I've been sitting on this figure for two weeks, dying to show it off, but I couldn't until it had posted as part of the Analogue Hobbies Painting Challenge "Toy Story" Bonus Round. The theme was to paint something relating to toys from your childhood, and for me that meant dinosaurs! I was 6 when Jurassic Park hit theaters, and didn't get to see it for a few years but I had all the toys. But before Jurassic Park, there was another dinosaur toy line I was obsessed with.
Released in 1988, Tyco's Dino-Riders had a short-lived tie-in cartoon series and a comic book series released by Marvel Comics. In the toys' lore, the heroic humanoid Valorans and the evil, half-humanoid, half-animal Rulons were battling in the distant future; a ship of Valorans tried to escape the Rulon invasion of their homeworld using the Space-Time Energy Projector to travel through time. Unfortunately, they dragged a Rulon battleship with them, and the S.T.E.P. device malfunctioned, hurling both spaceships back to the Age of the Dinosaurs.
Here, the Valorans used their psychic powers to befriend the dinosaurs they met, while the Rulons used mind-control to enslave them. Thus, both forces continued their battle, aided by the power of dinosaurs!
I took a look through galleries of the classic toys, dredging up 35-year old memories of which toys I had - and which ones would be interesting to paint up! Frankly, a lot of them were extremely dark olive drab - the T. rex was such a dark green it was almost black! Fortunately, one that I remembered owning did have an attractive splash of color to it. Say hello to "Monoclonius."
This is a Centrosaurus from Acheson Creations; it comes in two pieces, with a resin body and metal-cast head. It has an integral "rock" base that all four feet are touching, despite the galloping pose; I've glued it to a 50x75mm 3D printed base, which has been further gussied up with flock and some plastic "school diorama" plants I got a couple big bags of off Amazon a few months back.
But wait, I hear you say. Centrosaurus? Didn't I just say Monoclonius? Bear with me, I'll come back to that.
Monoclonius was part of the first series of Dino-Rider toys released in 1988; part of the Rulon faction, it came packaged with the Rulon Sharkman "Mako" and had a simple action feature; the head and tail were linked and moving one back and forth moved the other with it.
Unlike the dark olives and muddy browns of much of the line, Monoclonius had a dark green body, fading to a lighter shade on the legs, and a splash of bright turquoise on the face. While I wasn't up to the challenge of scratch-building Mako and his weapons platform, I could absolutely copy this color scheme.
So, to address the relationship between Centrosaurus and Monoclonius - they're most likely the same animal. The name "Monoclonius" was assigned to extremely fragmentary remains in the 1870s, possibly remains from multiple different species jumbled together. Some "Monoclonius" remains are probably Styracosaurus, others might be Einiosaurus, but the most likely candidate is Centrosaurus; all three are medium-sized relatives of the more famous Triceratops, lacking the long brow horns but having other ornamentation and long straight- or forward-curved nose horns. So while Centrosaurus was technically named *after* "Monoclonius," and normally the first name would be the one given precedence, because the fragments of "Monoclonius" are so small, and so "we can't really differentiate this from other animals," that Centrosaurus is the name given priority.
Up until the late 1990s, there were still scientists arguing for Monoclonius to exist alongside Centrosaurus as separate animals, but as of 2025 the consensus seems to be that it just isn't it's own species. And this happens sometimes with paleontology. So while "Monoclonius" might no longer exist as a valid animal, it remains a valid part of my childhood toy box.
All in all, I'm pretty pleased with how this turned out, especially the nose horn. And it was fun to go through the list of Dino-Riders figures trying to remember which ones I'd had as a kid! I've already factored this one into the tally below.
Miniatures Acquired: 47
Miniatures Painted: 47
Terrain Acquired: 0
Terrain Painted: 1
Scatter Acquired: 0
Scatter Painted: 0
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