Click Here to Return to the Main Page 




   

For those of you who are young, or just young at heart (or palaeontologists, to give you your proper name), here is my dinosaur toy collection, or at least those that are found on the Isle of Wight (or have relatives), with my comments on manufacturer, where I got them from and the quality of the restoration, so you can recreate the Isle of Wight of 120 million years ago in your own home! Oh, and by the way, no, they are NOT for sale! However, there are some dinosaur toys based on IoW dinosaurs in the DinoWight Shop

SMC, DW

P.S. Please note that this only covers toys, not model kits, as these are especially hard to come by, especially if like me you have no credit card! I may like dinosaurs, but I'm not willing to shell out $50 for a resin Eucamerotus or a lead Thecocoelurus
   

Like so many on this list, far too obscure to have an actual toy made of it, here this Isle of Wight compsognathid is represented by a JP3 Compsognathus, which was included with an Alan Grant action figure that I bought in a cheap shop in Portsmouth.
   

One of the few IoW dinosaurs actually available as a toy, here is an Invicta Plastics Baryonyx, made for the Natural History Museum, London (NHM), where I got it from. Not bad, even comes with a packed lunch of Lepidotes!

Incidentally, the NHM has released a new range of dinosaurs, including Baryonyx and Iguanodon. I only have the Baryonyx as it was £6. They also do a large cuddly Baryonyx, which is about £12 and semi-posable! They've also released a Baryonyx tooth replica, which is, erm, quite good.
   

 
   

 
   

A basal Titanosauriform, which is far too vague to be represented by a toy.
   

Too new, and frankly too obscure to have a toy, represented here by a Carnegie Deltadromeus, bought from Dinosaur Isle. Although not related, the toy looks a bit similar...

Having said that, about Eotyrannus being too new, Carnegie have managed to make a Dilong, a small tyrannosaurid, so that ight be a better bet. Must be an Anglophobic thing!

I recently heard that there is an Eotyrannus toy, but further research showed that it was only available in America, and was actually a really bad rip-off of WWD's Ornitholestes. Ah well...

   

Also obscure, here represented by an Invicta Brachiosaurus, bought from the NHM. There are lots of Brachiosaurus toys, but as this isn't Brachiosaurus, I won't bother to list them.
   

Despite being one of the most common and well known, no actual toy exists, at least half decent and in England. Here it is represented by a Walking with Dinosaurs (WWD) Leallynasaura, bought in Hamleys, London.

There was a rather nice one in a bag of dinosaurs available from Wilkinsons, the cheap shop chain, but the rest of the dinosaurs were rubbish, so I didn't buy it.
   

One of the most common, in both fossils and toys, represented here by an Invicta Plastics Iguanodon from the NHM, a WWD Iguanodon from Snooks in Bath and an enormous Aladar from Disneys Dinosaur, bought cheap from Tesco's in Portsmouth!
The hands on the WWD Iguanodon are in the correct orientation, shame about the rest of it, the Invicta model is based on the Dollo restoration and to cap it all, the Aladar has the wrong hand orientation and hadrosaur feet. My favourite dinosaur, I could have filled this page with Iguanodon toys, so I shall just mention my nodding Iguanodon, my cuddly Iguanodon, the Jurassic Park Junior Iguanodon and my Iguanodon magnet that I've had for nearly twenty years...
   

A good toy for this is the Carnegie Saltasaurus, a titanosaur from somewhere, I forget where exactly. Bought it in Dinosaur Isle though! I like it, as it has a rather sweet face...
   

A carcharadontosurid, related to Allosaurus, represented best here by the WWD Allosaurus, bought from Hamleys in London. There is also a WWD Allosaurus finger puppet, but it looks silly, and a little Safari Allosaurus, which was included in the WWD baby dinosaurs box set, which is rubbish, so I've left it out.

Neovenator toys have actually appeared, one rather rubbish one . There is also a Neovenator pencil top from Dinosaur Isle, based on their animatronic Neo...

A seller on Amazon claims to have a Neovenator for sale in the Dinosaur King range from Playmates, but this turned out to be a Carcharadontosaurus.

   

Also obscure, here an Invicta Brachiosaurus, also bought from the NHM, although to be fair it's the one I used for Eucamerotus!
   

A dromaeosaur, so either a Utahraptor, Velociraptor or Deinonychus...
   

The Invicta Brachiosaurus again! Oh, they're probably all the same thing anyway...
   

JP3 Brachiosaurus, just to relieve the monotony! (Bought in ToyZone in Swindon, if you're interested...) its got a huge gash along the side you can't see in this picture as part of the Jurassic Park "Dino-Damage" thing they like to do to their dinosaur toys, but unlike with the earlier ranges, you can't cover it up. Shame...
   

As with Iuticosaurus, a Carnegie Saltasaurus,
   

Only one decent model, and it's a WWD Polacanthus, even if the head's too narrow and stegosaur-like! There is also a Polacanthus model from the tube of dinosaurs of the Early Learning Centre that is a bit out of date, but charming none the less. It's also tiny, as you can see from the coin I've put next to it! It seems that there is a trend for making Polacanthus toys as small as possible, as you can see from the toy below that, from a tiny suitcase of dinosaurs I bought as a present from the NHM.

Finally, since Walking with Dinosaurs became THE place to plagiarise dinosaurs from, a few more accurate Polacanthus toys have appeared. Well, I say accurate, this squidgy Polacanthus I got from Cumberland House Museum, Portsmouth, is a lot of fun, but not the most accurate toy I've seen...

   

Oviraptorsaur toys are quite rare, although Safari does one. I'll have to pick one up sometime...
   

Maybe the WWD Leallynasaura, with no Dryosaurus toys on the market...
   

Yaverlandia isn't really represented as a toy, mostly due to it's obscurity. More information as I'm permitted to release it...
   

An odd one, this. Despite Velociraptor being probably the most famous dinosaur (After T. rex, of course), and one of the most commonly made as toys now, they all seem to be based on the Jurassic Park raptors, rather than Velociraptor. However, Disneys Dinosaur had fairly accurate Velociraptors, although they were missing their feathers. I have the McDonalds Velociraptor promo, which I got from a car-boot sale, with the impossibly curved tail, and a Safari mini Velociraptor, which is quite good, but a horrible colour, which isn't as noticable here.
   

The Carnegie Saltasaurus again! No Titanosaurus toys for some reason! Odd, but then again the Titanosaurus of the Isle of Wight isn't really Titanosaurus anyway, so it doesn't matter...
   

WWD did produce a rather nice Ornithocheirus toy, but it was only available to people who subscribed to a magazine. As I didn't, and therefore don't have it, a good model is this flying Tropeognathus, which is just a synonym of Ornithocheirus anyway! I got this in the BHS Xmas Shop a few years back, but it can be bought from most novelty shops, such as The Discovery Store, and Hamleys, London.

I should add that Burger King also produced a WWD Ornithocheirus skeleton model, but I missed the week it was available. If anyone does have it, and are willing to sell really cheap, let me know...
   

Nothing even close!
   

Although Caulkicephalus has only recently been described, toy manufacturers have been making very similar toys to this for years, when they put teeth in their Pteranodons. I do have a JP3 Pteranodon electronic keyring with teeth, but it doesn't have the crests on the snout.
   

You would think that as this is quite obscure there would be no toys. Well, there was a model Leptocleidus available from Cadbury's Yowie, but only in Australia, where Leptocleidus has also been found! This one is in the palaeo lab at the University of Bristol, and isn't mine, but it gives you an idea...
   

If you know of any relevant dinosaur toys that I don't have then let me know

Please remember, I'm based in Southern England, so no recommending a model shop in Alabama or a cheap shop in Rangoon, as I won't be able to just pop by and visit!

Further Information.
   

setstats 1