I'm back for another installment of dinos, and this time I'm going back to something I'm surprised I haven't covered more often, the Playskool Definitely Dinosaurs line. I've already extolled this line at least once, but it hasn't come up a lot so far simply because they were already well above the kind of toy dinos I wanted to cover here. They were well-made, they were awesome, and above all, people then and now knew what they were and where they came from. But there was an offshoot that has remained a little more mysterious, which was the source of a new acquisition not too long ago. Here's a few more pics of my two Definitely Dinosaurs "minis", including a reference pic with the excellent Pachycephalosaurus.
For my personal story, I somehow picked up the stegosaur when I was a kid, probably as a reward or maybe as a trade. I easily identified it as a Definitely Dinosaur based on the logo on the underbelly, and I must have heard from someone that it was a kids' meal toy (which as we will see is true but not quite the full story). It immediately impressed me, but it also puzzled me a little. In many ways, it was better than the dinos of the regular line, both in detail and overall realism; by comparison, the full-sized stego in particular had always stood out as one of the line's few genuinely disappointing entries. (I am sure I will get to him, but didn't feel like it today.) What seemed strange was that so much had been put into an otherwise small and cheap dino, though in hindsight Definitely Dinosaurs were always better than they really needed to be.
It was really only in preparing for this blog post that I pieced together the full story. The little/ mini Definitely Dinosaurs were indeed distributed in Wendy's kids' meals in 1988 and 1989, about a year after the release of the regular line. (Dates for the line get very sketchy even on authoritative collectors' websites, but I'm sure I got at least a few in 1987.) However, they were also sold on card in stores, reportedly into the 1990s. This would have kept them in circulation when the rest of the line was fading away. From my own further recollections, the toys passed out of my awareness well before their actual end in 1992. If I had seen the wave of recolor jobs that was the final series, it probably would have depressed me even then.
Meanwhile, I found some leads on the mini line while looking up online listings for other dinos. The one that caught my interest was the Anatosaurus. Like the stegosaur, it was modeled after one of the dinos of the regular line. I had actually considered ordering the full-sized dino first, but it proved to be decidedly inferior, particularly compared to the Parasaurolophus I had from back when. The annatosaur mini still wasn't quite as good as the stego, but still well-done and intriguing. I wasn't disappointed on arrival. What impressed me most was that the soft plastic was still flexible enough to squeeze. When I did compare it with the stego for this post, I found that it was also still quite soft, if anything a little more so. Here's some close up pics.
All in all, this line of little dinos are still among the best then or now. Above all, they demonstrate the work ethic that drove the line. If you were a kid, you didn't notice how good they were, not because you didn't care but because it was easy to take for granted, especially if you didn't have many other dinosaur toys. It was only later that you notice just how much better they were than anything else. With that tribute, I wrap this up. More to come!
No comments:
Post a Comment