The Trendy Troodon: Mystery Monday/ Legion of Silly Dinosaurs crossover: Random dino box!!!

As I write this, I'm preparing for my one-item bucket list trip to the Field Museum. In the meantime, I already had a surplus of dino material, and it has been a while since I did a Mystery Monday post. To cover the backlog, I decided to cover some material that was already the subject of my first unboxing video. I present a completely randomized online lot of dinos, only some of which were clearly represented in the listing. To get things going, here's the one that got my grudging interest, yet another incarnation of the Hideous Abomination (also already the subject of a video), pictured with one that turned up in a dino bag featured here before I bought it.

"Daddy, when will I grow a foot that supports weight?"

As previously recounted, the Abomination is a knockoff/ bootleg of the "skinny" T. rex issued by Marx after retiring their original (see my actual science post from last month). The most significant feature carried over was a pose that had one foot lifted off the ground, which the unknown persons responsible botched badly enough that one foot looks like a sloth's and the other, raised foot looks like a frog's. It is often identified with the patchisaurs, though I believe it is of independent origin. On the whole, it is if anything even more mysterious than the patchis, to the point that even its age has been difficult to assess. In my further opinion, it probably isn't much younger than the patchisaurs, but I have been hard-pressed to prove it. The best I had done up to this point was find pics here and there of specimens that were evidently older and definitely of far better manufacturing standards than those I had previously acquired. Notably, some of these had halfway decent painted detail, such as white teeth. I decided to acquire one, and ordered this lot because it had the most extensive and interesting additional material. Here's more pics.

On examination, this proved to be indeed a better specimen than any I had encountered before. The "feel" alone is a vast improvement, solid and far more pleasant. It has a number of details that are hazy or lost on newer examples, particularly extensive scales and bumps on the feet. The differences are most pronounced in the head, where the very silhouette is different. What looks like a wonky Kanamit brain on the copyis here a robust and well-defined cranium. Alas, the old version already has all the worst features, from the misshapen feet to the wonky ears. You can kind of see that whoever did this was really trying, but the only place to go from there was back to the drawing board. Here's a last detail pic.

Of the rest, the one that really convinced me to buy was a Carnotaurus of uncertain vintage. The photos provided in the listing were no help; I could only just tell what it was. As matters stood, it seemed very possible that this was the first toy to represent this very remarkable dinosaur, so I paid the price and waited to inspect it. What I got turned out to be smaller than I expected, and strange even compared to the creature. Here's a pic.

My immediate assessment was that it looked like a cake topper, a description that was repeated when I went looking for other examples. The quality and feel were on par with a "big mouth", though it lacks the characteristic open mouth and exposed hollow body. Beyond that, my best guess was that this was from sometime in the 1990s, at which time its "tripod" stance was already outdated. The most curious part is the head, which only looks as goofy as it does because it captures and even exaggerates the very unusual shape and proportions of the actual dinosaur. Here's a couple more pics.

"Bunny ears and buckteeth? We prefer lagomorphic and premaxillary enhanced."

For the remainder, it was a matter of course that a random box would have a few Marx clones. And here they are, a nicely colored stego and an Allosaurus.

Then there's a sampling of sauropods. The littlest of these is by my assessment the most interesting in the whole lot. It seems to be loosely based on the Marx Brontosaurus, scaled down and heavily stylized. The final product is attractive enough that I would very much like to know who made this and what their other products may have looked like. The largest one also shows a certain Marx influence. The third, however, is just odd, as if someone was given the description "long neck" without understaning that the tail was at least as long.

One more thing that might be expected is erasers. I got these two, which might or might not be erasers, but are very flexible rubber. They bear more than a passing resemblance to the Diener dino erasers, with detailing that is in some ways better. The only major con is that the stego is badly discolored on one side.

I also got a pair that seem to be of common origin with another group I've had backlogged for a very long time. These look like a Brachiosaurus and a Corythosaurus, and I'm sure the later is the same as one in a set of arcade prize dinos I picked up in the early 2000s. This just might be what gets me to post about this bunch.

And here's the last two, which are very different but fit together to me. The first is a big mouth that's practically unobjectionable (apart from the teeth), with a sculpt that's a good compromise between realism and stylization. The other is a quite modern stego that's very nice apart from the missing tail spikes. Here's a few pics.