Did you know that DeJankins has sold these items?

Back in the late 1990’s I had a friend suggest to me that DeJankins should sell the Starlux figures from France. That sounded like a good idea, so I found the phone number for Starlux and promptly gave them a call. I could speak a little French, I did know the word “bonjour” meant good day. But that was it. Of course, the courteous receptionist answered and greeted me in French, and my first words out were, “Bonjour, may I please speak with someone who speaks English?”. That phone call yielded a wonderful run of DeJankins supplying many North American collectors with the wonderful old world prehistoric figures from Starlux. If you are not familiar with these gems, check out this thread on the STS collectors site (you must be a member of that site in order to see the photos, well worth joining!):

https://sts-forum.forumieren.de/t23881-starlux-dinosaurs-la-prehistoire-complete-collection-and-some-curiosities

That same friend, some time later, recommended that I consider carrying the Mignot figures from France. So, after another phonecall to a courteous receptionist overseas, I was able to establish and account and order the prehistoric animals from the C.B.G. Mignot collection. See the link below for another thread on the STS collectors site:

https://sts-forum.forumieren.de/t21810-cbg-mignot-lead-prehistoric-line

In addition to the two French sets just noted, DeJankins has also provided the following figures:

• The ToyWay Walking With Dinosaurs line from Great Britain

• Pewter sets from Pewter Image and Sunwest Silver

• The British Museum Natural History figures from Invicta Plastics

• Koala Hills pewters from The National Dinosaur Museum of Australia

• The 1:48 scale line from the Louis Paul Jonas Studios in New York

• The six piece vinyl set from Marvel Education

• Many early items from Kinto Favorite of Japan, including soft models, Desktop Models, and other items

• The nine piece Wade Miller pewter set from Miller Enterprises of Provo, Utah

• PlayVisions sets of dinosaurs, prehistoric mammals, prehistoric marine reptiles, and prehistoric amphibians as well as the American Museum sets

• Old world Marolin animals and trees from Germany

There are many brands which DeJankins does not carry. It isn’t because they are not worthy, far from it. But some suppliers order requirements are more than what a small company like DeJankins can meet. Twice we have ordered items from companies (quite a lot in order to meet minimum order requirements) only to later find out that the items did not seem popular with DeJankins customers. We have many of those items still in stock, many years after receiving them. A small company can’t afford to make too many mistakes like that if it wants to remain in business.

But as the list above, and our current offerings show, DeJankins has done a good job of providing quality collectibles at good prices for our customers.

If you were one of the customers from years ago who did order any of the above items, please leave a thought about them by using the Comment link below. Thank you!

It was June 26, 1996 . . .

. . . when DeJankins was “officially” started. At least, according to the North Carolina Department of Revenue. Thirty years ago. That’s a long time to be in business, especially for such a niche business, dealing only in three dimensional, mass produced prehistoric animal figures. But here we are. Just a little younger than the Prehistoric Times magazine (I got their first issue in the mail in July of 1993). DeJankins is just a little older than most of the brands of prehistoric figures that we deal with including Papo, CollectA, Mojö, and EoFauna.

So what?

Well, we should do something to commemorate 30 years. So, stay tuned and check back here on our blog occasionally, as there are plans for various things throughout 2026. Especially in late June and early July. You don’t want to miss them. Look for another post, in February, about various brands of figures that we’ve stocked over the years. There might even be a special something for Valentines Day.

Another "Another waiting game . . . "

So, last year about this time, the previous blog post was created about the delays with Papo 2024 figures. Here’s the next chapter of the waiting game.

DeJankins found out last week from the “new” Papo distributor for North America that they would not be getting any more Papo items in stock. They will not continue as the North American distributor for Papo, and Papo France has told me that they hope to have another distributor in place within the next few weeks. The current distributor has some other Papo items in stock, but not the elusive Suchomimus, nor any of the 2025 prehistoric figures. So, for the time being, (unless we want to pay high international postage rates), we in the USA, Canada, and Mexico, will have to wait to see if/when the new distributor is engaged, and how long it may take them to get these newer items into their stock. Hopefully this will not be a long, drawn out process. But we shouldn’t hold our breath.

As additional information is made available, this blog post will be updated. Stay tuned!

Another waiting game . . .

The anticipated 2024 Papo Ampelosaurus, Suchomimus, and Corythosaurus will be a while. DeJankins has found out this week that Papo is changing distributors in the United States. The former distributor will not be able to order the new 2024 products, the new distributor is not yet ready to do so.

A company representative from Papo in Évry Ville Nouvelle France this morning told DeJankins that it would probably not be possible to place orders with the new distributor until after August of this year. It might not even be possible to get the three new figures until the very end of the year.

So, this is not the best of news for dinosaur figure collectors in the USA. What it is is the next waiting game. We had similar waits on the Kronosaurus and Einiosaurus from last year. So, we know how this game goes. We will eventually get the figures we want. Of course, purchasing them from foreign sources is possible, but additional shipping costs are almost guaranteed. Fortunately, it is not a life or death situation.

An update on two anticipated Papo figures . . .

In response to my request for information on the availability of the 2022 Papo Mosasaurus, here is what the North American distributor said:

“Unfortunately, it’s still on creation process and quality test validation; so it will not be this year.

We hope it for beginning of 2023, but we have no confirmed date now for production.”

I also asked about the leaked image of the Papo Kronosaurus, and the distributor has only the following information from Papo about that figure at this time.

“They are looking into the new dinosaur and will let us know when to expect it,

but they are certain it will be some time in 2023”

Papo Kronosaurus 55089

Shipping Costs - a plan to revamp the postage calculations in the shopping cart

This fall will mark five years since the shopping cart feature was added to the DeJankins website. When it was originally set up, there wasn’t a great way of handling shipping, but we tried to provide fair and reasonable options based on the number of items or the weight of a package. Over the past 54 months it has been obvious that a better solution has been needed.

Over the next two weeks, while away on a family vacation, I hope to make time to reconstruct the shipping calculator for our shopping cart function so that postage is calculated more accurately. Rather than having the same two processes for anyone ordering from any state in the USA, we will hopefully implement functionality which will factor in US Postal service zones and rates. It is our hope that the new system will be more economical for all DeJankins customers across the board.

Another major issue with the current system is that only orders from addresses in the United States have been accepted. We hope to expand initially to include Canada, and hopefully later the rest of our world. But this is a bigger project than can be accomplished in just the next couple of weeks. We will see what can be done. Whatever the case, hopefully by the end of May there will be a better solution in place for calculating postage for most of our customers.

Thanks for your patience with us during this attempt to update this process.

New EoFauna Konobelodon and Diplodocus expected May 4th

According to the shippers website, the newest EoFauna figures should arrive at DeJankins on May 4th. We have already planned to be out of town beginning May 10th, so it will be a busy few days once the Konobelodon and Diplodocus arrive, trying to get customer orders filled for those figures. Depending on the number of orders, we may or may not be able to fill all orders before leaving town on our vacation. We will do our best, fulfilling orders in the order in which we receive them. Thank you for your patience!

New from EoFauna in early 2022 - Diplodocus carnegii

Another sauropod will join the EoFauna line in early 2022 - Diplodocus carnegii. It looks to be a very nicely done figure and will be a welcome addition to this growing and well done collection of prehistoric animal models.

According to Asier Larramendi of EoFauna, this is the first time a figure has been created based on a 3-D musculoskeletal reconstruction published in a scientific study. The figure is at 1:40 scale and measures around 62 cm in length and about 11 cm high (24.4 inches long by 4.33 inches high). View information about the study at https://doi.org/10.1002/ar.24574 and check back with DeJankins in Late January or early February to get your copy of this beautiful piece.

Shown with the EoFauna Atlasaurus released in 2019.

A new brand in the DeJankins store - Wild Past!

It’s been a few years, but DeJankins is now carrying items from a new brand on this website. Wild Past produced a really nice Protoceratops a year ago and their brand new Tethyshadros pair have just found their way to the United States. DeJankins will have these figures in stock next week (c. June 9th). Please take a look at these new pieces and get yours soon. Here is a link to that page.

Finally . . . the ability to search products on the DeJankins site

My name is Dean Walker. And I am not a web master. I’ve worked for the same company (or one of it’s acquisitions) for the past 39 years. I’ve worked in their computer department for that entire time. But it has been on mainframe computer systems or monitoring database servers. I say again, I am not a web master. But I have just completed something I’ve wanted to add to the DeJankins site for several years - a search facility. And I’m kind of proud of that!

In the navigation pane at the top of DeJankins web pages is a “searching dejankins” link. Clicking that link will open a new page with the search bar. I’ve put some comments on that page about searching through the DeJankins website. Searching is one of the basic things on most websites, so you probably do not need a tutorial on how to do it. But I have put some tips on that page which may help you in finding products or related products across all brands in the site.

I would appreciate it if you would drop me a note to let me know if you find things which come up incorrectly in your search results. I have tried to learn about the various properties which control how searching is done and I have tried to “fix” issues that I found. But I imagine I have missed some.

Thanks for your patronage. I hope this will make the site a bit more friendly and usable. Thank you!