Its Glow Time!

And thus the puns begin. This week's topic is glowing dinosaurs. To start things off, for one reason or another I love glow in the dark toys for one reason or another. Absolutely no idea why they captivate me sometimes. Mold that stuff into a dinosaur, and you usually have yourself a solid purchase. I'm actually quite surprised I don't have more of these. Anyhow, enough babbling.

First off we have this rather basic pair, through the creative use of these Mega Block panels, I have gotten them to stand. Normally they will stand tripod style with their tails on the ground. Both of these fine glowing fellows came from bars of soap. Yes, soap. I believe we bought them from a Factory 2 U store (does anyone else remember those?) around 2001 or 2002. We bought two, one for me and, another for my brother. Over time we washed until they finally came out. As with all the glow figures on this post, their material makes it rather hard to capture all their details on camera, but these guys have have various folds of skin lining them, and eyes they actually painted red, with two tiny dots. They obviously didn't have to, but its still nice they did. I'm sure this glow in the dark material has been around way longer than I have. Which disappoints me that toy companies hardly ever branch out from this color. You'd think by now they'd start molding stuff in different glow colors more often. They have paint that glows in more than just green after all. Toy companies, take a cue here, and give me dinosaurs that have glowing blood splatters. I know you want to. You know we want it. Make it happen.

The majority of this post will concern figures from this bag I got at a Target no earlier than 2009. For a dollar or not much more in fact. Up first we have a set of Apatosaurs. I call them that simply because they remind me of the ones from Walking with Dinosaurs, and When Dinosaurs Roamed America. Its nice to see dinosaurs in a dollar bag not sticking to the generic sauropod. Far as I can tell, this is a whole new mold. Shame the details are hard to see in this material.

Next we come to the Stegosaurus. There was actually two, but I didn't pull that out of the box until I already took this and didn't feel like doing it again. Yes, I am that lazy. Nothing really stands out other than the fact its a new mold, and some skin texture. Definitely not the most exciting Stegosaurus I've ever seen. But still decent.

Look, a Parasaurolophus in a quadruped pose? Other than the generic two legged duckbill, I really do not see this often. Gets points for that. Good detail, and is that a bit of a hump on it's back from it's spine? They really put this in some thought into this. Or for all I know they took a recent dinosaur book and just copied everything into plastic form. Either way, looking good so far. The other side of this guy has a red spot. Now I'm not sure if he came like that, or got that from extended contact with something red in the box. I can't clean it off, as it's obviously stained the rubber. One of the Apatosaurs has a similar spot on one of his front legs, so it could be something production related.

Odd dip in quality here, as this "Triceratops" only has a single thing horn. Is it supposed to be something else? To me it feels like it was a Tricera that they cut corners with. It would be a nicer figure if they haven't. Plastic dinosaur god was cruel to this one. Its ok Tricera dude, I'm sure you can hang out at the dinosaur raves with the flashing lights and no one will notice. Good luck with your love life though. Can't help ya there.

Now we get towards the end with the carnivores. This is my favorite from the entire pack. It kind of looks like they were copying Jurassic Park 3, but I still like it a lot. The small tuft of feathers is just enough. Its nice to see feathers now and then, but not on EVERY single dinosaur that ever existed. There is a terrible fad that has swept the online dinosaur community (not creationism, but this manages to be just as stupid and baseless). That being the compulsive need for people to put feathers on every single dinosaur species, and citing it as "realism". It doesn't even have to make sense, Carnotaurus, T.rex, Dilophasaurus, and all manner of incredibly stupid places to put feathers. Evidence? Function? Thought process? None what so ever. Everybody who puts feathers on a dinosaur that would have absolutely no use for them automatically thinks they are a paleontologist. These people are what I like to call WRONG. Enough of that ranting, this isn't the time or the place. This figure has some nice detail, and can at least sometimes stand fine on his own.

Ahh the essential Tyrannosaurus Rex. Once again, opting for a more modern design. Once again detail obscured by material blah blah blah. Not a bad figure, can also sometimes stand on his own. Pretty nice figure, though no match for the (assumed) Velociraptor or Deinonychus above.

This. Just this. Completely out of left field and no reason at all, they pull this old mold out and shove it into this package. What were they thinking? A bunch of nice molds and a random one just for the lulz? I fail to understand the thought process here. Did the guy on the drawing board run out of time? Did someone say just "fuck it" for the last one and pull this mold from storage? Its so weird, it doesn't even remotely match the style of the rest. Look at those hands. Hes clearly mid handshake. I will give it that it isn't a terrible older mold, but still... Just seems so out of place.

Last one for this post. This is from Might Moose's line of  "Dino Magic" figures. Their gimmick being that you put an egg made out of some baking soda like substance into water and watch it fizz away to reveal the pieces of the dinosaur. What you get would be absolutely random. Forcing you to spend close to, or more than $5.00 per egg to collect them all. Nice idea, but screw that. Just screw it. There were tiers of rarity for each set of dinosaurs. I thought it was awesome that the most common dinosaurs in the chart were from the Cretaceous, and the rarer tiers went downwards to Jurassic, Triassic, etc etc. I will be sure to post a picture of the chart when I dig out the box for a later posting. I regret never getting the Longisquama figure however. But it was pretty much at the bottom, so my chances of that (as well as the chances of me spending that kind of money for it) were next to zilch. The glow in the dark skeleton above is from the Ultra Rare bottom layer, which tells the layers of strata to take a hike and to hell with geology and places mostly Cretaceous skeletons on the bottom. This figure is not quite that rare however. Given the fact you are garunteed to get this particular figure from the volcano set (which I did). Another gimmick of this line is that you can take them apart and mix and match pieces of various dinosaurs and skeletons. Overall a neat line, but way too spendy.

Thats all for this week!

My only regret is that I do not own a blacklight to make things like this glow constantly.