MORE STRANGE DINOSAUR STUFF FROM JAPAN
Here are some oddities I picked up at a thrift store in Japan.
Actually, they don't really have thrift stores in Japan along the lines
of Goodwill or Salvation Army. But in the little country towns you'll
sometimes find antique shops that carry pretty much the same kind of
stuff as you find in American thrift stores among the higher priced
antiques. These are cards, a little smaller than postcards, and were
probably used in some kind of game, although it's possible they were
just for collecting. It's an odd mixture of dinosaurs and movie
monsters, though the movie monsters depicted aren't from any actual
Japanese monster movies. In the Sixties, imitation monster movie stills
like these were quite common in Japan. To avoid paying licensing fees
the makers didn't use Godzilla, Rodan or Mothra, but created their own
monsters instead. Some of the cards below carry copyrighty notices from
Yoko Productions and one from Yama Productions. I've never heard of
either company in spite being in the monster film business in Japan
more than a decade. Dinosaurs from books often made very good imitation
movie monsters as you can see from the fire-breathing iguanadons and
stegosaurs below. And who knew the flightless "terror bird" diatryma of
the Cenozoic era could get that big?
