Inspirations

 

Carnegie Collection Inspirations

The purpose of this page is to document potential inspirations behind the various Carnegie Collection figures. No artist works in a vacuum, and especially in the 1980s, it was common for children's media to take inspiration from, or in some instances straight up copy, more well known paleoartists when creating toys or illustrations for books. Many of the Carnegie Collection figures, especially the first 2-3 waves released between 1988-1990, have color schemes that are based on art that could be found in popular dinosaur books of the late '80s. A few of these are documented below. If you find more, please post a comment or send me an email!

Above: This poster, produced by Ladybird, was either painted by or inspired heavily by Bernard Robinson, whose art formed a basis for many of the initial Carnegie models paint schemes. The poster was sold in the Safari Ltd. catalog.

Tyrannosaurus rex

The earliest versions of the Carnegie Tyrannosaurus, released in 1988/1989, had a very unusual bright orange and dark green color. Others, including the earliest catalog photography, were green with a yellow underside. Both of these colorways look like they took inspiration from the artwork of Bernard Robinson, reproduced below. Robinson's work appeared in several children's books of the late '70s and 1980s, notably Ladybird's Dinosaurs, Kingfisher's The Age of Dinosaurs and St Michael's Dinosaurs. 

Note that the orange and green color is not original to Robinson, but appeared in a 1971 painting by Rudolph Zallinger (below). However, many Carnegie color patterns are found in Robinson's book, so it's likely it was used as a direct source by Carnegie.

In the 1990s, this color was replaced with a brighter, more uniform green. The green is so bright that some collectors have referred to this version of T. rex as "Slimer", due to its resemblance to the Ghostbusters character. This ghostly bright green might in fact be based on the mural by Otto von Fuehrer that used to hang in the Carnegie Museum until its 1990s era renovation.

Apatosaurus

The Carnegie Collection Apatosaurus from the 1980s and 1990s had several distinct color schemes, most infamously the "gold wash" versions, but the original catalog photos show a mostly black or dark gray sauropod with a light beige underside. This seems like a reference to the classic Charles R. Knight painting of Brontosaurus. Some slightly later variants (from 1990) even have a green tone blended into the dark back color, which is noticeable in the original Knight painting (some reproductions in books come out with a much darker/black color as in the initial Carnegie figures).

Parasaurolophus

The first version of the Carnegie Parasaurolophus was painted in a mottled blend of light greens and yellows. The overall effect is very similar to illustrations from the same Bernard Robinson books mentioned above. Interestingly, the pose of the Parasaurolophus also looks like it takes inspiration from vintage dinosaurs, in that it is very similar to the pose of the Marx Trachodon. There is also an undeniable resemblance between the Carnegie Parasaurolophus and the character "Ducky" from the 1988 animated film The Land Before Time.

 

Triceratops

It's hard to say that any one piece of paleoart inspired the Carnegie Triceratops, especially since the original one was mostly gray, and "gray Triceratops" has always been a common trope due to its superficial similarity to a rhinoceros. However, it is worth noting that, since Carnegie seems to have taken a lot of inspiration from Bernard Robinson's books, there is a light gray Triceratops featured in one of his illustrations that is pretty similar.

Maiasaura

The Carnegie Maiasaura is orange with brown markings and a light underside, which was such a common trope in the 1980s I have trouble thinking of any counterexamples. The definitive version of this idea comes from Doug Henderson, who created many evocative paintings of Maiasaura, notably for the 1987 book Maia: A Dinosaur Grows Up by John R. Horner himself.

Later versions of the Carnegie Maiasaura were updated with more starkly separated orange, white, and brown markings, similar to common 1990s era illustrations like this one by Donna Braginetz, painted for the 1989 issue of Natural History Magazine.

Pteranodon, Elasmosaurus, and Mosasaurus

All three of these Carnegie figures, produced in 1989-1990, had color schemes that are nearly identical to the ones illustrated by Bernard Robinson (see poster at the top of this page). As you can see, even the pose of the Robinson Pteranodon is mimicked by the Carnegie figure, though in this case it is unclear which one inpired which since it seems likely the sculpt od the figure predated Robinson's poster. However, Robinson clearly copied his color schemes from older Burian paintings, pictured below. This distinctive look for Elasmosaurus was also used by David Peters in his influential book Giants of Land, Sea, and Air.

Spinosaurus

For their 1992 Spinosaurus figure, Carnegie took a page out of Tyco's book and directly copied a Japanese dinosaur figure produced by Tsukuda in the 1980s. Many DinoRiders toys were inspired by this collection, but, as far as I can tell, this is the only Carnegie to crib from their color schemes. Interestingly, the Spinosaurus pictured on the official Carnegie Poster looks quite different and was itself the inspiration for the 2007 repainted version.

Saltasaurus

The 1997 Carnegie Saltasaurus has a color scheme that looks pretty clearly based on the illustrations done by Betty Raskin for Janet Riehecky's book Saltasaurus, published in 1991.

Quetzalcoatlus

Both the design and color of the 1998 Quetzalcoatlus Carnegie figure were based on a 1991 depiction by John Sibbick. You can read a detailed analysis of this figure here.