There was only one Marx Hadrosaurus, always made in the same mold (the "medium" mold, # PL750). He was made throughout both the original production and the reissue periods. His mold cavity was a three-segment one of surprisingly complex shape. Basically it was comprised of left, right, and front/dorsal segments, but the right side of the neck, just under the bill, was actually part of the left-half segment....another moldmaking tour de force from Marx. The usual original issue colors were green and gray, as shown in the above photo. The reissue figure in the photo is in one of the standard reissue colors, an unhealthy-looking pale green. The pose is peculiar. Hadrosaurus looks like he's about to deliver a particularly tedious oration. An 1897 Charles R. Knight painting of Hadrosaurus might be the inspiration for the Marx figure, although Knight shows the tail deeper (dorsal-ventrally), the legs longer, the arms/forelegs thinner, the toes of the hindlimbs splayed out further, the eyes smaller, and the skull higher (see detail below). That painting was retired and squirrelled away somewhere in the basement of the American Museum of Natural History, and replaced by another version painted by Knight in 1909. A detail of the 1897 painting is below. 
The Marx figure bears little obvious resemblance to the 1909 painting. Its derivation from the 1897 painting is more plausible, especially evident from non-skeletal details like the profile of the dorsal margin of the tail, and the large skin wrinkles on the back of the head, both shown by Knight and faithfully replicated by the sculptors at Marx. But the histrionic pose of the Marx figure still eludes explanation. Hadrosaurus markings - HADROSAURUS (left side of tail), 40'LONG (right side of tail) The ELM version of this figure is here. (More at some future date) |