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and the Natural History Museum
This isn't all of them - see also Late Additions After the demise of Louis Marx's dino line, the next prehistoric figures with any claim to seriousness appeared in the early 1970s. This was the Natural History Museum series, made by Invicta Plastics. There is some confusion about these, at least here in the United States, as they are generally called the British Museum figures (understandable, as most are marked "British Museum") but that's not quite correct. The Natural History Museum was initially part of the British Museum. When Richard Owen (a Big Name in paleontology) was superintendent of the natural history departments of the British Museum, he convinced the government to build more spacious quarters. Eventually a building of a suitably florid German Romanesque style was finished, and the collections were moved to it in 1880. In 1963 an Act of Parliament established the Natural History Museum as an entity separate from the British Museum. The NHM now includes the former Geological Museum, which it absorbed in 1986.Meanwhile ... Invicta Plastics Limited was started in the 1940s and is still chugging merrily along, making games (they seem particularly pleased with "Mastermind"), educational toys, and plastic promo and point-of-sale items (" ... from swimsuit displays in the 50’s to Comic Relief Red Noses in the 90’s ... "). Their dinos count as "educational" (Hey, it could be worse, they could qualify as "family entertainment" - Ed.). The Invicta/NHM figures were much more carefully researched and sculpted than most of the market's prior Rubber Dino efforts. Invictas are molded in colors which are certainly more festive than the Marx army-surplus grays, greens, tans and browns, though a far cry from the garish MPC and TimMee colors. All the figures are in different colors, but each figure is always in the same color (for example, the Ichthyosaurus is invariably seen in a grayish slate blue; the plesiosaur is always in a darker bright blue; and the blue whale always appears in a dark dull blue). A welcome breakthrough of the Invicta/NHM line is that all figures were made to the same scale - 1:45. At least, in theory - practice is a different matter, as we shall see infra. As usual, the line is a mix of dinos and non-dinos. There is a slight emphasis on animals found in English (or Commonwealth) strata. Hence -
There were 23 Invicta figures altogether, the first appearing about 1973 or so, and the last circa 1993. Back in its heyday as the premier dino line it was well distributed (meaning, widely available out here in the colonies). After the Carnegie/Safari Ltd. line appeared, there was a short-lived effort to compete by offering painted versions of the Invicta figures. But the entire line, painted or unpainted, became rare on the US market during the 1990s. Nevertheless, most of the unpainted Invicta figures remain in production. Invicta's site shows only a boxed assortment on the early years page of their educational section - not "early" as in paleozoic, but "early" as in kid stuff (scroll down toward the bottom of the page for the Dinosaur Box) [Nope, the Invicta site is down as of Feb. 2005]. The Natural History Museum site shows the same boxed assortment on their Christmas gifts in our Dino Store page. However, my mole burrowed into the very gizzard of London society informs me that the Museum has a goodly supply of the individual figures in bins, as well as some Carnegie figures and the Safari Dinosaurs of China series (and, naturally, some "bucket o' dinos" types that only a collector could love). It's too bad that such paltry efforts are being expended on the distribution of the Invicta/NHM set, as it's still a very good one, and reasonably priced. BUYER BEWARE - "Antique" dealers in the US are asking extortionate prices for these figures, under the peculiar misconception that they are long out of production. I just saw a price list posted on the 'net asking (for example) $15.00 for the Invicta Magalosaurus .... fairly outrageous, considering that I bought a Megalosaurus two weeks ago, fresh from the factory, for US$2.32, including the Old World barbarity of VAT. If I can buy one for $2.32, Dear Reader, so can you. See my Relevant Links page for sources. The lineup, in approximate production order -
The asterisk (*) denotes the dozen figures currently sold by the Natural History Museum in the Invicta Dinosaur Box set. I have noted the Blue Whale as "discontinued?" because I know of no vendor currently listing it for sale. Troodon is noted as "discontinued" because one of my recommended vendors of individual Invicta figures, Online Hobbies UK, says that it is. Cain and Fredericks (in Dinosaur Collectibles, 1999) list Dimetrodon and Lambeosaurus as "UK exclusives," which suggests to me that perhaps by the time these two figures appeared (circa 1993) Invicta was no longer trying very hard to sell the series in the US. Cain and Fredericks note further that Troodon was "pulled [from the US market] pending litigation" .... whatever that means. It was still sold in England before going extinct sometime in 2003. |
