In May 1996, I had the opportunity to appear on the Wanted Corner of TV Tokyo's "Kaiun! Nandemo Kanteidan" (Lucky Item Appraisal Team). They came to my house to film, and they went to great lengths, even compositing a female reporter into a diorama I made. The item they offered 20,000 yen for, waving a wad of bills at the camera, was "Jungle Swamp" from the Aurora Prehistoric Scenes plastic model series.

"PREHISTORIC SCENES," released in 1971 by the now-defunct plastic model manufacturer Aurora, is a masterpiece series in the history of dinosaur models. All models are unified in 1/13 scale, with movable limbs and necks. Each comes with a diorama base and bonus small animals. The lineup includes Tyrannosaurus, Allosaurus, Triceratops, Styracosaurus, Ankylosaurus, Pteranodon, Dimetrodon, Smilodon, Cave Bear, Phorusrhacos, Tar Pit (with a woolly rhino stuck in it), Neanderthal Man, Cro-Magnon Man (male and female), a cave (which combines with the Cave Bear diorama), and the Jungle Swamp, which is a set of small animals. Of course, the proportions are those of dinosaurs from a bygone era, but the expressions of scales and fur are superb, and the poses are dynamic.
At the time of the appraisal show, Jungle Swamp was the only item remaining that I hadn't acquired from the series. I didn't get any response from the show, but later I found it in an American catalog and happily obtained it (photo above). The small animals included are an Archaeopteryx, Rhamphorhynchus, Compsognathus, Eohippus, Kuehneosaurus, a snake, and a Diplocaulus with only its head emerging from the pond.

The two photos above show the shelf where Aurora's dinosaurs are displayed. (Some others are mixed in, but) the Ankylosaurus, Pteranodon, and Dimetrodon are reissues from different manufacturers, but the rest are originals. It's a collector's sin to build valuable kits without stocking them, and even modify them, but back then, I wasn't a collector yet; I was just a dinosaur fan eager to display dinosaur models, so let's consider it fine. In fact, perhaps that's the more correct attitude.

Thinking back to those days in the 70s when I searched for dinosaur models, which were still very few, my heart aches with nostalgia. That was my youth, wasn't it...?