Bone Age is a line I plan on reviewin on this blog but just need the time to do it. In the mean time, I decided to write this introduction/retrospective up on it to share with all of you.
I have always owned Bone Age toys and was totally into this libe as a 7-8 year old kid, a fact I am sure the designers at Kenner were happy about. The Christmas of 1988 was very much focused around Bone Age as I recieved the Triceratops skeleton ("Tritops") from my Nana at the family Christmas get together, and then the Tyrantisaurus Rex and Plesiousaurus skeletons ("T-Rex" & "Plesio") on Christmas Day itself. This, coupled with the Deinonychus & Anklosaurus skeletons I already had ("Dynacus" & "Anklor"; all the dinosaurs had shorter personalized names) made this an epic holiday for sure. Kenner really did pull out all the stops on this toy line but as a kid I either A) Never showed interest in anything aside from the dinosaur skeletons or B) Never saw anything but the dinos on the shelves to begin with. I received the majority of my collection from gifts so I don't really remember walking into a Kay-Bee or Toys 'R' Us and asking for certain sets by name. As I grew up and became a toy collector, I became interested in the other items in the Bone Age line, and they really went full-tilt on them.
Look what else they offered:
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| "Collect all the clan hunters. Armed with weapons and shields made from rocks and dinosaur bones, 3 clans battle each other for survival. The chiefs wear skull helmets for BONE AGE power. Cavemen are sold separately, and every dinosaur comes with its own caveman too."- Blurb from the card back |
- Clan Packs: "Collect the Chiefs and Hunters from the three Caveman Clans. Each comes with BONE AGE weapons. Chiefs come with removable helmets for BONE AGE power.". These are basically just warriors to bulk our your tribes that came loaded to the gills with weapons and accessories (all for a MSRP of $2.99! Only in the 1980's!). Each tribe had 2 Warriors that came with a signature weapon of their clan, a pair of manacles to capture opposing cavemen, and then some specialty weapons of their onw (typically a melee weapon & shield, but sometimes also a spear too). The Chiefs came with less accessories, but came with bigger, sometimes cooler helmets then the versions of them that were included in the dinosaur sets.
- Action Weapons: "Mini Arsenals for the caveman clans and their dinosaur bones. Attach weapons to dinosaur bones to build strong bone-aged defense.": Compatible with the larger skeleton sets to bulk them out or modify them, basically think of them as stone aged siege weapons. To see two re-purposed pieces from this assortment, check out Kenner's Robin Hood Prince of Thieves Net Launcher and Bolder Bomber. Both take the top, weapon portion from the Bone Age line versions (the Tangle Trap & Bola Bomber; Kenner only changed one of the names) but added a new base for the Bola Bomber so it could look less Stone Age and more Medieval, and allow the Robin Hood figures to stand on it.
-Gigantic dinosaur skeletons that can combine into vehicles, siege weapons, fortresses; whatever you wanted to build them into with your imagination re-assuring your mind that stack of ribs was indeed a hang glider.
Now, Kenner made this whole line in scale with itself, well...roughly in scale. Each cave man warrior stands about 3" tall with that standard 5 points of articulation (head, arms, legs) and the dinosaur skeletons are BIG. I got "Brontus", the Brontosaurus for Christmas from my Nana (I loved my Nana, awesome lady and always got me the coolest stuff) in 1989 and this this is MASSIVE. I have to dig it out for review purposes, but Google "Kenner Bone Age Brontus" and just look how massive that thing is compared to the 3" cave man it came with. I thonught the Stone Clan had this tribal war secured with the T-Rex...but once Kenner gave the Lava Clan Brontus, I bet they shit the proverbial brick, or stone as the case may be.
I did not follow the lore of the line very much when I played with them but that was because the line had virtually no lore or media tie-ins: no mini-comics packed in, no regular comics, no cartoon show- nothing. It's almost if this was a property that appears to have just come into being randomly one day:
Kenner Toy Maker Guy #1: "Hey, wanna make a toy line about three cave men tribes warring with one another that use the animated bones of dead dinosaurs to convert into vehicles and play sets??"
Kenner Toy Maker Guy #2: "'Kay."
And *BOOM*: Bone Age was born.
From what I have been able to figure out from some internet sleuthing, as all my Bone Age boxes got chucked as a kid (still got the instructions though!), all the dinosaur sets had bios for the included cave man warrior. Unfortunately, the bios are reeeally short, like a sentence maybe two tops. Take "Tog" of the Stone Clan (he came with the "Codus" skeleton of some sort of giant prehistoric crocodile), his bio card said this:
Thog- Stone Clan Swamp Master. Has magical powers to travel through thick bogs, leading the Stone Clan to secret prehistoric treasure.
Stone Clan- Agile caveman warriors who dwell in rock wall cliffs. Led by Crag the Clubber.
Not much to figure out from that huh? Thog's entire bio has told us he is a swamp master and used magical powers to navigate through swamps specifically to find secret treasure of a prehistoric nature. I don't know what to do with that. What is "prehistoric treasure"? More dinosaur bones? How does Thog have magical powers? Where do they come from? Did someone give them to him? I NEED ANSWERS KENNER!!
What's even funnier is, the whole blurb about the Stone Clan shows up on every, single Stone Clan Dinosaur set. So, after the first one you kinda got the idea they were agile cliff-dwelling cavemen led by Crag the Clubber. Well, whatever the back story the line did so-so and even had a Burger King tie-in promotion towards the end of the line.
This promotion had four, 4-part dinosaur AND prehistoric mammal skeletons for you to build, swap parts and mix and match. T-Rex and Deitron (the Dimetrodon) were two newly sculpted, small scale versions of the two skeletons from the main line and then they tossed in a Mastodon skeleton named "Mastus" and a saber tooth tiger named "Fangra". What really intrigued me as a child was what was on the bottom of the pamphlet given away inside all Bone Age kids meal toy baggies. Check out the scan I made:
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| Wait...how the hell do you get beetle and dragonfly skeletons??? |
We would have also seen 3 sets for a new 'Creatures' assortment with....
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| What size were scarabs back in prehistoric times? The size of Volkswagens?? |
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| Okay, now that is pretty cool. What kid DOESN'T want a skeleton of a dragonfly that turns into a helicopter? |
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| Okay, "flying fortress" is a bit of a stretch. I looks more like a tree. |
I poured over this pamphlet over and over again as a kid, but Kenner never released these Creatures sets OR the Mammals sets unfortunately. The only new things that came into the line after the original 1988 release was "Codus" and the massive "Brontus", those two new toys were also shown on the reverse side but then that was their last hurrah. But, don't be disheartened by what could have been, the line did produce a crap-ton of toys to buy: 9 individually carded cavemen warriors (2 for each tribe plus a more heavily armed and outfitted version of the tribe leaders- in case you couldn't buy the larger sets they came with), 6 siege weapons with real spring-powered action features and 11 dinosaur sets (3 for the Ice Clan, 4 for the Stone Clan & 4 for the Lava Clan). That's nothing to easily dismiss, that's a huge turn out for a line's initial launch. I have a nice chunk of the line, and have nearly all of the single-carded figures so expect reviews for them soon.
If you get the oppurtunity, check out Bone Age toys but if you buy them loose be sure to examine the connector clips on the skeletons: each peg is really two pieces and can easily break rendering the peg useless. I had this happen to me constantly as a kid, so this was not a old-age thing; the design was always poor. Aside from that, these are cool, obscure toys that if you love this 3" scale, dinosaurs, skeletons and caveman warfare- this is right up your alley.
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