Parasaurolophus One of Many - Store Versions Exist, Too
Definitely Dinosaurs Vinyl Figure
Item No.: No. n/a Manufacturer:Playskool Includes:A full dadgum meal, if you can believe it Action Feature:n/a Retail:$2.99 Availability: ca. 1988 Other: Available in blue/more blue, in yellow/green and maybe others
I don't know for a fact if this Definitely Dinosaurs sample was sold carded, or as a bagged Wendy's toy. I found this Parasaurolophus at a collectible toy shop on a day off about a year ago for five bucks, and I try to make it a point to buy any 35-40 year old toy I see for less than the price of shipping. I went back a couple of months ago and found a Stegosaurus - we'll get to him soon.
I had three of these guys since I was a kid. You may have seen Anatasaurus [FOTD #1,434], Triceratops [FOTD #1,419], and Apatosaurus [FOTD #1,446]. There were also store variations, with Playskool but not Definitely Dinosaurs branding, also in different colors. I wasn't able to get these in 1991 when they were in stores - "baby toys," you see - but I'm an adult and I can buy whatever I want now. So I got this blue dinosaur with a neck joint.
At about 4 1/2-inches tall, he looks very similar to most of the other bipeds in the line. The arms kind of sag, the tail kind of drags, and an open mouth gives it a little bit of life. Maybe it's mooing. The open mouth with the very visible tongue could be a look of disgust, or terror, or maybe just of a sculptor who had a deadline and gave it very little thought. The head has cleanly painted yellow eyes and lots of great sculpting. You can see little warts, skin folds, nostrils, and a bony crest all cast in hollow plastic, probably quite cheaply. Playskool (now part of Hasbro) doesn't make them like this anymore, but you can find some charming dinosaurs at about this size for a buck or so in Walmart's cheap toy bins. Or you could. Admittedly, I haven't seen them in a while.
His body has no articulation at all, but you can see that there's not a lot of action in his body language either. He's dragging his tail along, moaning, or maybe posed to fight another animal. He's not planning on hurting anybody - his big feet are planted firmly on the ground, with evidence of muscles going more or less unused. It looks really old hat compared to his peers, even from Playskool - the company sold a boxed version of this dinosaur (with a caveman) around the same time. That figure had a jointed neck and jointed limbs, which were kind of novel in the late 1980s as most dinosaurs were still cheap unarticulated plastic statues. A soft vinyl toy with one joint wasn't a huge step up, especially compared to Tyco's Dino-Riders (or Kenner's future releases of Jurassic Park), but this is the kind of toy you would sometimes see before mega-corporation IP reigned supreme. Once in a while the public domain would result in a branded line of toys, but the vast majority of 1980s toys went forgotten in the shadows of the super big brands we still see today.
One of the things that's really neat about this toy was that, before Jurassic Park branded "JP" on its toys, Playskool stamped an apatosaurus on their bellies. Clearly other toy designers were paying attention, because doing anything to set your dinosaur toys apart from the dollar store could result in big profits if the line hit in a big way. (They usually did not.)
The secondary market says this figure is $10 or so plus shipping, which seems like what I would expect. A toy company could probably make something like this for a couple of bucks today, and I hope more of them try. It's kind of cool, molded in one color, with painted eyes and a spray of dark blue along the back. It's just enough to bring out a little detail, and it's the kind of look you see on a lot of high-end sofubi figures. If you see a toy like this at a thrift store or antique shop, bring it home. Maybe you'll keep it on your desk, maybe you'll give it away, but it's always lovely to find a toy from the 1980s at a price so low I can't say no.
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