The Legion of Silly Dinosaurs: Spinosaur lineup!

 

I'm back with another dino post, and I just realized I had almost gone a whole month without one of these. I had really been working on something else, but that was going long, and in the meantime I made a new acquisition that fit in with a larger  group. Fittingly, it's from Walmart, where I also got the Marx dino clones, the Jurassic World hadrosaur,  and the Primal Clash megafauna. The retail giant has truly been turning out the best and the worst in modern dino toys/ models, and we're going to be covering both. First, however, I want to talk about the subject, a now-famous dino called Spinosaurus.

While I could easily do a whole post about Spinosaurus, what fascinates me most isn't what we know now but what I remember of how it was portrayed back when. In hindsight, the shape of Spinosaurus was nearly unknown until several related species were found and described in the late 1980s, though pieces of its very unique skull had been among the long-lost material used to describe the species in 1915. Even so, I can remember frequent depictions through the 1980s in books and the occasional toy. With very few exceptions, these early efforts portrayed it as a very conventional theropod with a sail on its back. I can further recall seeing it portrayed the same way well into the 1990s if not longer, egregiously in the Jurassic Park/ Lost World toy line, long after paleontologists had arrived at a reasonably accurate picture of spinosaurids. I never bout one of these increasingly outdated dinos, but I still wouldn't be surprised to run across one, because as I've been saying all along, outdated dinosaurs (or whatever the Hell the patchisaurs are) never die.

To kick off the line-up, here's one of the honest mistakes from the old days, which has already turned up when I introduced generic Godzilla. It's from the Definitely Dinosaurs line, and probably the second tallest after the Tyrannosaurus. This was given to me a few years back, but I remember it well from the advertising and box art for the line. Like the vast majority of the line (including the fast food tie-in), it's of very good overall quality with the durability and simple design appropriate to a play-worthy toy. Unfortunately, like almost depictions from back when, the lower jaw is all wrong even from what was known at the time. Still, it's a solid dino worth having. Here's a pic, with Sidekick Carl.

This is why you wear a helmet.

Fortunately, things changed with the release of Jurassic Park 3, which made a Spinosaurus the main villain/ monster rather than a background creature. The frequently-scene dino incorporated all the major discoveries made about spinosaurids, and also portrayed it in the water. Inevitably, several different spinosaur toys were released in the movie's merchandise. For some reason, I didn't pick up any at the time, but I found one at a comic shop a few years later. It seems to have been the smallest produced, but if anything, the design and detail are better than others I can find images of. It remains a bit conventional in proportions and posture, notably with a fully symmetrical sail, yet largely unobjectionable.  Here's a few pics with the Truckstop Queen, and the next dino in the lineup.

Go ahead and pout, no trick, no treat.

You were made after me??!!

After Jurassic Park 3, the old-fashioned  spinosaurs at least retreated to arcade prizes and discount bagged toys. I was all the more interested to see a semi-realistic spinosaur at the Walmart a few years back, under an "Adventure Force" line/ brand that seems to get slapped randomly on generic/ knockoff toys of diverse origin. It had something close to the long, crocodilian head we know it had. However, something about it was... off. Or to put it succinctly, it's one of the silliest silly dinosaurs I've ever seen. In the spirit that led me to create this feature and the blog, I picked it up, along with an equally inoffensive tyrannosaur from what has to be the same manufacturer. It's the opposite of epic, like if Alien and Predator had a tea party. Here's the pair together.

"Have you the time?"

"No, but could you tell me the way to the British Museum?"

Fast forward, and I made a new discovery right before the end of 2020. I was looking through a group of relatively good dinos that have appeared on and off under the Adventure Force line, and I was startled to see something new. It was quite possibly the most modern and realistic spinosaur I had ever seen. On top of that, it was big, detailed and flat-out good. There was just one problem...

After this sighting, my best hope was to wait and see if any more came in. Since I haven't been shopping nearly as often as I used to, it ended up being about six weeks before I took another look. Sure enough, there was an intact specimen among a group of newly arrived dinos. I picked it up, brought it home, and then spent a few days looking it over. It has no shortage of problems. The quality is subtly chintzy, notably in how the paint was applied, and it was already obvious that the durability is nothing to right home about. The anatomy isn't great, either. They went a bit overboard on the spikes, the tail isn't as hydrodynamic as some researchers now think, and on top of that, the legs are of visibly different lengths. Nonetheless, it's as good a spinosaur as we're likely to get outside of the museum gift shops (and better than plenty in those venues). Here's a couple more pics, still on the plastic packaging/ support because of the issue with the legs.

On further reflection, I'm glad that this dino has finally come far enough for the "generic" treatment. It was intriguing even when people assumed it was hardly different from any other carnosaur. Now we know it as one of the largest and strangest dinos that ever existed, and lots of people are familiar with it through both fact and fiction. On the other side, it should be a disconcerting reminder of the limitations of prior expectations. There was just enough evidence that we could have deduced that it was a crocodile-headed, fish-eating, potentially quadrupedal dinosaur, but nobody put it all together until we already had proof such things existed. In any case, there's no way I'm wrapping this up without a group pic.

That's all for now, more to come!