The Legion of Silly Dinosaurs! Diener Dinos

 

Lately, I've been doing a lot more thinking about what I want to do with this blog. An immediate result of it all is that I decided I'm probably going to be doing my more or less monthly dino-related posts sooner rather than later. This time, I've rounded up the ones that are biggest in my memory but have the smallest footprint in my current collections. As previously discussed, the most ubiquitous and ephemeral cheap toys of the 1980s were erasers. By all accounts, the most prolific producer of these artifacts was Diener, last encountered back in my Space Raiders post. Naturally, their products included dinosaurs, and I had plenty of them. In fact, I think I had more of these than any other small dinos. More importantly, they made a deeper mark in my memory than anything but the patchisaurs, enough that I could easily reconstruct them in my mind long after I assumed they had been given away, thrown out or simply crumbled into oblivion.

Fast forward to recent times, and I was taking a deep dive into a few boxes that held my oldest toys, specifically the stuff that was junk even by kid-me's standards. Among other random debris, I found a Diener Dimetrodon (see also the zombie synapsid), which along with a couple other discoveries gave me a set of three of the damn things. I decided then that I would be covering these sooner or later, but set them aside till now. Here's a few more pics of the lineup.

For background, these dinos were undoubtedly first made sometime in the 1970s. Other collector pages have mentioned that they were made both as erasers and hard rubber toys (see the Little Rubber Guys). I remember having some of both, particularly an ankylosaur I couldn't find. I'm pretty sure I also had at least one stegosaurus, which looks familiar in pictures I have seen. I have further recollections of some regular animals that must have been from the same manufacturer, particularly an elephant that may have doubled as a mammoth. Of the dinos at hand, the one I suppose I really kept track of was the pterosaur, which of course isn't a dinosaur but still probably among their closest relatives. Here's a closeup pic.

What's most intriguing is that the pterosaur is quite clearly shown with hair-like insulation as well as fibers in the wing. These were in fact confirmed from fossil data by the 1971 discovery of Sordes pilosus (approximately "Hairy Devil"!). This makes it more curious that it took so long for reconstructions of Deinonychus and Velociraptor with feathers to reach the "popular" level, as covered in the retro raptors installment. It's stranger still that such a "modern" reconstruction popped up among small dinosaur toys, which we've already seen have preserved far older reconstructions for far longer. (While we're at it, here's a link for the Marx clone dino post.)

Finally, here's closeups for the other two, the Dimetrodon and Tyrannosaurus. They're in far better shape than I can easily account for, though the rubber is stiffer than might be expected. Unfortunately, it will also be apparent that many of the details were either outdated or entirely strange even in the old days. I am especially baffled by the mouth on the Dimetrodon, which looks almost like a bulldog (still a closer relative than the dinosaurs).

While I'm at it, here's one more I unearthed from the old days. He's part of a set of three I'm pretty sure I could find at least one more of, all made from solid metal and painted green. It's night and day from the Diener dinos for quality and price, but still very much in the same style. The paint obviously isn't what it was, and it's a little embarrassing for all concerned that it gives the dino a little more character.

With that, I'm wrapping this up. There hasn't been quite as much material as I would normally cover for dinos as small as these. Still, it's been a nice, quick trip down memory lane, and a further reminder why the smallest toys can make as many memories as the big ones. That's all for now, more to come!