1984. The world of Japanese dinosaur models experienced a Cambrian explosion that year, and my wallet exploded along with it!

In December of the previous year, an announcement for a new dinosaur series appeared in "Art Pla," the company magazine of "Kaiyodo," one of the garage kit manufacturers that was becoming popular with anime characters and monsters at the time. Then, in April, "Hobby Japan" magazine published a major dinosaur special (Photo 1). Gracing the cover was a Spinosaurus created by Kazunari Araki. This marked Mr. Araki's debut, who would go on to lead Japanese dinosaur modeling. In addition to articles on the creation of Spinosaurus and Ornitholestes, he shared his passion for dinosaurs over several pages. While several other modelers participated, they seemed to have no particular attachment to dinosaurs, playing supporting roles by creating prehistoric creatures other than dinosaurs such as Smilodon, mammoths, and Pteranodons. In essence, it was a special feature on "Araki and his dinosaurs."

And in response to this special issue (or rather, the article might have been a campaign), Kaiyodo released its "Dinosaur Museum Series." These were resin kits, and first up were 1/20 scale Triceratops and Tyrannosaurus sculpted by Mr. Araki. At 20,000 yen for the Triceratops and a staggering 38,000 yen for the Tyrannosaurus, they were incredibly expensive, but I decided to bite the bullet and buy them. This was the biggest purchase in my collecting history up to that point.

Note: Garage kits are distinct from plastic models (injection kits), but they are given a chapter in the definitive "50-Year History of Plastic Models." And, honestly, without garage kits, this "History of Dinosaur Plastic Models" would have a gaping hole until the year of Jurassic Park in 1993.

Well, having bought them, the journey to displaying them on a shelf was another ordeal. Early resin kits, perhaps due to technical limitations, had ill-fitting joints. I had to file them down to fit, fill them with putty, and re-sculpt lost details like scales and wrinkles. (Incidentally, the T-Rex had no teeth at all, so I made them myself from epoxy putty.) Sometimes, I had to hold heavy resin parts by hand for tens of minutes, which was also a good muscle workout, killing two birds with one stone... These are the results of such efforts (Photos 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7). The T-Rex, in particular, was worth the struggle. It's undeniably cool. Beyond being arguably the world's first commercially available dinosaur model in a horizontal posture, its dynamism and gravitas were precisely what I, who was so passionate about the "new dinosaur image" at the time, had been waiting for. While different from the realistic, biology-oriented sculpting based on skeletons of today, it feels alive in a different sense. Can't you almost hear its roar?!

The Ceratosaurus (1/20) in Photo 8 was also released around the same time, and believe it or not, the original sculpt was by Mr. Araki when he was in his first year of high school!

Kaiyodo's dinosaur series continued to expand, drawing in other sculptors. According to the 1988 catalog, it included 10 types in the 1/20 series, 31 types in the 1/35 series, and 18 types in the affordable collection-sized series around 1000 yen (Photos 9, 10, 11 - all these series were sculpted by Araki-san). And this doesn't even include Shinobu Matsumura's dinosaurs or Shigeru Yamazaki's skeletal models (Secret Treasures Vol. 26), so it would add over 30 more figures... The fact that about 80% of them are in my house makes me wonder how much I've poured into Kaiyodo over the years...

It's impossible to introduce all of Kaiyodo's vast dinosaur collection, so next time, I plan to show you some particularly impressive ones. Finally, let me show off a special treasure. The "Ornitholestes + Archaeopteryx" in Photos 12, 13, and 14 are the actual models featured in the aforementioned Hobby Japan magazine, and they were given to me by Mr. Araki himself! Pretty enviable, right?