Company:
Playmobil
Theme: Dinos
Year: 2012
Price: See
“Availability”
BACKGROUND
Today we look at a birthday present I received a couple of
weeks ago that’s very dear to my heart – a Playmobil dimetrodon.
The dimetrodon is one of my favourite prehistoric animals.
Living between 298 and 272 million years ago during the Permian period, it was
an early precursor to mammals – though sadly, does not have any direct living
ancestors today. As I’ve mentioned elsewhere, the dimetrodon is not actually a
dinosaur. You could be forgiven for thinking so, as it does kind of resemble
one and it’s often featured in books about dinosaurs, not to mention in amongst
dinosaur toys – much like woolly mammoths and sabre-toothed tigers. I didn’t
even realise it wasn’t a dinosaur myself until a couple of years ago! But it
turns out they lived around 40 million years before the first dinosaurs walked
the earth.
One of its most distinct features is the large sail on its
back. Theories behind the sail have changed over the years; when I was a kid,
one of the most common theories was that dimetrodon was cold-blooded and the
sail was for heat regulation. But thought has shifted and it’s now more
commonly thought to have been used as a mechanism for sexual display. But until
we clone a couple of living specimens, Jurassic Park-style, we’re unlikely to know for sure. That means there won’t be a
lot of discussion of “historical accuracy” – which is usually quite silly when
it comes to dinosaur toys – though I’ll make sure some gets in there.
THE PLAYSET
Playmobil playsets are new territory for me. I had a handful
of Klickies as a kid, but never any of the playsets, and don’t remember having
any great awareness of them either. It’s a shame really, as Playmobil is a
great brand and often overlooked.
This one is pretty simple as they go – it’s a sort of swamp
scene – but it’s loaded with accessories with the dimetrodon itself serving as
the centrepiece.
Everything is placed on an irregularly shaped green base,
which has a trench cut into it. What’s that for? Well, you have two choices –
leave it empty and it can be a dried-up swamp. Or do as the box suggests and
click the translucent blue piece into place. Then you’ve got yourself a simple
stream flowing in and pooling. It’s so simple, but looks so great!
Then it’s time for the plants – two trees, a patch of
leaves/moss/lichen, some reedy-looking things and a flowering bush. I’m no good with
modern day botany, and much worse at prehistoric stuff. I couldn’t begin to tell
you whether this is an accurate representation of a Permian Age swamp or not,
so bear with my ignorance.
One tree resembles a palm tree with two separate batches of
leaves. Both have lots of fronds, which are created by inserting multiple leaf
pieces into the top of the two trunks.
The other one looks more like some kind of dead Australian
tree – it has two bits of foliage on it, which serve as mounting points for two
creatures that we’ll get to shortly. The instructions and the box differ
slightly as to how this tree should appear on the display, so I just ended up
going with the image on the box – it better facilitates the angle of the
vegetation. This tree can also be displayed standing straight up, or lying flat
as though it has been knocked over.
The moss is a single piece, nicely textured to break up the
single colour. The reeds are cast in a slightly lighter green, in a flexible
plastic. Particularly interesting is the flower bush. Each little flower needs
to be put onto the bush separately, which was enjoyable for me but will no
doubt annoy many children. The end result looks great though!
Last but not least is a lilypad, complete with white flower
on top. This is an excellent little piece, and you can easily set it “floating”
on the river.
In among the accessories are various fauna to populate the
swamp environment – a snake, a scorpion, an enormous dragonfly and a flying
lizard. The snake could be a contentious inclusion – evolutionary
knowledge surrounding these guys is apparently a bit on the vague side. But
consulting with Bob Strauss’ page here seems to suggest that they first showed
up in the early Cretaceous, with some arguable precursors well before that.
Gasp! POTENTIAL ANACHRONISM!! Scorpions though? A quick bit of Googling seems to suggest that we're in reasonably safe territory.
Now we come to the flying creatures. The first is a large
dragonfly-looking creature – probably a Meganeura.
Related to the dragonflies of today, they were absolutely massive in comparison
to our modern specimens. It’s cast in a translucent plastic, with some slight
tampographs. The only thing I don’t like about it is that it doesn’t actually
glow in the dark, despite looking like it might. It can be mounted on a couple
of different spots on the playset, but the fallen tree is the most logical
place for it.
The second flying creature to mount on the tree is a Xianglong – or possibly a Coelurosauravus or Kuehneosaurus. The Coelurosauravus or Kuehneosaurus are probably a
little more likely as they was first described in 1926 or 1962, in contrast to
the more recently discovered Xianlong, which was first described in 2007.
All of these are species of gliding lizard that you’ll see
decorating many a page in dinosaur books. These lizards are almost never the
focal point of the images they’re in, but they still look really cool and help
set the prehistoric scene. It’s a nice touch, and I don’t think I’ve ever seen
a toy of one before. The Xianlong lived in the Cretaceous period, in what is
now China, while the Kueheneosaurus lived during the late Triassic – and the Coelurosauravus
lived in the Upper Permian, so we may have avoided the dreaded HISTORICAL
ANACHRONISM on this occasion.
Jokes aside, my only real point of criticism of these
accessories is that there are so many that I can’t help but wonder whether this
set is really intended for kids. Maybe you’d give it to a slightly older kid,
9-10 or older, but any younger than that just seems like a recipe for disaster.
It does come with a couple of spare flowers, but you can almost guarantee these
will get lost too. The suggested age of 4-10 seems a little on the low side.
As cool as these elements are, it’s the dimetrodon who is
the centrepiece of the set, so it’s important that he turns out well. He’s got
movement at 3 points – his jaw, and his two forelimbs. It might be nice if the
back legs moved too, but Playmobil has always gone for a pretty simplistic
aesthetic, and this design fits that aesthetic nicely. Not to mention that
younger kids would probably just get incredibly frustrated if they had to try
and balance the thing constantly.
Most of him is cast out of the usual solid Playmobil
plastic, giving him a nice chunky feel. However, his fin is cast in a rubbery
plastic, presumably for safety reasons. It’s fine, but I would have preferred
the whole thing be cast in the same solid plastic – I don’t want the rubbery
plastic cracking and ruining the toy and its paint job as it ages. Still, I’m very, very pleased with this toy.
With the dimetrodon alone, I feel the (reduced) purchase
price is justified – I love dimetrodons and am glad to have an awesome one for
display. But the swamp is a great set in its own right, and all the accessories
are fantastic. Stripped of its prehistoric beasties, this playset could easily
serve as a swamp setting for any Playmobil figures you chose – and if you’re
willing to fudge the scale a little, it could work for Lego, too.
PAINT
There’s not a huge amount of paint on any of this set – the
vast majority of items are cast in the relevant colours, with the dimetrodon
receiving most of the paintwork. Most of the paint has been tampographed. Whether it’s
colour-accurate is of course entirely open to speculation, but it’s a good colour
scheme that still makes the sail a bit of a spectacle, without being garish. The
same goes for the Xianlong’s wings.
The only real dud paint in the set is the snake. Seemingly
hand-painted, in contrast to the tampographing elsewhere, it’s a little on the
sloppy side. But it’s a tiny accessory, so it can be let slide.
AVAILABILITY
Though it’s a couple of years old now, this set is still
reasonably easy to find at your local Toys R Us – and I saw it at the
Australian Museum recently, too. The problem is mainly that it costs an arm and
a leg in Australia, usually around $50AUD. I paid about $USD20 – an on-sale
price, admittedly – for this guy on Amazon, which seems much more reasonable.
OVERALL
Playmobil is great, but I don’t plan to buy a lot of it. I’m
already collecting enough stuff, and there’s only room for so much of this
stuff in the house. Add in the relatively high price (not that Lego and NECA
figures are cheap, mind you), and it’s just not really feasible.
But on this occasion, everything was just right – the price,
the timing and my mood. So I’m very happy with the Dimetrodon. Dimetrodons rarely
seem to get a look-in outside of the lower-end dinosaur toys, so I’m thrilled
to see one in a more prominent role. Here’s to more public awareness of the
dimetrodon!
For more toy photography, follow me on Instagram –
lupinefunclub
Sadly, the final product is not quite what it could be. 
Finally, a word about the paint. The teeth are incredibly
sloppy, and there’s a big mark across the tongue – neither of which was visible
while in the box. This time it’s annoyed me enough that I am actually going to
take steps to fix it. I know I say this a lot in my POP reviews, but I think
this one is bad enough that it’s actually warranted. 
