Different reviewers appear to have stopped masking UKRD figures years in the past, however there are nonetheless plenty of them left to go, so I assume that’s my lot in life. Whereas they might look like mass-produced dreck to most individuals, I discover them attention-grabbing and charming as a result of they usually mirror outdated or downright weird concepts and classic palaoart, normally (with some notable exceptions) primarily based on John Sibbick’s work from the 1985 guide Enyclopaedia of Dinosaurs by David Norman.
The latter appears to be the case for the large UKRD Apatosaurus figure, which is distinctly Sibbickian, together with having the, by the point the determine was launched in 1991, right, low and elongated head of a diplodocoid, as properly a definite neck-wattle. However UKRD dinosaurs appear to have are available in three sizes: giant, medium, and small (to not point out bendable and skeletal variations), and, till now, I assumed they have been simply all primarily based on the identical designs, however, boy, was I fallacious…
Whereas for instance the Pachycephalosaurus of all size-classes look related, the medium UKRD Apatosaurus from 1992 most likely couldn’t be extra totally different from the massive one. To begin with, it has the basic, outdated boxy cranium, as was reconstructed for numerous Brontosaurus museum mounts again within the early twentieth century, like those within the American Museum of Natural History and the Yale Peabody Museum. However the determine is labelled as Apatosaurus on its stomach, so it might appear that that is an odd case the place UKRD was updated with the taxonomy, however not a lot with the anatomy of the dinosaur.
The genus Brontosaurus was after all famously synonymised with Apatosaurus on the time (although its kind species, B. excelsus, was saved as a sound species of Apatosaurus), however as Brontosaurus has since been revived, meaning this determine may probably depict Brontosaurus fairly than Apatosaurus… That’s after all troublesome to find out, as a result of Apatosaurus itself was additionally reconstructed with a Camarasaurus-like boxy skull within the early twentieth century, and I wouldn’t be shocked if the UKRD sculptor didn’t actually know the intricacies of Apatosaurus/Brontosaurus taxonomy, and by extension what precisely they have been sculpting.
With that out of the way in which, we will transfer on to different variations with the massive determine, together with that the tail is surprisingly not dragging throughout the bottom within the small one, however is raised a bit, and its pores and skin appears way more wrinkly and saggy, particularly alongside the flanks. Its colour-pattern can also be extraordinarily totally different from the yellow and black-striped giant determine; its higher sides are painted sky blue, whereas the underside is gray, seemingly the color of the rubber. The eyes are splashed with yellow that far exceeds the dimensions of the attention itself, and bleeds onto the encompassing pores and skin, whereas the pupils are black.
The determine is about 15 cm from the tail-tip to the entrance of the snout, and it stands nearly 8 cm on the high of the pinnacle. Not way more to say about this determine than get it for its nostalgic worth if nothing else. However hey, I simply observed the nostrils on the previous Yale Brontosaurus mount are on the entrance of the snout, identical to on this determine, so may that imply it depicts Brontosaurus in spite of everything? And the bendable model of the determine was apparently re-labelled as Camarasaurus? That’s a part of what makes the UKRD figures “mysterious”, as Marc Vincent put it in his overview of the massive model, and provides to their attraction. They appear to be primarily based on fairly particular references, and it’s enjoyable to attempt to establish them in these critiques.
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