Pop Culture’s Best Dinosaur TV Shows and Films for Children
Evidence of the first dinosaurs was discovered in the late-1600’s, though the name “dinosaur” didn’t get coined for another hundred and sixty-five years. Nevertheless, humans—and especially young children—have been fascinated with dinosaurs ever since.
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- Live-Action Dinosaurs of the 1970s
- The Land Before Time Starts a Dino-Boom in the 1980s
- Dinosaur Cartoons of the 1980s
- Jim Henson’s Animatronic Dinosaurs of the Early 1990s
- More Animated Dinosaur Series
- Disney’s Dinosaur (2000)
- Dinotopia (2002)
- Contemporary Shows and CGI Dinosaurs
(What if Barney were real? Concept art by Jay Guevara shared on Photobucket.)
The fearsome recreations of full-size dinosaurs by the Stan Winston Studio in Jurassic Park still represent perhaps the most compelling attempt by artists to imagine a world with real, interactive dinosaurs. But on the small screen, kids have been treated to many examples of friendlier dinos, from The Flintstones’ famous “dog” Dino—actually some kind of small sauropod—to the ubiquitous purple T-Rex, Barney. Today, we’ll look back and pay tributes to a few of our other favorites.
(Dino with Fred on top, battery operated, plush & plastic toy from Marx, 1962.)
Live-Action Dinosaurs of the 1970s
The first live-action children’s TV show with dinosaurs, NBC’s Land of the Lost, created by Sid and Marty Krofft featured a docile baby Sauropod named “Dopey” and a hostile T-Rex named “Grumpy.” Both were achieved with stop-motion puppets for the wide shots and hand puppets for the close-ups (see Garage Monsters and Garage Monsters Two to learn to make your OWN Land-of-the-Lost-style puppets.) With other non-human characters such as the Pakuni and Sleestak played by actors in heavy makeup and latex suits. CBS launched Hanna/Barbera’s Valley of the Dinosaurs, an animated show, the very same year with a suspiciously similar setup where an ill-fated rafting trip leads to a prehistoric valley with no obvious escape.
(The “Grumpy” Puppet from Land of the Lost, created by creature-maker Wah Chang, was recently sold at auction for $5,000.00.)
The Land Before Time Starts a Dino-Boom in the 1980s
Arguably the film that brought the dino-craze to light, years before Spielberg made dinosaurs fearsome, he made them adorable. The Land Before Time co-produced by George Lucas with Don Bluth directing. The mercifully short non-musical (unlike it’s twelve direct to video sequels and the TV series) depicts the hard life and inter-species cooperation between dinosaurs of the overlapping Jurassic and Cretaceous periods. Annoyingly, the actual dinosaur species names are discarded in favor of child friendly, “Longnecks,” “Spike-Tails,” “Three-Horns,” “Flyers” and “Sharptooths.” At Speilberg’s request the attack of Chomper the Tyrannosaur was toned down. (Probably he just wanted to save all the glory for the positively gripping Tyranno attack on REAL children he’d direct a few years later.)
(Ducky, a Saurolophus, narrowly avoids being a snack for an attacking “Sharptooth” aka T-Rex.)
Dinosaur Cartoons of the 1980s
DINOSAUCERS – 1987
Arguably one of the lamest animated cartoons to ride The Land Before Time dino-wave, Dinosaucers was about a group of anthropomorphic brightly colored dinosaurs, called Dinosaucers, who battled the evil Tyrannos for no good reason. Both groups arrived on earth from the planet Reptilon. Four teenagers given special rings that give them superpowers help the Dinosaucers. A mess of a show that was a blatant attempt to rope in kids who’d watch ANYTHING with a dinosaur in it.
DINO-RIDERS – 1988
Little more than an ad for Tyco’s planned launch of a toy line where future humanoids are transported back in time to the age of dinosaurs. The best thing to come out of this show was that James Gurney modeled his character Bix from DINOTOPIA on the Dino-Riders Protoceratops toy.
DENVER, THE LAST DINOSAUR - 1988
A US/French animated show that ran for 2 seasons in 1988 and 1989 followed by the dino boom caused by the success of The Land Before Time, Denver, the Last Dinosaur featured kind of a Dino-style Corythosaurus who, once released from his pre-historic shell discovered at the La Brea Tar Pits museum, stood on two feet, wore pink sunglasses, skateboarded and played electric guitar. ‘nuff said.
(Denver in all his animated glory.)
Jim Henson’s Animatronic Dinosaurs of the Early 1990s
Fran & Earl Sinclair were anthropomorphic dinosaurs in this typical family sitcom set 60 million years ago. The dinosaurs in Dinosaurs were puppets made by the Jim Henson Company, shortly after Jim’s passing. Cleverly, all the dinosaurs were named after Oil companies (Sinclair, Hess and the boss—B.P. Richfield.) In the series finale, the dinosaurs accidentally trigger their own demise by dropping bombs into volcanoes which triggers the ice age—a thinly veiled metaphor playing on contemporary society’s fears of a nuclear winter. But aside from the clever satire, the show was also a fantastic outlet for state-of-the-art puppeteering and animatronics, and like the dinosaurs, we miss those things!
(A cross-section cutaway of the workings of Earl's head from Dinosaurs. Source: Jim Henson’s Creature Shop: No Strings Attached, MacMillan Books, 1997.)
More Animated Dinosaur Series
THE ADVENTURES OF T-REX – 1992
From the Wikipedia entry: “The show features five musical Tyrannosaurus brothers who played to sold-out crowds as a vaudeville group for the Dragon company owned by the beautiful and wealthy Myrna while also secretly fighting crime as "T-REX," masterminded by Professor Edison.” Of note, Buck, the yellow one, had Humphrey Bogart’s voice which I’m sure kids understood.
(Buck voiced by Humphrey Bogart impersonator Michael Beattie from The Adventures of T-Rex, a DIC/Kitty Film US/Japan collaboration.)
Disney’s Dinosaur (2000)
Disney’s first fully computer-animated film was also the costliest film of the year at over 130 Million dollars. That’s more than a dollar for every year since the Stegosaurs and Allosaurs first walked the earth. Though the idea of having the dinosaurs speak contemporary English was a late add-on to a story conceived without dino-speech. The otherwise realistic depiction of dinosaurs was achieved through extensive live-action photography of backgrounds with digital dinosaurs positioned—some would argue hastily rendered and composited—into the amazing environments. Yet, kids love dinosaurs. The film was a box-office success, earning almost 3x it’s cost in its worldwide and domestic theatrical release, not to mention the ancillary benefits of endless toys, games, theme park rides etc.
(A still from Disney’s Dinosaur, copyright Disney Enterprises, Inc.)
Dinotopia (2002)
Based on James Gurney’s fabulous book The World Beneath, and it’s sequels, Dinotopia ran as a 4-hour miniseries produced by Hallmark for the Disney Channel and was followed by one-season of an ABC show. Though not as beautiful as the books, the show won an Emmy for its visual effects, largely CGI dinosaurs by Framestore in England, though there were some live-action animatronics created by the Jim Henson Creature Shop.
(Dinotopia author and illustrator, James Gurney holds the animatronic hatchling character “26” created for the Hallmark miniseries by the Jim Henson Creature Shop.)
Contemporary Shows and CGI Dinosaurs
Canada’s most recent contribution to the list of Animated dinosaur shows for very young children included 2005’s Harry and His Bucket Full of Dinosaurs, a popular Canadian animated series based on a series of beloved children’s books, where 5-year old Harry jumps into a bucket of dinosaur toys and is transported magically to DinoWorld where the Dinosaurs are full-sized.
With varying degrees of realism, very young kids today have their pick of dino-shows to satisfy their dino-craving. Jim Henson’s Dinosaur Train is the best of the bunch in terms of it’s writing and the inspired combination of kids’ two favorite tropes: dinosaurs and trains. Nick Jr’s, Dino Dan concerns a boy who sees dinosaurs everywhere. And other currently popular children’s shows such as Go, Diego, Go! and The Wonder Pets have dedicated Dinosaur episodes.
(Tiny the Pteranodon and Buddy the T-Rex from PBS Kids’ Dinosaur Train.)
What was your favorite dinosaur when you were a kid? Did we miss your favorite show or movie? Tell us about it in the comments below!
- David Sanger