Vintage Dino Profiles: Marx Iguanodon

Here we have one of the dinosaur's (vs. the mammals) from Marx's Mold Group PL-1083, the Iguanodon. Herbivorous Iguanodon's stomped around during the Early Cretaceous, about 140-110 million years ago, in what is now Belgium, England, Spain, Portugal, and Spain and may have been more extant in Europe. Iguanodon's measured ca9-10m long and could walk on either two legs or all four. Because of their size and abundance they're regarded as a dominant medium to large herbivore. In England, contemporaries would have been: predator's (like Aristosuchus, Eotyrannus, Baryonyx, and Neovenator); low-feeding herbivores (like Hypsilophodon and Valdosaurus), fellow "iguanodontid" Mantellisaurus, the armoured herbivore Polacanthus; and sauropods like Pelorosaurus.

Marx's version is a tad shy of 10m long measuring only 4" (10.16cm) L x 3" (7.62cm) H. I've been concentrating on toy dino's here on Toys and Stuff since November of last year and I try to give just enough info to wet your appetite about dinosaurs and hope that you'll delve deeper into the subject than what little I provide. They are a fascinating subject with new species constantly showing up in the news or revisions to previous finds being reported. After starting this series I joined a couple of facebook groups about toy dinosaurs and was blown away by the latest generation of ultra-realistic, über-detailed toys now available - and that's a cool thing. But just realize that somewhere, sometime there has to be a start to things and, in regards to toy dinosaurs, Marx was really the start with their accurate (for their time) line of plastic toy dinosaurs and prehistoric creatures. For us toy collector's, collecting Marx dino's is fairly easy in that we can at least get loose figures readily. Some boxed sets are readily available, but carded and bagged sets can be hard to find. I do not have any Marx carded or bagged sets in my collection and only one boxed set (not counting the Flintstones sets I have) so that should be easy enough to cover on the blog. So folks, stay tuned to this station for more of your favorite vintage Marx prehistoric creatures. Enjoy! Opa Fritz

This figure is one of the later, waxy soft plastic versions. When Marx reformulated their plastics to lead-free they turned out to be shiny, waxy in appearance