Thursday, February 17, 2011

Ankylosaurus and Dimetrodon Slug It Out!

In 1977, the year I began, the Chivers Jelly company ran an advertising promotion which enticed consumers into purchasing their delicious gelatin products with that time-honored prize of little plastic prehistoric beasts. It also came with a book called "How The World Began," which hopefully was a bit more accurate than the lurid print ad they ran.
Chivers Jelly How The World Began Ad 1977
Image shared by Combombphotos at Flickr.

I love the Dimetrodon vs. Ankylosaurus battle. Such a wildly anachronistic fantasy. Seriously: drawing me fighting an Ankylosaurus would be less anachronistic by about 200 million years. That is staggering. It's also less likely: I'd rather be good buddies with the big lug than scrap with him.

Ankylosaurus Vs. Dimetrodon!

Of course, I shouldn't make any hasty presumptions: this may very well be a stolen moment from an interspecies courtship ritual. This would certainly fit in with the ouevre of its illustrator, British comic artist Frank Langford, best known for his saucy romance comics. He also drew the space opera comic strip The Angry Planet. More on Langford at the romance comics blog Sequential Crush.

So, do you want to see what the Chiver's Jelly toys looked like? Of course you do. Little plastic dinosaurs: there is no more effective way to make children cajole their parents into buying them sweet treats.

1 comment:

  1. According to this, the Earth is still cooling while a tyrannosaur roams, maybe the jello has had an effect on time which allows an ankylosaur and dimetrodon to meet.

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