writes:
We previously profiled the rubbery dinos at Dollar Tree. Now, I've prepped one up as a monster for my 15mm fantasy gaming.
These are the Jurassic World toys. companycmd commented that they're supposed to be 'baby' dinosaurs. I'm not sure, maybe they're just supposed to be 'cute'?
I used nippers to cut the base, piece by piece, away from the toy. I sprayed the toy with matte clear to give my paints something to adhere to, then touched the figure up with drybrushing and a brown wash.
Here is the finished and based Ankylosaurus:
The eyes do give it still a 'toy' look – or are those just lizard eyes?
Drybrushing brought out a lot of texture on the legs.
I considered trying to hide the butt seam, but wasn't sure what filler would work well with a rubbery toy. And why are you staring at my dino's butt, anyway?
Nobody seems to know what these beasts actually looked like, in terms of coloring. I ended up with a light-shaded dino; a more aggressive wash would have darkened the shade. A darker dino would look more threatening, I think.
Above, the Ankylosaurus poses with 28mm fantasy and sci-fi figures. Which raises the question: what scale is this model anyway? If the tail were straightened, the toy would be about 60mm long. The Ankylosaurus is estimated to have been at least 5.4m long in real life. That makes this toy roughly, in wargaming scale, an 18mm model.
I plan on using this for 15mm fantasy mass-battle gaming, so I based it on a Mighty Armies (Rebel Minis) 'large' base (2" x 2"), with LITKO FlexSteel beneath for storage purposes.
What next? For 15mm fantasy, you could put a fighting platform on him, but that seems impractical with the tail weapon. Maybe a rider behind the head, but where would you get a figure that would fit? Alternately, these would work as dungeon monsters in 28mm, or alien beasts for sci-fi.