■  Kaiyodo DINOLAND Series

I only found out about his set in mid-2014 from from John Carlson, President of Monstrosities Inc., the company that imported them to the USA. He found a few left in storage and contacted me to see if I was interested. They date from the the mid-1990s when interest in dinosaurs was booming after the hit Jurassic Park movies. These models are virtually unknown outside Japan. Beautifully packaged, there is a good range of skull types represented. For the time, they were nicely detailed although not especially accurate. Of course I had to acquire and document them to complete the set of Kaiyodo DINOLAND skeleton models. Note there were no copies of the T. rex skull available so John kindly lent me his own example to document.

Product & Packaging

There are 7 skulls in all, each hand-cast from silicon molds in one piece. They were expensive at the time and very few sold in the USA. Resin color varied (as can be seen from the examples shown here). All are painted with a varnish wash to simulate age and highlight details. The elaborate packaging and the number of different models suggests a reasonable sales volume was expected.

Each skull is nested in a protective straw-like material and sits on a black paper printed base. A small (180 x 130 mm) single-sided information sheet (shown opposite) is included inside each base. The  outer box is transparent and the details of the skull inside (name and species details) appear on the top left front corner, applied using a transparent sticker.


product insert

Tyrannosaurus

L 70, H 47, W 34 (mm)

Pachycephalosaurus

L 70, H 45, W 37 (mm)

Monoclonius

L 80, H 55, W 40(mm)

Allosaurus

L 63, H 44, W 30 (mm)

Brachiosaurus

L 68, H 55, W 38 (mm)

Lambeosaurus

L 85, H 73, W 30 (mm)

Velociraptor

L 76, H 45, W 30 (mm)

Request

If you have additional information, resources, or
can help with translation of the product insert
of this or other Kaiyodo DINOLAND skeleton models
I am very keen to hear from you. Please contact me.