The other day, for the first time in several years, I visited "Gojiraya," an antique toy specialty store in Koenji, and bought a soft vinyl Stegosaurus figure. In the days before online auctions, I used to frequent stores like this (such as "Natsukashiya" in Shimokitazawa or "Billiken Shokai" in Aoyama) to dig for dinosaur treasures. It was a moment of double nostalgia, as I found myself searching for dinosaur items in a store filled with Showa Retro toys, just as I used to do.
The Stegosaurus I bought then has no manufacturer's logo and its origin is unknown, but from its face and other features, I've decided to infer - or rather, convince myself - that it's from a dinosaur series by a manufacturer called "Daikyo."
In 1966, "Marusan Shoten," which held exclusive rights to popular monster series like Ultraman and Godzilla, released soft vinyl monsters. A few years later, Bullmark took over, and the monster boom swept the nation. Taking advantage of this, "Daikyo" was one of the manufacturers that created so-called "batchimon" monsters (original monsters that resembled popular ones but were not the same), and they also released dinosaurs that "did not have copyrights." The dinosaur series was titled "Living Dinosaurs and Monsters - Supervised and Guided by Science Critic Toshio Aijima-sensei" and featured six types.

Photo 1: From left, Tyrannosaurus, Allosaurus, Diatryma!, Iguanodon, Stegosaurus (Triceratops is not yet acquired. There is no confirmation that the aforementioned Stego and Iguanodon are from the same manufacturer). The figures are in plastic bags with Aijima-sensei's commentary (Photo 2), but despite the先生's supervision, both the Tyranno (Chirano) and Allo have four toes on their forelimbs, and the packaging illustration is utterly terrifying with its ray-emitting monsters. It's quite something (Photo 3).

Daikyo also had large soft vinyl dinosaurs. The Stegosaurus and Dimetrodon in Photo 4 are about 45cm long and impressive. The sculpting of the Dimetrodon, in particular, is quite good.

While Daikyo's dinosaurs are only known to be "probably from the 40s," the release year of the following Marusan dinosaurs can be identified. In 1967, to coincide with the release of Harryhausen's film "One Million Years B.C.," three types of dinosaurs (Photo 5), Triceratops, Brontosaurus, and Stegosaurus (which did not appear in the film), and Archelon (not yet acquired) were released as character merchandise. While realism cannot be expected from dinosaur sculpts of this era, they are quite unique and charming, aren't they? It seems that even greatly simplified copy versions of Marusan dinosaurs (batchimon dinosaurs!) were circulating (Photo 6), suggesting that the world of 40s soft vinyl dinosaur figures is still quite deep.
Next time, we'll look at soft vinyl dinosaurs from the 1970s, which became a bit more dinosaur-like.