Dinotoys: dinosaur stamps by djeco

EDIT: I am poaching  on someone else’s territory today, and no, this will not become a habit: I am infringing on the Dinosaur Toy Blog‘s area of expertise. Marc, Adam, all the other: sorry – this was too good to pass up.

Djeco, a French company, sells some great toys. If you want to check them out, be warned: Their web page is a flash monstrosity, stay away from it, rather browse amazon or whatever.

For his fourth birthday my son got a set of dinosaur-related stamps by djeco.

Obviously, I had to test them 😀

There are a total of six dinosaurs, one of them a hatching hatchling, plus a ?pterosaur, a volcano,  footprint and…. AARGH! No, I won’t spoil things now…..
The set also includes a stamp-pad, in green, so you’re immediately set to beautify every available surface with mesozoic critters.

I tested each stamp by using it the way most children and adults will – smash it into the ink, and onto a piece of paper – and by repeating the process, but this time carefully pressing each part down to ensure the image is as perfectly transferred to paper as possible. Here are the results.

Triceratops – hasty version on the left, thorough on the right. The skin texturing is…. interesting, to say the least! Certainly not boring, though!

Obviously an ankylosarrawwr!

and Stegosaurus – this one with one row of plates on the back (YAY!), but following the universal tendency of cartoonists and (other) laypeople of slapping the tail spikes on a good bit away from the tail tip. Well, do I have news for you….. Carpenter 1998, figure 3 shows them very near the tip, as is the case in Kentrosaurus (Mallison 2011, figure 3).

Need I say anything? Anything at all?

and finally, a sauropod! OK, they are easily recognizable by the long neck and long tail, but I have to admit that I never, NEVER, ever imagined them with ringed necks and tails 😀

These “dinosaur tracks” – have to put them into quotation marks. Looks more like a bunch of tree trunk sections or something. But OK, in the context you can get what the’re supposed to be. The volcano is kinda nice, though, unless you look too closely at the – what is that on the second one? a lid?

no, I think it is more a magma monster slug trying to wiggle into its home! What we need to counter this is more dinosaurs; let’s hatch some!

Overall, as you can see from the pictures, the stamps are very well made. They handle well, for the clumsy fingers of a three-year old or grown-up palaeontologist, or the nimble ones of a five-year old (my daughter just LOVES them, too). With the larger ones it is important to make sure you press down on the distal parts, though.

For the bitter end, here’s the unavoidable horror….

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRGGGHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

OK, that outta the way, let’s see what else there is to report regarding this set of stamps. First off, they are really good quality. Thick enough that they will last long, pliable enough that you can really push down the corner to get an excellent print. There’s no little bits and pieces sticking out and producing prints in the wrong places either. The ink pad is a bit too small for some of the stamps,

but my kids managed that without any problems. Thus, I can say that from age 4 on, these are fine.

The images of the dinosaurs are obviously cartoonish, which is fine, and they are lovingly done. On a positive note, you can recognize all the animals easily. Overall, a nice quality set for long winter days, and that at less than 15 € (I’ve found it from 11.30 € up, plus shipping). Three big thumb-claws up for this one!