Artistic License Paleontology / Toys

• The Dino-Riders franchise had dinosaurs from virtually everywhere, plus the obligatory pterosaurs and Dimetrodon. A spinoff line of prehistoric mammals provided another example of this trope, with an entelodont (giant pig-thing) alongside a giant ground sloth, saber-toothed cat, and woolly mammoth. Then again, this is a series that concerns the exploits of aliens waging war on prehistoric Earth with the help — voluntary in the case of the good guys, not so much in the case of the bad guys — of the animals. Rule of Cool heals many a wound.
• Playschool had a toy line called Definitely Dinosaurs. It featured fully articulated prehistoric creatures, and was meant to be educational... so what are the cavepeople doing there? At least the packaging pointed it out and said it was just for fun.
• Tyco's ImagiNext line does the same thing, though it has no pretensions of being educational. Bonus no-prize for the Carnivores Are Mean storyline.
• Fisher-Price has a line called Imaginext Dinosaurs which is various dinosaur toys (IE: Tyrannosaurus rex, Triceratops, Brontosaurus (sic) along with some commonly-used non-dinosaurs (IE: Sabre-Toothed Tigers, Woolly Mammoths, Dimetrodons, Pteranodons, etc.)...Oh, and cavemen. Considering it's meant to be a science fiction-fantasy-action line of toys for kids, it's somewhat forgivable. However, the real outrage is that one of the toys (which is supposed to be a Dilophosaurus, including the cliched Jurassic Park-inspired frill...which it NEVER had) is called a "Frilled Raptor". Can you hear your inner paleontologist sobbing now?
• And then, there's Topps' insane Dinosaurs Attack! trading card series. It's probably a lot easier just to say this: any question as to whether or not they were pointedly invoking the Dinosaurs Are Dragons trope were gone the minute it turned out that the (all carnivorous and homicidal regardless of species) dinosaurs were sent by Dinosaur Satan. In addition, this is one incredibly violent series of cards — rivaling even Topps' own "Mars Attacks" in terms of sheer mayhem. The whole set generally appears to be aiming for Refuge in Audacity writ large.
• Much of the dinosaurs found in Dollar Stores are guilty of this trope. Case in point, at least one Dollar Store has toys for sale that include a Ceratosaurus labelled as an Oviraptor and a Dimetrodon labelled as Spinosaurus.
  • And there exists one such "Chinasaur" package that depicts a T. rex eating a huge lump of grass... maybe it was hay, but in either case, it was not flesh-colored. The toy makers must have been living in a cave their whole lives.
  • Gary Gygax created a handful of the iconic monsters of Dungeons & Dragons when he bought a bag of toys to use as miniatures which could only have been called "dinosaurs" euphemistically, despite this being what the bag was labelled as. The rust monster was inspired by what looked like a cross between a flea and a lobster with a propeller on its tail. Only a handful of the rest were anything close to dinosaur-shaped. For reference, the Bulette is probably the most dinosaur-like of the monsters that share this origin.
• In general, most toys would be more accurately conveyed in the term "Prehistoric long dead things in colorful poses," but that would not please many parents.
• Check out this tiny "Carnotaurus" from a German toy series, called Predators. The only research the sculptor made most likely stopped at "carnivorous dinosaur with horns". Quite strange, considering the series has models of other, much more obscure and yet better sculpted animals. Though it also has a Sauropod calling itself a Lystrosaurus, a naked raptor, and a Theropod labeled "Megatherium". The linked blog offers a variety of similarly exquisitely bad Chinasaurs.
• There exist several lines of cheaply made Transformers-ish figures, all of which turn into dinosaurs, following the same general pattern: back legs become arms, the legs are formed from the belly, the tail splits in two to become shoulder-cannon mounts, and the head ends up on their chest (or in some cases lower, which lead to TF fans dubbing some of these toys "Dinocock Prime"). There is one figure called Deinonychus-Bot, however the actual toy turns into a harmless and cute-looking basal ornithopod/iguanodont! For some reason, this makes the toy all the more badass.
  • Perhaps transforming alien robots only have Jurassic Park for reference with respect to Earth's prehistory.
    • They can only copy mechanical devices. They copied mechanical dinosaurs from theme parks, that were affected from Critical Research Failure to begin with.
• LEGO's Dino line of sets feature standard, JP-styled critters, including a scaly, kangaroo-handed raptor. The figures are still leagues better than the ones from Adventurers or Dino 2010/Dino Attack, though.
  • Ever since biomechanical dinosaur cyborgs got introduced to LEGO's BIONICLE canon, fans have eagerly waited for one to appear in an illustrated form of media. The graphic novel Legends of Bara Magna finally depicted one, but it was a one-panel wonder of a stereotype Flintstones-styled tail-dragging "Brontosaurus" with what looked like miniature lamp-posts sticking out of its cyber-head. But then it kicks in: this is an aversion, since Bionicle animals have never looked realistic.
• The Playmobil dinosaur line largely averts this: the Pteranodon has a toothless beak, most of the theropods have non-pronated hands, the Spinosaurus is larger than the Tyrannosaurus, Velociraptor is accurately sized, etc. The only real caveat is the lack of feathers on the deinonychosaurs.^note  And the nostrils atop the Brachiosaurus's head, but that one's a bit more technical.
  • The Pteranodon does have one major error, though: Digitigrade feet used for perching in trees. Pteranodon had plantigrade feet and lived mostly on the ground when it wasn't flying. At least the resulting visuals are impressive◊.
• There's a set of models called "Prehistoric Digs". The advertising copy for them in the catalog says, "Discover a hidden 3D dinosaur skeleton! Then assemble the scattered bones to reveal your very own 10" museum quality reproduction of a 70 million year old 3D dinosaur skeleton. Specify T-Rex, Triceratops, Stegosaurus, or Mammoth."
• Jurassic Park's Chaos Effect line of toys relied on the Rule of Cool with its insane Mix-and-Match Critters. This is a pretty abstract concept to begin with, though there were instances where you had to wonder how these mutants came to look the way they do, considering what species they're composed of. Velocirapteryx, for example, is said to be a Velociraptor combined with an Archaeopteryx, yet the figure features an elongated pterosaur-finger for a wing, which neither of these had, and said finger serves as an attachment point for the wing feathers, when these really grew out of their second fingers. Also, since Velociraptor and Archaeopteryx were nearly identical-looking dinosaurs anyway, if we did mix them together, the differences between the base dinos and the resulting mutant would hardly be all that apparent (it would be like mixing together a wolf and a jackal). However, as far as the feathers go, there's a fair bit of Science Marches On taking place, because it was only discovered later on that Velociraptor itself was feathered, which makes the figure Hilarious in Hindsight.
  • In the regular toy line, Tanystropheus◊ is portrayed as able to constrict its victims with its long neck like a python. Real Tanystropheus◊ couldn't do this - their necks were relatively stiff, and scientists believe that they mostly ate small prey like fish.
• In Transformers, one of the core Dinobots is the pteranodon Swoop. This is mostly due to the origins of the franchise hailing from importing and rebranding toys from the Diaclone line, of which the "Dinosaur Robo" sub-line included the pteranodon figure that would become Swoop. Besides his existence, due to this Grimlock turns into the older tail dragging depiction of a tyrannosaurus as well, albeit more modern depictions have him turn into the more accurate version.
  • Beast Wars had its Megatron become a more accurate tyrannosaurus in comparison to the original Grimlock^note Being the size of a human notwithstanding. Dinobot on the other hand, becomes a highly inaccurate velociraptor clearly more inspired by the Jurassic Park depiction of the species.
  • An obscure and small Dinobot line from 2003 featured a toy of Sludge as a dimetrodon.
  • In the Power Core Combiners line, the Dinobot Grimstone is misidentified on his box as a Triceratops, whereas he's really a Styracosaurus. Eh, easy mistake to make, especially since he has a stylized, robotic dino-mode. But worse, his Dimetrodon-drone is said to be a Spinosaurus on the same package!
  • Transformers: Age of Extinction starts with a flashback to prehistoric Earth that depicts multiple species of dinosaurs that didn't exist in the same period failing to survive an apocalyptic event. Also, when Strafe shows up ^note Swoop renamed due to trademarks, his beast mode is a double-headed pteranodon, but that's obviously evoquing Rule of Cool over accuracy.
• The Dino Valley lineup of Chap Mei Toys is the embodiment of this trope. It has scaly raptors and pterosaurs, Pteranodon with a beak full of teeth and an additional Tapejara-esque crest, a bizarre cross between an Ornithocheirus and a rhamphorhynchid labled as Pterodactylus, an Ornitholestes (referred to as "Dragonosaurus" in some packaging) with a crest on its snout and raptor-like footclaws, a featherless egg-stealing Oviraptor, double-crested spinosaurids, a frilled Dilophosaurus with a sail and only two toes, bendy-necked plesiosaurs, a Carnotaurus with a small nose horn and tyrannosaurid-like arms, and a Brachiosaurus with a diplodocid-like body.
• While Rebor dinosaur figures have been praised for their incredible detail, they haven’t done well when it comes to accuracy. two egregious examples are their Yutyrannus figure, a dinosaur famous for having feathering barely having any on their figure, and there baby Velocitaptor^note yes they did misspell that triplets which had absolutely no feathering on them and suffering from shrink wrapping.
• Companies producing collectible dinosaur (and other ancient animal) figures are a mixed bag. CollectA (AKA Procon) has long been infamous for producing inaccurate and ugly looking animal toys, though at some point after 2010, they became a favorite among collectors when they began sculpting more scientifically up-to-date models. Papo is also one of the more well-regarded brands for their high quality figurines, despite many of their models being drastically inaccurate (a lot of their dinosaurs have for example been modeled on Jurassic Park designs or generic reconstructions from the 20th century). Other companies, such as Schleich have had a more negative reputation, as the bulk of their models seem to be decades out of date — as revealed by How It's Made, their "research" at times simply consists of looking up dinosaur pictures on Google Image Search.
• The YouTube show Your Dinosaurs Are Wrong focuses on measuring up the accuracy of dinosaur toys. Occasionally, other types of animals, skeleton model kits and fan-made coloring books get to be the subject of an episode.
• The main reason why a lot of dinosaur's toys still use the outdated kangaroo pose has to do a practicality. Many theropod would have issue standing up in toy form. Using the tail as a makeshift third leg fixes this problem. It's not impossible to put them an accurate pose but it's certainly easier to just do the Kangaroo pose.