ED'S ONE AND ONLY SCHLEICHS

 Ed at Vegas Base kindly sent these live pictures of an Apatosaurus in Las Vegas!

The Dino was swiftly joined by Ed's one and only Schleich dragon!

Grrrrr!

Have you got a favourite dragon readers? In books, films or toys?

RAPTOR BIRTHDAY

Hi Woodsy,

Thought you might like to see my Lindberg Velociraptor kit built-up.

This was a re- release of the Jurassic park mold, sold around 2010.

-BrianF 

Monster Base

 NJ USA

The Garden of the Terracotta Roof Tiles

 Currently plagued by a trapped sciatic nerve I'm basically seat-bound assisting Junior in his garden pursuits as a budding Indiana Jones.

The dig site garnered a whole tray of finds, mostly terracotta, some fossils (he smelt a rat there!) and a 1936 George V One Penny ( he should have smelt a rat there!).

Junior was most excited about four big pieces of old roof tile he dug up. They were really in situ.

With some help from the Seated One he glued them back together. It says Rowley on it quite clearly.

Using a mix of brick dust and PVA Junior filled in the biggest cracks and set it to dry.

No longer a good roof tile, it'll make a fine display item for Junior somewhere out of the rain in the garden. 

Have you ever dug up anything?

What did you want to be when you were a kid?

Brian F's Amazing Land of the Dinosaurs Play Set

Hi Woodsy.

Im replying to your recent request for pictures of a dinosaur playset.

I received the Marx Prehistoric Times Playset when I was very young,and it started a lifetime of fascination with Prehistoric Life .

After all these years,all I have left of it is a few of the dinosaurs, buried deep in storage.

What I do have is this Land of the Dinosaurs Playset, found at a flea market about 10 years ago.

It contains the rock and cave formations of the Marx Playset, with a selection of dinosaurs in some new, bright colors.

Of particular interest is the large purple T-Rex,which is the original Marx sculpt, later replaced with a slimmer T-Rex in a livelier pose

-Brian F 

Monster Base

 NJ USA

ED'S NEW DINOS

Woodsy and Fellow Moonbasers,

Here's a few shots of new age and golden age dinosaurs. 

Right now, there's so many new dinosaur toys on the market it blows the mind. I am partial to the old stuff but there's no denying the new stuff is terrific! 

The B&W photo was taken by me at Disneyland way back in 1980.

From Jurassic Park Vegas

Ed

USA

Forget Brachiosaurus, Here Comes Dreadnoughtus!

If like me you grew up the Sixties then you were probably mad on dinosaurs. They were everywhere. Extinct but everywhere.

The big three vegesaurs back then were the massive saurapods. You'll be able to name them: Brontosaurus, Brachiosaurus and of course Diplodocus.

Much more recently BBC's Walking with Dinosaurs shows us what the Brachiosaurus might have looked like. I'd have loved this as a kid!

I thought that they were the biggest land animals ever. Wrong!

There are new sauropods on the block and they're even bigger!

With names like Titanosaur, Argentinosaurus and the fabulously named Dreadnoughtus!

Here's some somewhat ponderous but somehow hypnotic 'footage' of Dreadnoughtus in Malta!

Some of the these giants have only been discovered since I was a kid so I wouldn't have known about them in the 1960's.

The 'biggest' seems to shift depending on who's telling you. Theses guys slug it out for the top spot continuously.

You can read more about these vege monsters here on Brittanica 

https://www.britannica.com/list/titanosaurs-8-of-the-worlds-biggest-dinosaurs

Did you/ Do you like dinosaurs?

GIANT PAWPRINTS IN THE PAINT

 I was a dinosaur nut as a kid. I wanted to be a paleontologist.

I'm not one but I am a bit of a fossil now!

My tender years were filled with dinosaur books depicting the fiercest predators that ever lived. I loved them all and read them voraciously and often dreamt about a T. Rex stomping up the street and peering at me through my bedroom window.

Here are a good few of the books I had as a kid.

Besides books I also loved these Polska stamps. Such iconic illustrations! My personal faves were the two giants Brontosaurus and Brachiosaurus stood in water.

I'll sign off this Jurassic jaunt with an auction listing I saw that made me smile. It's as if the dinos know they're being photographed! Ones even walking over the list of names. I love it! Ha ha. What where your favourite dino books and species?

BRONTO SIGHTING IN CONNECTICUT!

Woodsy,

Here is my stab at the Glencoe Brontosaurus skeleton, originally an ITC/Ringo kit from the mid-60s. 

I decided not to paint the bones, as they were molded in a lovely ivory, but tried to have some fun with the base. Bone pieces fit well with just a little whittling. 

50 parts exactly. This beast is over 20” long!

Rob C

USA

PALMER'S AMERICAN MASTODON KIT BY PAUL ADAMS

Brontosaurus and Mastodon: Palmer Plastics Inc., of Brooklyn, New York, made these two prehistoric creature skeleton kits. 

Scalemates date both of these kits to 1959, but there do not appear to be any dates on either the boxes or the instruction sheets.

The American Mastodon (Mastodon americanus), an elephant-like mammal with enormous tusks:

This was Palmer kit number No.110-1.00, which meant catalogue number 110, retail price $1.00. No scale is given on the box, but the model was 10 inches long.

One side of the box has a panel giving details of the Mastodon, which states that they were 15 feet long. That would make the 10 inch long model about 1/18th scale.

The box top art-work showed the skeleton, which is what you got in the box, along with a smaller view of a live Mastodon. It is described on the box top as an 'All Plastic Scale Model Assembly Kit', and 'Scaled From American Museum Restorations'.

The oblong box has a lift-off lid. One side has a panel showing the other kit in this series, the Brontosaurus.

There were 43 pieces in the kit, including the base, all moulded in a suitable bone coloured plastic. The tusks and larger bones were moulded in two halves.

At some point (probably in the 1960s or 1970s) a company called Natural Science Industries, of Far Rockaway, New York, re-issued this kit. I am not sure if they actually produced the kit themselves, or if the kits were made by Palmer, and just sold in NSI boxes.

NSI made a wide range of educational and craft toys, so these educational Palmer kits would have fitted in with their other product lines. Both firms were based in New York City.

The NSI boxes were nearly identical to the normal Palmer releases, and used the same box art, with the addition of the NSI logo and address. The original kit numbers were retained, but without the price suffix, and now just said No.110.

There seem to have been three, slightly different versions of the Mastodon box.

Palmer logo and address.

Palmer logo with NSI address (this looks to be a sticker)

NSI logo and printed address

Scalemates do not mention this NSI version, and it seems the Mastodon kit has not been available for many years. As a kit subject the Mastodon has not fared too well, being over shadowed by the Mammoth.

Ten photographs from Worthpoint.

Paul Adams from New Zealand