While dinosaurs dragging their tails are often described as "nostalgic" these days, before the groundbreaking "The Great Dinosaur Book" was published in 1976, general dinosaur fans like myself couldn't have imagined dinosaurs walking with their bodies horizontal and tails balancing them. So, I was astonished and impressed by Bakker's depiction of a Deinonychus sprinting with its tail held high.

Even back then, there were dinosaur models (like Airfix plastic kits), but naturally, they all stood on three points. Dissatisfied as I had awakened to a new image of dinosaurs, I attempted to modify them.
(Photo 1 - A Deinonychus modified from a Hong Kong-made rubber toy, and a Tyrannosaurus modified from Nitto (white) and Tamiya (green) plastic models.) I can't help but smile at them.

Around 1985, Kaiyodo released Japan's (and perhaps the world's) first resin kit of a horizontal-postured Tyrannosaurus. This was an early masterpiece by the renowned Kazunari Araki (Photo 2). While it had some questionable aspects by today's standards, such as not having binocular vision (back then, no one considered binocular vision an issue), I think it's a wonderful work full of dynamism, almost making you hear its roar. However, garage kits at the time had poor casting, so I had to make the teeth myself with epoxy putty and extensively fill joints with putty to carve out surface details, which was a tremendous amount of work.

Araki is a person who should be called the pioneer of modern dinosaur models, having created many dinosaurs with tails held high, such as Deinonychus (Photo 3) and Megalosaurus (Photo 4). Incidentally, Kaiyodo's early lineup of dinosaur models also included quite a few old-fashioned dinosaurs, reflecting a time of change.