Stegosaurus

1/20^th Stegosaurus stenops

The original model was sculpted by Shigeru Yamazaki, the artist who made all the Kaiyodo DINOLAND skeleton models. I finally obtained a Taiwanese recast of this model from a friend in China (details below).

Images and the making-of article were sent to me by Zhenghao Chen (USA) and, more recently, scans of the kit instructions sent to me by Chinese collector Leonard. Unfortunately I can't read the Japanese kit instructions as they would probably shed some light on the models origin.

What's immediately apparent is the kit was not a KAIYODO product, as I originally assumed, since the KAIYODO brand does not appear anywhere on the printed instructions (shown below). It seems likely that Shigeru made and sold this model himself. Interestingly, it's the only one of his sculpts that included a diorama base.

 It's very likley the rarest of Shigeru's kits and although small (~30 cm) it is a beautiful and very detailed model.

An intriguing photo of raw resin cast parts of an original Shigeru kit.

In December 2011 I obtained a superb recast copy of the Shigeru Stegosaurus skeleton kit. I have no record of what the original kit production was like but this looks like a good facsimile, it comprised:

• Box with original art label
• Bagged part set
• Diorama base
  
• Glossy photo print
• 2-sided instruction sheet