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!

2020 - What a year . . .

I can’t imagine anyone saying that there haven’t been at least some interruptions or inconveniences this year. Many have had quite a difficult time of it with shutdowns, lost jobs, and Covid. It is my sincere hope that DeJankins customers have been spared most of that.

This year has certainly seen impact to delivery schedules for new prehistoric products. With new 2021 items being revealed, we are only now finally getting the remaining 2020 into our stock. This coming Monday (the 7th), we expect the last shipment of 2020 items to arrive, the “mid-2020” CollectA figures. Once they arrive, all 2020 pieces from each of our suppliers will have been received here at DeJankins. Pending orders will be sent out as soon as possible.

The new Safari 2021 figures (only five in the prehistoric vein) are not yet available (per my sales rep at Safari). The new 2021 CollectA figures will most likely come in two waves next year as they have for the past several years, the first batch making landfall in the USA in late spring or early summer. I have no word yet on Papo figure availability for next year. Schleich will be releasing in two waves as they have been doing for the past four or five years. Their “early 2021” figures are slated to be ready in January, the remainder in July.

So, we at DeJankins want to wish each of you a Merry Christmas, and a much happier 2021 than 2020 was. Thank you for your continued support.

News Flash: United States Quarantined from 2018 CollectA products

You will not read about this in the New York Times, or in your local newspaper or online news feed.  And it's not even technically accurate.  But because of decisions beyond the control or influence of any of us collectors in the United States, we will find it very difficult to acquire new 2018 CollectA figures for our collections and stores.

Here is the notification received earlier today, directly from a CollectA representative:

Very much to my regret I need to tell you that we are unable to serve you any longer with shipments to the US. We have signed an exclusive agreement with Reeves International in the US which makes it impossible for us to send shipments to the US.

The labelling and batch codes of the different series making a full back-tracking of a shipment possible and it would be obvious who was the one to breach the territory rights. Contractually penalty clauses have been agreed upon and we cannot take the risk to go undiscovered.

I am very sorry and as much as we would like to serve you I hope you can understand that our hands are bound.

So, this doesn't sound so bad - just get the figures from Reeves International who has the exclusive rights for CollectA products in the USA.  That would be the answer except that earlier Reeves had chosen to only carry 60 of the 200+ prehistoric figures available from CollectA.  None of the 2018 pieces are among that number.

For the time being, it appears we may be at the mercy of our friends and collectors outside the borders of the USA to help us add these figures to our collections.  DeJankins will continue looking for some way to provide these to our customers and will communicate with Reeves to see if some concessions can be made.  Updates will be posted to this blog as they become available.