurassic Park Allosaurus is so much better than this one we got. Why can’t we have that?!

Because fate is cruel.

Alright, who’s next?

Now, the Pachycephalosaurus toy is actually one I do really like, as I feel it is well proportioned and surprisingly accurate. Of course, like any Pachycephalosaurus toy, it has the obligatory head butting action; but really, it would feel like a cheat if it didn’t have that! Pachycephalosaurus was actually supposed to be utilized in the film much more than it was, but it was sadly cut from the final movie and it only made a tiny blink-and-you-miss-it cameo.

Oh yeah, and apparently they’re racist to Pakistanis.

OK, let’s talk about the true star of the movie, Indominus Rex!

 

Now, I can’t talk about this guy scientifically since once again it’s not a real dinosaur, but I can at least say how I think the toys themselves are. The smaller ones, like the other figures, are pretty ugly and cheap looking, but at least this particular I. rex toy has a cool feature regarding the Dino Damage. Not only can you cover it, but the covering is also spring loaded. That way when you simulate another dinosaur ripping into it, all you have to do is push the other dinosaurs muzzle against it and the spring will release, revealing the wound. That’s a great way to utilize that feature!

The big Indominus Rex toy is also the best toy in the line in my opinion. It’s made of a really nice feeling plastic and has a really satisfying chomping action. Too bad it’s insanely expensive. Still, once again I’m going to have to say my favorite Indominus Rex toy is probably the LEGO one.

Or the plushies.

Next up we’ve got Dimorphodon, and these guys are pretty ugly as well. Sure, Dimorphodon was already a pretty ugly creature, but this toy design is certainly doing it no favors. Even though the sculpt at least tries to replicate the minimal fibers that the creature is known to have and is even depicted with in the movie, the whole thing still looks unnervingly reptilian and lizard-like. The sculpt on the skull doesn’t really do it for me either. It’s kind of dopey looking, almost like Rex from Toy Story.

Imagine that face with Wallace Shawn’s voice.

As any pterosaur toy reconstruction, the body proportions are mangled beyond recognition, but sadly that’s a problem the film version also has, which depicts Dimorphodon as a theropod headed scaly dinosaur dragon thing instead of the fairly small and short winged creature it actually was.

Do they even use skeletal references in these movies?

Thankfully, however, the Dimorphodon has a pretty good wing flapping mechanism; one of the better ones I’ve seen and miles ahead of the mechanics they used in the earlier toy lines for the pterosaurs.

Now let’s take a look at the Ceratosaurus, and yay, they actually kept the color scheme from the third film!

Yay! People besides me remember you!

Unfortunately, the toy also inherits the movie Ceratosaurus’ inaccuracies, with a skeletal design more akin to a mythical dragon than any known dinosaur. However, one of the really good things I can say about this particular toy is the fact that the hands are facing each other, not pointing downward like most Jurassic Park theropods do. This is the correct way the hands are supposed to be positioned, and it’s actually quite the breath of fresh air.

Now, Dilophosaurus may have only made a small cameo in the actual movie…

Although said cameo was admittedly pretty awesome…

…the long standing tradition of making Dilophosaurus toys even though her last major appearance in the franchise was the first time we even see her will not end today. As far as Dilophosaurus toys go though, I’ll have to say this one is OK at best. The frill is fixed on, which would have annoyed me as a kid, but thankfully it can be folded inward. It also comes with a green plastic rod that you can put into the mouth to simulate the spitting venom, which is both gimmicky and kind of gross.

 Next we’ve got the OH MY GOD WHAT IS THAT?!!!!

Is…is that the Pteranodon?

Look at that body! It’s like a squashed baby! Those legs! Those wings! I don’t think they were meant to bend like that! And I thought the ones in the movie were ugly. AND ARE THOSE TEETH?!!! Not even the ones in the movie had teeth!

Look! The movie actually got something right!!!

So there goes my hopes and dreams that someday we’ll have an accurate, no scratch that, halfway decent looking pterosaur toy on the market. LEGO, can you once again save me?

Wow, so much better.

Guys, I don’t know how much more of this I can take. All these dinosaurs that are so woefully inaccurate, so ugly, so cheap looking.

For you guys, I’ll do one more.

ONE.

MORE.

BRING ON THE MOSASAUR!!!

 

My God is that hideous.

Yeah, the Mosasaur toy doesn’t seem to fair any better than the Pteranodon. Much like the T. rex, the way the jaws are articulated makes it look like they don’t even fit on the head to begin with, which is so strange since so many toys before with similar functions never had the same problem. The body is also really awkward looking, I can’t put my finger on it, it just doesn’t look right. I have a feeling that this toy was designed around the illustration of this creature used on the website, which also doesn’t look quite right to me.

Compare this…

…to this.

Wow, I’m done. I’m actually done. YES! Finally! I can move on to the movies and TV shows I REALLY want to talk about. Return to my old format! I can leave these toys behind me!!!!!

Hold it right there!

Woah! Time Traveling Cynodont! I haven’t seen you since my Walking With Dinosaurs 3D Review! (Mostly because I can’t figure out how to write you into my blog posts anymore). What are you doing here?

There is one more toy line I would like you to look at. Toys that are actually very high quality and pretty to look at. No more cheap plastic throwaways like these!

Hey, that doesn’t sound to bad. Sure, I’m game.

Wait a minute, last time I reviewed something for you there was a terrible, terrible catch.

There was no catch. I simply had you review a bad film. These aren’t going to be bad figures. They’re miles ahead of these toys in quality.

And in accuracy?

Well….

Dun DUN DUUNNNNN!!!!

….

….

Papo.

Yes guys, I’ll be reviewing the infamous Papo dinosaur figures soon. But in the mean time, I’ll be spending some time working on another chapter of my novel Masai Mara and posting it on my other blog Ink & Paint Zoology. My next post here will be another edition of Dinosaurs That Need More Love, this time focusing on Shunosaurus.

When Dinosaurs Ruled The Mind #66: Dinosaurs Over The Years: Brontosaurus

(This blog is not for profit. All copyrighted images belong to their respective owners and are used for review. New to the blog? Start on the introduction.)

Introduction : Remember Dinosaurs? They’re Different Now.

 

 

This is actually a post I’ve been wanting to make for a long time, but I didn’t feel like the time was right yet. I kind of wanted the whole thing to just blow over a bit before I did my take on it. Science changes so frequently, and something that was claimed to be true and revolutionary one moment can be just a second study away from being thrown in the garbage. But now I think enough time has passed, and the general consensus has remained unchanged. Ladies and gentlemen, I have some good news.

Brontosaurus is back.

Yes, Brontosaurus is once again a scientifically recognized genus distinct from Apatosaurus. Nostalgia, rejoice!

But, as many dinosaur fans know, when mainstream news outlets report dinosaur news they almost never fact check, leading to some cringe worthy article titles. When this whole thing first trended, many articles would post a picture of an old, dumpy, Knightian image of a Brontosaurus from the 1970’s, as if to insinuate that that creature was somehow confirmed to be real. This lead to many comments on those articles to say ‘yeah but it still didn’t look like that’. So, how did Brontosaurus really look in comparison to how the general public thinks it looks.

 

This image by Charles R Knight pretty much sums up what scientists thought Brontosaurus looked like for nearly a century after it’s publication and even to the present for every day people. Big, lumpy, kind of like a mix between a reptile, an elephant, and a whale. Living in the water, too big to stay on land for too much, and with that ridiculous boxy head.

 This image of the Brontosaurus is so pervasive it’s pretty much the first thing people think of when they think of a sauropod, or long necked, dinosaur. Heck, it’s the first image to come to mind for many people when you mention the word ‘dinosaur’ itself! So, what did Brontosaurus really look like?

Well, let’s go ahead and dissect the popular image of the thunder lizard by looking at one of it’s most populat silhouettes on the logo of the Sinclair gasoline corporation.

You see that? Hits right in the nostalgia for you baby boomers out there huh? Classic Americana.

It’s all wrong!

First off, we’l l get to the most infamous thing that most of you reading this should all ready know, and if you just stumbled across this webpage as you casually surf the internet and don’t have that much of an understanding on dinosaurs, here is some news for you. The boxy head that Brontosaurus is usually portrayed with actually belonged to a different sauropod dinosaur called Camarasaurus, and the skull was incorrectly attributed to Brontosaurus early in it’s discovery.

Camarasaurus for the uninitiated.

Now, let’s compare the skull of a Camarasaurus to the head often attached to Brontosaurus reconstructions.

Camarasaurus skull.

Typical Brontosaurus head.

But in reality, Brontosaurus would have had skull more similar to it’s relatives Apatosaurus and Diplodocus, who have a much more slender, horse like head.

Like this.

Other common cliches used in popular Brontosaurus illustrations include the swan-like upright neck that creates a S curve down to the bloated hump backed body to the lowered tail often dragging on the ground. Pretty much all of this is false. Although the positions a sauropod neck is capable of is still a hotly debated issue in paleontology, most agree that the perfect swan S curve is an impossibility. That bloated body is also a bit of an exaggeration, as brontosaurus’ closest relatives are pretty well known as being the most slender of sauropods. Sure, they obviously still had bulk on them, but not to the degree of other contemporary sauropods like Camarasaurus. And this should go without saying, but no dinosaur dragged their tail on the ground. The bones in the tail were much too stiff, and were instead held high above at hip level.

In reality, the Brontosaurus would have looked very similar to it’s relative and once synonym Apatosaurus, and when the creatures were alive the only way to tell them apart would have probably been through coloration and other outward features that don’t correctly fossilize.

So, if Brontosaurus was so similar to Apatosaurus, so much so that scientists considered them to be the same genus for nearly a century, what makes a Brontosaurus a Brontosaurus? Well, one of the biggest distinguishing features is in the neck.

Although it is rarely accurately portrayed, Apatosaurus had an incredibly thick and beefy neck, while Brontosaurus’ neck wasn’t nearly as meaty. The vertebrae in Apatosaurus’ neck were incredibly robust, despite the fact that most restorations give the creature a thin, snake-like one. Brontosaurus’ neck was also fairly thick, but not nearly as much as Apatosaurus.

 Of course, this leads me to believe that the Apatosaurus’ in Jurassic World, which were criticized by dinosaur fans for their thin, spindly necks, are in fact meant to be Brontosaurus.

And let’s be honest, doesn’t Brontosaurus fit Jurassic Park’s style just a bit more?

So yes, for now Brontosaurus is back. Sure, he may not be how you remember him, but let’s all be glad that we can finally say that awesome name again and not be ridiculed by a billion scientific purists like myself.

Inhale

‘Thunder Lizard’

Exhale

Doesn’t that just sound so much better?

Join me next time as I (finally) finish my coverage of the Jurassic Park toys as I bring you the latest JP action figures to grace the Wal-Mart shelves. I take a look at the toys of Jurassic World.

These guys are just a little bit more wrong than usual.

Happy One Year Anniversary of When Dinosaurs Ruled The Mind

Yes my friends, it is true. It has been a full year since I launched When Dinosaurs Ruled The Mind, and I’ve got to say I would have never made it this far without you guys. I remember when I first started the only thing that kept me going was the fact that I wanted to make content for the few people I knew were watching, even if they weren’t commenting. Then the comments started coming in. Then the view counts got higher and higher.

I remember saying to myself that if the blog didn’t make significant growth in a year I would stop updating. But thankfully, because of you guys, I plan on continuing this for a long time coming. I know I’ve been pretty slow recently and new posts have been few and far between, but I can assure you I have not disappeared. Nor do I plan on doing so. Let’s hope to make it to year Two!

When Dinosaurs Ruled The Mind #65: Jurassic Park III Toys

(This blog is not for profit. All copyrighted images belong to their respective owners and are used for review. New to the blog? Start on the introduction.)

https://whendinosaursruledthemind.wordpress.com/2014/08/18/introduction-remember-dinosaurs-theyre-different-now/

 

As I mentioned in my first Jurassic Park toy review (if you can even remember that far back) I said I wasn’t really around to experience the merchandise of the first two JP films. I was, however, around for the incessant barrage of child marketing this movie threw at us. Even though all the Jurassic Park movies have been marketed to children (because everyone knows kids like dinosaurs), I personally believe Jurassic Park 3 was marketed specifically to kids more than anyone of the movies prior.

No joke, I’ve seen a lot of kid targeted products of Jurassic World, but they pale in comparison of the amount of stuff the JP3 marketing team was spitting out. Almost none of the marketing seemed to be targeted at adults. Heck, if you didn’t know any better you would think it was a kids movie.

And with games like this I wouldn’t blame you.

Heck, I personally believe Jurassic Park 3 was marketed as a genuine kids film. Perhaps they thought that adults would be too smart to actually pay money for this kind of movie, but if we sell it to the kids maybe they’ll beg their parents enough that we’ll actually make a profit. And that’s exactly what happened. Jurassic Park 3 was a box office success, and it’s merchandise sold INCREDIBLY well. Heck, I remember seeing JP3 merchandise  in stores long after the movie came out.

The way I see it, the first Jurassic Park and even The Lost World had enough to them that would entice a movie going audience, so child marketing for those two was only a facet of the marketing itself, not the main goal. But they probably knew this film wouldn’t garner that kind of intrigue, so they focused all their efforts on the kiddies. And it worked. You know how I know this?

Because I fell for it all.

When this movie came out, I was merely in kindergarten. But a perfect storm of dinosaur stuff was brewing at that time of my life, and it seemed like fate that my life would revolve around how awesome dinosaurs were. My cousin introduced me to the first Jurassic Park, The Land Before Time and all of his awesome 80’s dinosaur toys. The Disney movie Dinosaur had also just came out, and at this time Universal was spitting out Land Before Time sequels by the barrel full (and I had them all). Dinosaurs were everywhere in my life at the time. The toy store shelves were already filled up with Disney’s Dinosaur and The Land Before Time and generic plastic dinosaur set pieces, and then this new Jurassic Park movie comes along and fills the shelves with even more dinosaurs. You know I bought into that.

Because of this, I actually owned a lot of the toys I’ll be talking about on this post. Some of them were pretty good. Others not so much. and others still I think surpass the toys from the previous toy lines. Now, without further hesitation, let’s get into it.

Now this was one of the first toys they released, their obligatory Velociraptor. And yes, I had this one as a kid. I do remember having quite a bit of fun with this guy. It had minimal articulation in the arms and legs, but it was just enough to simulate movement. A little lever on the back activated the arms into a swiping motion, and the infamous Dino Damage was actually not on the side like with most of the JP toys, but instead on the backside of the tail, represented by a few exposed vertebrae (it’s less conspicuous placement was one of the reasons I liked this toy more than some of the others). There was a button on the damage that when you pushed it the toy emitted a raptor screech (it was probably crying out in pain because you just pushed down on it’s exposed wound). Although I did like the toy, the plastic was a little to rigid for my tastes, and it didn’t really scale well with the rest of my dinosaur toys. and let’s not even get started on the accuracy. It’s a Jurassic Park raptor for Christs sake. In the end, I think the older generation raptor toys were better.

Next up we’ve got a Brachiosaurus, and strangely enough, I think this might be the first Brachiosaurus (heck, the first sauropod) in any Jurassic Park toyline! That’s such a strange thought, cause I always thought sauropod toys were among the most best selling dinosaur toys out their. But of course, the JP toys tend to focus on dinosaurs with claws and horns and teeth so they can rip and tear each other apart, so it doesn’t surprise me too much that this is the first we see of this creature.

This was another toy I owned as a kid, and I have to say I didn’t really like it all that much. I mean, it wasn’t a terrible toy, but I think as a kid I liked to have my sauropod toys tower over my other dinosaurs, and this figure was about the same size of the JP3 raptor (I demanded realism and feasible size comparisons with my toys). It did have a few cool features, like a rubbery neck and tail for a much easier playing experience (I wasn’t a fan of the more rigid plastic dinosaurs). But as you may notice, the Dino Damage is quite prominent, and unlike the previous toy lines, it isn’t removable. It’s a permanent feature of the mold. As a kid, I hated that, and it was one of the reasons I think I didn’t play with my JP3 dinosaur toys nearly as much as my other ones (but I still had them because they were dinosaurs of course).

Much like the raptor, the button that activated the sound effect was located on the exposed flesh, which is kind of terrifying when you really think about it. I distinctly remember the noise the toy made, as it wasn’t the sound effect used in the movies but it was the noise the whale made in Finding Nemo!

 

I tended to notice these sort of things as a kid.

As far as accuracy goes, one of the things that kind of bothers me with the figure is that the front legs seem to be shorter than the back, even though Brachiosaurus is literally known for being one of the few dinosaurs where the opposite is true. In real life, the front legs were much longer than the back! It’s one of the genus’ most famous features!

I mean, it’s even in the name. Brachiosaurus means ‘arm lizard’.

Now, remember who the star of Jurassic Park 3 was?

No…

There you go!

Even today, for better or worse, Spinosaurus is the most remembered thing about that movie. Whether it was because he was a genuinely awesome dinosaur, or because he was the jerk off that killed the T. rex, or because literally every piece of merchandise plastered his Daffy Duck face on it.

For me, it was the latter.

Spinosaurus was all over the Jurassic Park 3 merchandising, he was practically the face of the movie. So it would come to no surprise that there were a ton of toys made about this guy. I owned one of them.

I remember liking it just fine, but I always thought the proportions were off, and it kinda hindered me from playing with it a lot. Still, I was kind of suckered into the awesomeness of the Spinosaurus at the time, and still thought it was a pretty cool toy.

There was also another Spino toy that had pretty much the same features that came out, with the only difference being a slightly different mold and a new paint job. I remember seeing this one and thought the blue coloration was cool. so I begged my parents if they could buy it for me. But they were all like ‘no son, you already have that one’ and I would be all like ‘but it’s different!’ and they’ll be like ‘how so?’ and I’ll say ‘it’s a different color’ and I’m glad my parents didn’t just give into my every whim. I had good parents.

I remember seeing some of the bigger Spinosaurus toys, but I didn’t even try and bother to ask my parents for them. Even though I did constantly try to push my limits to see what they would get me, I knew that if the thing was half my size alone, chances are I’m not going home with the thing.

Still, that didn’t stop the JP toy makers from throwing as many Spinosaurus variations as they could at us. Oh, this one makes sound. Oh, this one moves! Oh, this one is animatronic! Oh, this one is poseable! Geez man, how many toys do you think we can afford of the SAME freakin’ dinosaur?

Alright, lets move on from a dinosaur that was all over this movie to one that wasn’t even in it.

I distinctly remember getting this toy from Target and being getting so excited about it, but as I started to analyze the toy a bit more in the box, I realized I didn’t even want it. I didn’t even open the box! It was the first toy I distinctly remember returning before I opened the package. So, what was my reasoning for not wanting the Dilophosaur? Well for one the Dino Damage on this guy was pretty prominent, which was already a pet peeve of mine from the other JP3 toys. The entire figure was also made of this really rigid plastic that I didn’t really fins appealing. It was also kind of big, and I didn’t really see myself playing with it all that much. you see, I liked my medium sized dinosaurs like the Triceratops, Stegosaurus, and T. rex’s to be all about the same size, my big sauropod dinosaurs to be bigger than my medium sized dinosaurs, and my small dinosaurs to be, well small. I had this system where all my dinosaur toys were pretty accurately sized in relation to each other, and for me that made playing with them much easier. Some of the Jurassic Park toys kind of threw this off, and I kind of tolerated it. But I knew this Dilophosaurus was just way too big for this perfect system I had created.

But strangely enough, that wasn’t the main reason I decided to return it. The main reason was actually the frill. I thought it just looked cumbersome and wonky, and I knew if I were to play with it I didn’t want the frill to be displayed all the time. I tried to see if maybe I could take it off, but it was on their pretty good.

I remember saying on my first Jurassic Park toy review that this particular figure wasn’t very good looking, but one of the great things it had was that the frill was removable, and you can use it or take it off whenever you wanted to. This would have been the kind of toy I would have liked as a kid.

Hmm, is it just me or did I seem very OCD as a child?

Now, another one of the break out stars of the film were the Pteranodons, as this was the first JP movie that they were prominently featured in. Strangely, two different pterosaurs were created for this toy line. One was Pteranodon, obviously, but the other was a completely random and obscure genus: Tapejara.

I didn’t own the Pteranodon, even though I wanted it. I remember going specifically to the Target with that Pteranodon toy in mind, but they weren’t in stock. The Tapejara was, however, and that was the one I ended up getting. And you know what, I loved that toy!

Yes, it still has those eagle talons and mangled body structure that I have come to expect from toy pterosaurs, but I would have to say that it was one of the most satisfying pterosaur toy that I have ever had. In fact, I think these guys are the best pterosaur toys the Jurassic Park franchise has ever spit out. They handled the best, they played the best, they looked the best, and they appear the most anatomically feasible (even though they’re still not).

Can you really argue that?

I remember the only thing that really bothered me about the model was the fact that I could rotate it’s arms in biologically impossible ways, but that was just me as a kid being OCD. My real question is, however why make a Tapejara toy in the first place? It didn’t appear in the movie, it isn’t exactly a well known species, it doesn’t make a lot of sense.

Well, my first thought was that in order to save money the toy makers slightly changed the head sculpt of a Pteranodon and tried to sell it off a a distinct toy. I mean, really, that head just looks like a Pteranodon with a head sculpted onto it. And as you pterosaur buffs know, Pteranodon and Tapejara had very different head shapes.

It’s like comparing a heron to a toucan.

But comparing and contrasting the two toys I can tell there are differences in the sculpt, so they are two distinct molds. So the toy makers actually put some effort into making a toy of a pterosaur that even many paleontology fans aren’t aware of. I’d give them props, but if they put the effort into the body at least put that same effort into the skull cast.

Now, despite T. rex only having a bit part in the third Jurassic Park movie….

Get it? Bit?

…the awesomeness that is Tyrannosaurus is too much to deny, so of course a couple of toys were made from him.

This was the one that I owned. I remember showing it off in first grade during show and tell. I liked it just fine, but it was still made from that rigid plastic that I didn’t like, and even then I could tell that the proportions were just off. And that ever present Dino Damage was just as distracting as ever. Yeah, I did like it, but I had other much cooler T. rex toys that got much more of my attention.

There was another, larger T. Rex toy that was released as well. Such is the tradition of Jurassic World, sell both a cheap version of a certain popular dinosaur as well as a much larger much cooler much more expensive version of that same creature. It’s been happening since the beginning, really. I never did see this guy in person, either it was always sold out or the stores that I went to never carried them, but just by looking at it over the interwebs I can tell that many of the older Tyrannosaurus figures were much better designed.

Now, the last toy I’ll talk about today (there were other JP3 toys released, but I don’t think I can comment much on them) is the Triceratops. This was another one of the toys I owned, and I have to say I really liked this guy. In fact, I think it’s probably the best looking Triceratops toy the series has produced thus far.

I mean, to me, the older Triceratops models always looked a bit too wonky for my tastes. They just don’t capture that ‘Triceratops’ feel that I think a Triceratops toy should have.

But this particular Triceratops felt sturdy, strong, and looked more movie accurate and scientifically accurate than the other Trikes. But still, that Dino Damage and the toy’s somewhat small size kind of prevented me from playing with this, heck any of the JP3 toys a lot.

I think the thing you can gather from this post was that even though I had a lot of these toys, for one reason or another they just didn’t hold my interest for too long. This particular toy line had a strange mix of both some really good toys and some pretty bad and cheap looking ones, and I can certainly see why most fans prefer the Kenner toys from the earlier films. And although I think all the Jurassic Park toys have their ups and downs, I do see why some of the design choices here would turn some people off. But what can I say, I was a product of my time.

I’ll be back some time later to finish my Jurassic Park toy review series with the toys from Jurassic World, but first we’ll return to the series Dinosaurs Over The Years and look At one of the most resilient dinosaurs of our pop culture history.

Brontosaurus. And yes I can finally say that now.

(P.S.: I will also be returning to my other blog Ink and Paint Zoology with a review of The Lion King and hopefully another chapter of my novel Masai Mara. It feels good to be back guys.)