The irony is that at the same time I bemoan the loss of stores that sell interesting stuff, more and more interesting stuff is being made. When I was a kid, a “dinosaur toy” was a cheap, stiff hunk of plastic. Nothing moved; it was merely an immobile statue… and not a very accurate one. Half my lifetime ago, the movie Jurassic Park came out and the marketing juggernaut that came with it produced a vast pile of new dinosaur toys… these were more accurate, had more moving bits. And now with the combination of rapid prototyping and the rise of nerd culture (specifically the rise of people willing to spend a whole lot of money for “toys” that are incredibly detailed and complex, filled with features, that will probably not leave the box but instead will be put on a shelf and never played with), there seem to be some damn fine dinosaur toys out there. Behold:

Beasts of the Mesozoic: Raptor Series Action Figures

Twenty years ago, I thought it was pretty neat to find a toy of *one* type of raptor, in no particular scale, certainly not in scale with anything else. Now… a whole range of 1/6 scale raptors are in development.