If we were handing out awards for ‘chonkiest Stegosaurus toys’ this one would surely be in the running. When I first embarked on this review I had assumed it would be a simple matter of specifying this as the Bullyland ‘mini’ Stegosaurus, but I quickly realised it isn’t that simple.
There are several variants of this figure, since Bullyland tweaked the sculpt on several occasions and re-released it in several lines. The excellent Animal Toy Wiki (ATW) has been a particularly helpful reference for helping me to understand the complicated and overlapping history of this Stegosaurus sculpt. The version I’m reviewing today has a shut mouth without a beak, and it has individually sculpted legs. This variant is from Bullyland’s ‘Animal World Dinosaurs’ (or just ‘Dinosaurs’) line, which was released in the mid 80s (1985 or 1987), and discontinued in 2015. This seems to be the original version.
The sculpt was proceeded by an almost identical but shrunken variant (61375) in a line the ATW calls ‘Mini Dinos II’, released in 1993 and discontinued in 2000. As well as being smaller, the ‘Mini Dinos II’ figure also has the gaps between its legs filled in.
An updated version of the original sculpt was released as part of a short-lived ‘Small Museum Line’, released in 2013, but discontinued the following year in 2014. This variant (61345) is more or less identical to the ‘Animal World Dinosaurs’ variant pictured here, except the mouth is slightly open and it has a beak. It looks like the entire head was replaced by a different head sculpt. This ‘Small Museum Line’ variant was then re-released in 2021 (with new colours and a new number 61315), so this open-mouthed version is still in production and available today. It is listed on the Bullyland website as a “mini-dinosaurier”, part of the company’s current ‘Dinopark’ line.
An even earlier Bullyland miniature incarnation of Stegosaurus (11733 unpainted, 11706 painted), released in 1980, is very different and can be safely regarded as a completely separate sculpt (‘Mini dinos 1’).
Browsing Ebay I also encountered at least one minor variant of the closed-mouth ‘Animal World Dinosaurs’ version, with different wording on the tummy. On my figure is says “STEGOSAURUS, CE C BULLYLAND, MADE IN GERMANY. But one variant has a slightly different arrangement on the tummy missing the words “MADE IN GERMANY”. There may be others!
The coloration also varies, both between and within different sculpt variants. My figure has a simple three-tone coloration, with a yellow coloured base plastic, and dark metallic blue paint applied to the plates and dark brown paint on the upper part of the body. ATW shows two additional colour variants of this specific sculpt, one with a yellow plastic and orange-red painted upper parts, and one with green plastic and dark green upper parts: https://toyanimalwiki.mywikis.wiki/wiki/Bullyland_61357_Stegosaurus
The sculpture itself is nothing to shout about. A typical children’s toy-box affair with a rather retro old-fashioned sprawling appearance, and some usual errors such as too many toes on the hind feet, which we would expect for a sculpt from from the 1980s. The plates are almost perfect diamond shapes, which is also a trope of older Stegosaurus toys, but the plates are also notable for having veins sculpted on the outer surfaces. The tail is also very short, which is incorrect but makes it look cute.
At 8.5 cm ling the figure is small but not tiny. It isn’t branded as a baby so I’m going to assume its meant to be an adult, and that’s how I’ve calculated the very approximate scale for this figure. But the chubby figure with its unusual proportions would probably pass as a baby.
Overall, this is a cute little Stegosaurus figure with a surprisingly complicated history!
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