When the theme rounds were announced, "Toy Story" made me think of one thing - Dinosaurs! I was absolutely a dinosaur kid (still am, to a large degree), and why not? Jurassic Park hit theaters when I was 6 years old, and while it was a few years before my parents would let me watch it, I had all the toys that were released with the film. My dad, who was resuming scale modeling himself after a gap of about 15 years, also picked me up the Lindberg model kits that were released for the film, and building model kits was what eventually led me to painting miniatures.
But before Jurassic Park, there was another dinosaur toy line that captured my imagination. Released in 1988, Tyco's Dino-Riders had a short-lived tie-in cartoon series and a comic book series released by Marvel Comics. In the toys' lore, the heroic humanoid Valorans and the evil, half-humanoid, half-animal Rulons were battling in the distant future; a ship of Valorans tried to escape the Rulon invasion of their homeworld using the Space-Time Energy Projector to travel through time. Unfortunately, they dragged a Rulon battleship with them, and the S.T.E.P. device malfunctioned, hurling both spaceships back to the Age of the Dinosaurs.
Here, the Valorans used their psychic powers to befriend the dinosaurs they met, while the Rulons used mind-control to enslave them. Thus, both forces continued their battle, aided by the power of dinosaurs!
I took a look through galleries of the classic toys, dredging up 35-year old memories of which toys I had - and which ones would be interesting to paint up! Frankly, a lot of them were extremely dark olive drab - the T. rex was such a dark green it was almost black! Fortunately, one that I remembered owning did have an attractive splash of color to it. Say hello to "Monoclonius."
This is a Centrosaurus from Acheson Creations; it comes in two pieces, with a resin body and metal-cast head. It has an integral "rock" base that all four feet are touching, despite the galloping pose; I've glued it to a 50x75mm 3D printed base, which has been further gussied up with flock and some plastic "school diorama" plants I got a couple big bags of off Amazon a few months back.
But wait, I hear you say. Centrosaurus? Didn't I just say Monoclonius? Bear with me, I'll come back to that.
Monoclonius was part of the first series of Dino-Rider toys released in 1988; part of the Rulon faction, it came packaged with the Rulon Sharkman "Mako" and had a simple action feature; the head and tail were linked and moving one back and forth moved the other with it.
Unlike the dark olives and muddy browns of much of the line, Monoclonius had a dark green body, fading to a lighter shade on the legs, and a splash of bright turquoise on the face. While I wasn't up to the challenge of scratch-building Mako and his weapons platform, I could absolutely copy this color scheme.
So, to address the relationship between Centrosaurus and Monoclonius - they're most likely the same animal. The name "Monoclonius" was assigned to extremely fragmentary remains in the 1870s, possibly remains from multiple different species jumbled together. Some "Monoclonius" remains are probably Styracosaurus, others might be Einiosaurus, but the most likely candidate is Centrosaurus; all three are medium-sized relatives of the more famous Triceratops, lacking the long brow horns but having other ornamentation and long straight- or forward-curved nose horns. So while Centrosaurus was technically named *after* "Monoclonius," and normally the first name would be the one given precedence, because the fragments of "Monoclonius" are so small, and so "we can't really differentiate this from other animals," that Centrosaurus is the name given priority.
Up until the late 1990s, there were still scientists arguing for Monoclonius to exist alongside Centrosaurus as separate animals, but as of 2025 the consensus seems to be that it just isn't it's own species. And this happens sometimes with paleontology. So while Monoclonius might no longer exist as a valid animal, it remains a valid part of my childhood toy box.
Overall, I think I did a pretty good job capturing the spirit of the toy's color scheme, while also bringing out the detail on the nose horn and the bony knobs framing the frill, which the toy didn't have colored. While I did not make the rider or his platform, I hope I can still ask that this be scored as a 28mm vehicle. I also claim a squirrel point for Dinosaurs.
