An awful lot of dinosaur toys and models have been created and collected since the dawn of the mass-produced plastic tat era (let’s call it the ‘Tatozoic’), but few have had as much impact as the Carnegie Collection (manufactured by Safari Ltd). The models made by Invicta Plastics for the London Natural History Museum are certainly up there (as we’ve discussed on the podcast), as are the Battat and Tyco ranges of the ’80s and ’90s, but the Carnegie Collection was special – for boasting gloriously colourful dinosaurs and a museum certification, having a large range of species, and for its longe ..read more

After months of technical mishaps, we finally managed to get the podcast back up and running! Marc, Gemma and Natee start off by having a little moan about terrible dinosaur movies before moving into a fun German book Gemma found at a school! We got some typical late 80s fare, with some very unusual depictions of dinosaurs… Then, Gemma and Marc interview Yasmin Grooters, head of the dinosaur lab at Naturalis Leiden, who recently finished work on a whole herd of Triceratops! Will Natee narrate the next Walking With Dinosaurs special? How is a Quetzalcoatlus like a pair of embroidery scissors? H ..read more

In my further quest to avoid the DK Encyclopedia of Dinosaurs & Prehistoric Life from 2001 (which I do now own, at least), here’s another book from around that time – Dinosaurs, published in 2002 by Fog City Press. It’s a rather generic affair all told, but I’m sure there’s someone out there for whom this is an important childhood memory. Besides which, it features illustrations by Steve Kirk and Luis Rey (among others), not to mention an interesting mix of retro reconstructions that could have come straight from the early ’90s (and probably did) alongside up-to-the-minute pieces that ..read more

Say “Ladybird dinosaur book” to someone, and they’ll very likely think of the book illustrated by Bernard Robinson that was reprinted a number of times and spanned the childhoods of multiple generations. (Well, at least two.) I reviewed it all the way back in 2011, so perhaps my review is now as nostalgic for some people as Ladybird books are for others. (Nah, just kidding. I’m not so deluded.) Robinson’s illustrations, while technically superb and highly memorable, were looking rather dated in the late ’80s; while the art was gorgeous, the reconstructions were resolutely old-school. How fortu ..read more

As the sort of unremarkable kids’ book that you might find buried in a stack at a charity shop, looking a little forlorn (but I found on eBay, of course), you might not expect too much from the Oxford First Book of Dinosaurs (part of a series that included further volumes on animals, art, maths, science, and space). As you’ve no doubt guessed, it uses a lot of art recycled from earlier books. Ah, but in this case, it’s a lot of Steve Kirk art, and we do like a bit of Kirk around here, having featured his work numerous times before. Indeed, some of the illustrations in this book have featured o ..read more

Not wanting the last post of the year to be a vanilla Vintage Dinosaur Art post featuring some filler art from 20 years ago presented a conundrum. What else am I supposed to do these days? A few different ideas came to mind – a bit of personal reflection, a review of a museum or other attraction that I’d failed to post about, or a humorous comparison of ‘expert reacts’ videos regarding dinosaur media. In the end, I decided to just mash everything together. It’s been one of those years (again)… Firstly, the images of so-so dinosaur robots that you’re seeing are from Hamerton Zoo Park, located i ..read more

Once again: Marie Hubrecht. Are you tired of me talking about Marie Hubrecht yet? Because I’m not done. If you want more Hubrecht, check out my reviews of Verdwenen Werelden here, here and here, and our Verdwenen Werelden podcast episode here! This post is a direct companion to my last one, in which I detail the time I went to see the spectacular murals she made in the 1920s at the former Girl’s Lyceum in Amsterdam. These paintings have been lovingly restored in the 2010s and can now be seen in their full glory in the central hall of the Joke Smit College. Let us begin, then, to apply some of ..read more

Regular readers (we have some, right?) will be aware that our sole criterion for a book’s inclusion in Vintage (=Old) Dinosaur Art is that it be 20 years old. Consequently, books from the early 2000s have now entered our purview. It was a time when, in the wake of Walking With Dinosaurs, publishers demanded increasing numbers of CG creations in lieu of more traditional illustrations and model photography. Dorling Kindersley (aka DK) very much followed this trend, inserting very dodgy CG-o-saurs into their books with merry abandon. This is just such a book, but fear not, for the more traditiona ..read more

Have I told you about Marie Hubrecht? Wasn’t she the Dutch aristocratic lady turned suffragette turned idiosyncratic palaeoartist? After first finding out about her through the palaeoart exhibition at Teylers Museum, I fell in love with Marie’s work, initially just for its novelty. There’s simply no vintage palaeoart that looks like this. In the time of semi-realists like Knight, Harder and Zallinger, you just don’t get palaeoart that is stylized like this. Plus, how many palaeoartists are eccentric old lesbians? I know two: Ely Kish is the other one. Hubrecht is not part of any trend or movem ..read more

Seatbelts, everyone! A few weeks ago I reviewed The Magic School Bus in the Time of the Dinosaurs, and mused at the end that I might have to seek out the TV episode on the same theme…which was in no way an appeal for commenters to do the work for me and provide a link, oh no. (As if I’d be so lazy.) Nevertheless, Zain Ahmed obligingly provided a link to a YouTube video. Thanks, Zain! (Admittedly, it’s not exactly hard to find on there.) As such, I’ve duly given it a watch, and it’s certainly an interesting affair for someone who managed to avoid the franchise as a child. Was Ms Frizzle always ..read more