# Dinosaur Kits



## Desslock (Mar 5, 2011)

I'm a big fan of the Aurora Prehistoric Scenes kits, but I have a few questions about the other styrene dinosaur kits that exist:

- Airfix/AMT 00 the AMT dinosaur models are just rereleases of those original Airfix dinos released in the mid-late 70s, right? Are there any that don't overlap?

- Pyro/Lifelike - from 1950s-60s - same and completely overlap?

- Lindberg - they have me a bit confused. I know they have rereleased some of the Pyro/Lifelike kits (Brontosaurus/Apatosaurus), but presumably they produced some original molds in connection with Jurassic Park, like the updated T-rex, the Raptor, and Dilophosaurus. Their Corythosaurus seems to be the AMT/Airfix mold?

- Tamiya, all original, in two groups (Diorama series and a handful of others).

- Aurora 1990s (Polar Lights) New molds for T-rex, Pteranadon and Triceratops.

- Monogram/Revell - reissues of Aurora's Prehistoric Scenes only, plus Revell issued mini-versions of 6 of those kits.

Pleased confirm/correct/expand upon the above.


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## SpaceCrawler (Mar 22, 2010)

Desslock said:


> - Monogram/Revell - reissues of Aurora's Prehistoric Scenes only, plus Revell issued mini-versions of 6 of those kits..


Does anyone have photos of those mini-PS kits? I heard about them but never saw them. How small are they?

Sean


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## djnick66 (May 2, 2008)

The Pyro kits were later sold by Life Like, and ultimately by Lindberg. The original series from Pyro varied a bit in quality. Some were not too bad, and others were very poor. Looking at the tooling, its almost like two or three teams of sculptors did the masters over a period of time. At some point, the molds for a lot of those kits were altered. The Stegosaurus, for example, was originally a smooth model, but the current Lindberg issue has a heavy warty skin texture added.

Lindberg added some new dino kits for Jurassic park. They made their own large Tyrannosaurus Rex, Velociraptor, and Dilophosaurus. Subsequently, the poor Pyro Tyrannosaurus has not been reissued since then. Lindberg advertises the Protoceratops on the back of the current issues of the Pyro kits, but that one was not reissued, so it exists now in ad form only.

Airfix had quite a few dino kits but only a couple were issued by AMT and MPC. Airfix included the Tyranosaurus, Stegosaurus, Triceratops, Hadarosaurus/Corythosaurus (not the Pyro kit at all), Brontosaurus, Dimetrodon and Pteranadon. I think AMT issued just the first three.

Tamiya has two sets of dinos... a horrible Tyrannosaurus, Triceratops and Stegosaurus, and then a reasonable 1/35 diorama line. Their old T Rex is, if possible, worse than the Pyro kit! Tamiya has a rare bagged flying pteranadon kit too.

Bandai had a range of dinosaurs wtih clock work motors to make their legs move. They were not very good. As a kid I had the Styracosaurus and Tyrannosaurus.


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## Mitchellmania (Feb 14, 2002)

SpaceCrawler said:


> Does anyone have photos of those mini-PS kits? I heard about them but never saw them. How small are they?
> 
> Sean


about the size of a quarter. I had the Alisausus and Triceritops fun little kits and pre painted!!


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## Solium (Apr 24, 2005)

SpaceCrawler said:


> Does anyone have photos of those mini-PS kits? I heard about them but never saw them. How small are they?
> 
> Sean


Tiny! I managed to grab them off of "the bay". If no one posts pics I can try and find them. There somewhere in a closet full of model kits.


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## djnick66 (May 2, 2008)

Mitchellmania said:


> about the size of a quarter. I had the Alisausus and Triceritops fun little kits and pre painted!!


They are in the vein of the Japanese "Chocosaurus" pre painted candy toy/models


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## TAY666 (Jan 8, 2000)

For some pics of the mini-dinos.
http://www.tylisaari.com/prehistoricscenes/kits/mini.html
For an idea of the size, here is one of the old pics I took of one of them, with a quarter in the shot for size reference.
http://www.tylisaari.com/prehistoricscenes/kits/trikemini.jpg

For a look at the Bandai kits, check here.
http://www.tylisaari.com/models/dino/bandai/bandai.htm

I have a few of them, and really enjoy them.
Biggest problem is they tend to come apart. 
Like the leg will come off the metal shaft that makes it turn.

Also, on the Lindberg kits.
The stegosaurus, and hadrosaurus are both old life-like kits with texture added to them.


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## dino84 (Jul 20, 2008)

SpaceCrawler said:


> Does anyone have photos of those mini-PS kits? I heard about them but never saw them. How small are they?
> 
> Sean


Here are a couple of pics of my Mini-dino Tyrannosaurus built up. As you can see it's quite tiny!



















And to add to the original list Revell also made a Tyrannosaurus and a Velociraptor pair for the Lost World movie.

Scott.


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## djnick66 (May 2, 2008)

TAY666 said:


> For some pics of the mini-dinos.
> http://www.tylisaari.com/prehistoricscenes/kits/mini.html
> For an idea of the size, here is one of the old pics I took of one of them, with a quarter in the shot for size reference.
> http://www.tylisaari.com/prehistoricscenes/kits/trikemini.jpg
> ...


The Corythosaurus/Hatrosaurus always had texture. Most of the other Pyro kits were smooth. Of the original series he is about the best, although his neck is a bit short.


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## djnick66 (May 2, 2008)

Here are some of my dinosaur kits: Tamiya's poor Tyrannosaurus, Pyro's Brontosaurus, the Aurora Allosaurus, the Pyro Triceratops, Stegosaurus and Corythosaurus (I built this one almost 40 years ago).










Pyro's Brontosaurus... Not the most accurate reconstruction and not the best kit.










Pyro's constipated Dimetrodon










A hard plastic pre painted Trachodon by Starlux... very cute


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## Cro-Magnon Man (Jun 11, 2001)

dino84 said:


> And to add to the original list Revell also made a Tyrannosaurus and a Velociraptor pair for the Lost World movie.
> 
> Scott.


Well remembered! The Tyrannosaurus was crushing one of the safari vehicles as fas as I remember, but I don't know how many parts the kit had - maybe the crushed vehicle was molded as part of the base. But the kits looked quite well sculpted.


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## Cro-Magnon Man (Jun 11, 2001)

If noone else posts a photo of the six Revell minidinos builtup, I'll dig mine out of storage tomorrow and take a photo of them in daylight and post it.


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## Solium (Apr 24, 2005)

Cro-Magnon Man said:


> Well remembered! The Tyrannosaurus was crushing one of the safari vehicles as fas as I remember, but I don't know how many parts the kit had - maybe the crushed vehicle was molded as part of the base. But the kits looked quite well sculpted.


Correct, the vehicle was molded as part of the base. And yes the T-Rex was a pretty good sculpt, and more animated than most dino kits.


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## MightyMax (Jan 21, 2000)

Don't forget about the Polar Lights Dinos. T-Rex, Triceratops and Pteranadon.

I do believe I saw somewhere that Round 2 is repopping them.

Max Bryant


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## SUNGOD (Jan 20, 2006)

The Airfix Brontosaurus looks like a masterpiece compared to that Pyro/Linberg one. Quite possibly the worst plastic dinosaur kit ever.


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## SUNGOD (Jan 20, 2006)

And not forgetting the new Prehistoric Scenes we're supposed to be getting from Dencomm.


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## TAY666 (Jan 8, 2000)

djnick66 said:


> The Corythosaurus/Hatrosaurus always had texture. Most of the other Pyro kits were smooth. Of the original series he is about the best, although his neck is a bit short.


Now I am going to have to go digging through the kit stash.
I could have sworn that I have a build-up of one that was smooth and in the purple plastic.
Buried somewhere in one of my misc styrene boxes.


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## Cro-Magnon Man (Jun 11, 2001)

TAY666 said:


> Now I am going to have to go digging through the kit stash.


That could be quite a lengthy expedition. See you when you come back out!


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## Desslock (Mar 5, 2011)

Thanks for all the additional information, guys. Djnick66 - it was actually your flickr photostream that I randomly stumbled on when surfing that got me thinking about this stuff, so thanks for the response.

Yeah, the Pyro bronto is a definite candidate for the worst dinosaur model ever, although the tyrannosaurus is a contender too. The bronto - not sure which release, but it was the one that was a purple mold - was the first model I ever received as a kid, so I'm kind of fond of it for nostalgia reasons. I can't believe it's still kicking around in that relatively recent Lindberg release.


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## djnick66 (May 2, 2008)

I painted my reissue Bronto in a slightly purplish grey in homage to the original plastic color.

One of the first models I remember trying to build as a kid was the Pyro Tyrannosaurus. I had just Elmers white glue and it took forever to dry, and then the parts would fall apart... This would be around 1971... I recently picked up a shrink wrapped early Life Like issue (could be also what I had?) that uses the old Pyro style artwork.


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## scooke123 (Apr 11, 2008)

The Pyro T-Rex has a certain charm to it though - kinda reminds you of the old "B" movie dinosaurs!!Plus the little cave-man you got with some of them made it kinda cool too.
Steve


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## TAY666 (Jan 8, 2000)

I don't really care for the Pyro rex.
I think the Bandai looks more like the old B-movie critters.









My first dino kits were a mix of Aurora, Bandai, and Pyro.
Can't remember which I had first though.


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## DragonClaw (Jul 15, 2013)

*Dinosaurs?*

Neither Brontosaurus nor Dimetrodon were...


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## Al Loew (Jul 3, 2008)

Sigh...I think the purple Brontosaurus (okay, Apatasaurus for purists) was my first kit ever as a kid, so I'm forgiving of the inaccuracies! However it was in keeping with the times (remember when the said it could only live in water because it was too heavy to be on land?).


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## Hunch (Apr 6, 2003)

Strange, I had the little flying reptile and one other but they did not have any prepaint on them. They must have been lazy that day!


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## djnick66 (May 2, 2008)

Here are some more of my Dinos...

These aren't models but a mix of the old Invicta, Sinclair (Oil Co) and ROM pieces, along with Marx' prehistoric playset plants.








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Marx Prehistoric Playset pieces. These are first and second series pieces. The original Tyrannosaurus Rex from the 50s is at the left, next to the later, Second Series version, in yellow. 








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Marx's 1950s Tyrannosaurus Rex is the great grand daddy of all other plastic dino toys and models. In case you don't know he's a Tyrannosaurus, Marx thoughtfully put his name on the side of the tail. 







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My prehistoric ground sloth and armadillo collection








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## finaprint (Jan 29, 2006)

Ah, yes, Marx dinosaur playsets, I had like 3 of them. As soon as I lost all the pieces I wanted them again, my mother must've thought I was crazy. The earlier T. Rex thinking modeled from the Zallinger painting. Never knew of the later T. Rex-when I saw one I traded like 3 models to get it from a school friend. 

BTW I'm also wanting to think the earliest Pyro Corythosaur/Hadrosaur was smooth too, but I could be full of it. 
(edit) Maybe not, all I see on the web is textured, even in claimed early Pyro. See my next sentence..........

You guys are making my brain hurt, all the hard drive damage up there.

Some of the current Safari prehistoric stuff is pretty collectible also.


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## djnick66 (May 2, 2008)

I never saw a smooth Pyro Corythosaur and the one I have is from a 70s Life Like issue. I think the texture was added to some of the other kits by Lindberg around the time of Jurassic Park. Life Like wouldn't have done it... they never actually made anything (outside of trains and slot cars), they just ran other companies kit molds. 

Yes the old Marx Tyrannosaurus is based on the famous Zallinger mural. Actually many of the Marx dinos were. Here is a section of it. A really incredible work of art. Zallinger, along with Charles R Knight, were masters at prehistoric artistic reconstructions (based on scientific knowledge at the time)










I have original issues of all of the Marx dinos, as well as later versions and modern recasts. Some were done in two or three styles with minor variations. MPC also did some mostly poor dinosaurs, copied from Marx. AMT did have some neat Ice Age mammals and birds. Lido also made some MPC copies. Collecting the Marx and related dinos is a great hobby. Most can be had fairly cheaply and its fun to search for new color variations or a good non-chewed up original.


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## dino84 (Jul 20, 2008)

Wow, I'm pretty sure I remember getting some of those Marx pieces in small packets along with a sticker and piece of bubblegum in the early '90s. I vaguely remember trying to paint one up and having the paint flake off quickly (think it was either the Tyrannosaurus or the Iguanodon). Wouldn't be surprised if there were still a few floating arount my family's place.

Scott.


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## Tone (Jan 21, 2006)

I really like the look of the old plastic toy animals such as these.

I kept many of my Marx and MPC plastic animals, along with the Starlux and oddballs such as museum souvenirs.

I got rid of the Aurora Prehistoric Scenes long ago, however.


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## Paper Hollywood (Nov 2, 2011)

This is evolving into an pretty interesting thread (if you'll excuse the expression). The Marx sets bring back memories. A lot of us spent a good deal of quality time with those guys. Sometime in the early '60s I pestered my mom and dad into taking me (a very long way) to shopping center exhibition of some Sinclair full scale dinos. They had a glass-sided blow molding machine that allowed you to "make" your own green brontosaurus. I had that thing forever, but it's long gone now.

I just found a page on showing the machines and the dinos as distributed at the '64 world's fair. Apparently it was called "Mold-O-Rama". http://www.moldville.com/history.html


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