Copyright 2002 T. Sheil & A. Sheil All Rights Reserved
Dinosaurs will always be a popular item, because children love them. That fascination has not dwindled a bit over the years. The children of today are as awestruck as the kids of my generation. Naturally, dinosaur playsets and plastic figures have been there to meet the need.
Marx made a dinosaur and caveman playset, and later did one based on the Flintstones cartoon that included dinosaurs. At the New York Worlds fair, they had machines that would cast a large plastic dinosaur right before your eyes. It was outside the Ford Pavilion with good reason. In the Ford Pavilion, you rode in a car (it was on a conveyor) past animated scenes of dinosaurs and cavemen. One big part of the show was the fight between a stegosaurus and tyrannosaurus rex. Funny thing: that image was firmly implanted in the minds of kids long before we got to the Ford Pavilion. A graphic of a stegosaurus whapping its tail at a T-Rex had been in most of the books on dinosaurs, and somehow it stuck even to this day. The truth is that the stegosaurus and tyrannosaurus rex lived in different eras, so they never came into contact.
My first set of dinosaurs was bought at the Avon Pavilion, a gift shop / beach shop on the boardwalk at Avon by the Sea, NJ. Aunt Allie bought me the blister-packed card of little dinosaurs before we went onto the beach. The Avon Pavilion is a restaurant these days.
Kids love them, so this section will be expanding as I find more and better dinosaurs to populate it.
From a bag set of dinosaurs and cavemen. The dinosaurs are smaller than the cavemen. |
Three of the cavemen look very good in poses and detail. The second from the left looks like a refugee from a Hulk comic book. |
These Tootsietoy dinosaurs are more substantial and larger than the preceding Tim Mee set. |
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These small dinosaurs vinyl were sold as party favors. They are a nice assortment of popular dinosaur types. |
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