I must have it -- "Banjo"

Banjoooooo!

      Since part of my fandom for dinosaurs and ancient life is steeped in collecting toys, figures, coins, hats, stickers, what have you, I figured it was very necessary to make rambling about collections a staple in my blog.

      I have a embarrassing amount of dinosaur stuff on multiple wish lists that span most forms of online shopping known to man, ranging from the cute and ridiculous to the monstrous and amazing. I'll pick out my favorites and share them with you, because why the hell not?

      To kick this off with the bang, we'll go with a cool collectible toy exclusively from Australia's own Age of the Dinosaurs Museum in Winston Australia, the awesome Australovenator "Banjo".

What I assume the toy was modeled after.

      If you don't already know about this awesome dinosaur, it's one of the therapods of the Aussie outback, recently discovered and probably Australia's favorite dinosaur. This awesome predator has vicious hand claws and stands about 6 feet tall, 20 feet long.

      Despite how he looks, Banjo is actually a tyrannosaurid, not a raptor, and lives during the early Cretaceous about 95 MYO. Because of it's light frame, it's known as the "cheetah of it's time" according to it's Wiki page.

      I'll have to do a more detailed post about it later, because he's really neat.

BANJOOO!

      Because I'm a dork with a dinosaur toy obsession, I follow a dinosaur toy reviewer on YouTube called Jurassic Collectibles. He's a cool dude who gets to unbox new and not-yet-released dinosaur toys on his channel, which is something I would sell my soul for.

      I don't know if it's the combination of the fact that I love how it looks, painted, or if it's just the exclusiveness of Banjo that makes me want the toy so bad.

Also the name. It's probably the name.

   
 I do have a stegosaurus named Banjo, and my raptor in World of Warcraft was named Banjo, and Space Ghost's giant sea horse monster was named Banjo.

      It's a great name!!

      This figure goes for about $30 on the museum's website, and the shipping is a staggering $45. There is a CollectA figure of this dinosaur for about $10, but it doesn't nearly come close to how cool this model looks.

CollectaA version. Sad, right?

      I do have a friend with some Australian connections, but I don't know if there's a way to make that shipping less gag inducing.  The figure is awesome, but not $80 awesome.

      This is the first figure I've run into that has limitations on obtaining it. This is the age of the Internet, nothing is impossible to find! I'm sure I'll figure out some way of getting this beautiful creature at some point in my life.

      And no, I'm not going to Australia. That place has nightmare bugs.

      I think I'm going to make these posts normal set days of the week. Just different dinosaur/ancient life themed stuff I either have or want really, really bad.

      If you're thinking, "Oh, great. Thanks for showing me this. Now I want it and it's $80."
Then I love you and we should be friends.

      Also, you're welcome.