My Thoughts on Dink, the Little Dinosaur

[pokeplayer984]

I often saw people here referencing Dink, the Little Dinosaur.  Curiosity finally got the best of me and I decided to check it out.

Now, it was difficult for me to find all of the episodes.  Usually, I just have to look for a torrent of it and I'm good to go.  However, my searching got me absolutely nothing in torrents this time around and YouTube didn't have them all.  Luckily, someone went to the trouble of putting them on Rapidshare.com and I was able to find all the episodes there.

So, what are my thoughts after watching only 9 episodes?  To be honest, I'm not impressed here.

Sure, I wasn't expecting something as epic as anything Land Before Time has offered, but if there's one word I would use to describe Dink, the Little Dinosaur, it's "predictable".  The episodes are just predictable to me.  It really doesn't have one bit of surprise factor in it for me.  I can tell what's going to happen even though I've never seen it before.

Also, if you want a show where the adults are STUPID, look no further than this.  They're even worse than what we get of Land Before Time.  The ones in Land Before Time are so stupid that it's funny, but the ones in Dink, the Little Dinosaur are just terrible.  A mother Triceratops not being able to recognize what her own species looks like just shows you how stupid they get.  To be honest, I can't stand this level of stupidity.

The only likable characters end up being the main five in the story, but they sadly don't add much.  There's not much to say about them and not much I want to emphasize on.

In fact, the predatory villains end up looking less threatening than anything Land Before Time has offered.  These guys look like wimps when compared to the worst of the Land Before Time sharpteeth.  It's no wonder they go after the kids.  They probably couldn't get anything else if they tried.  Even then though, they fail more miserably than the worst of sharpteeth.

In the end, Dink, the Little Dinosaur is, simply put, a Kids Show that is meant for only Kids to enjoy.  Even I, as an adult who likes Kids Shows, can't find myself enjoying this.

To me, there's a reason it went off the air.  It just SUCKED!

I'm sorry to say it, but I hate this show.

Yet, I can't seem to tear myself away from it, despite how bad it is.

Looks like this show has become my guilty pleasure.

[Malte279]

Having watched all the episodes (I owe you Kacie for sending them to me) I have a higher opinion of Dink the little dinosaur than you do John.
Now I am not praising it to the heavens, but I still found it quite entertaining. Produced back in the late eighties / early nineties on a much lower budget than the land before time I think they made something quite good given the limitation of their resources.
Some of the stories are predictable, but so have been most of the LBT stories. There is an introduction, a problem is presented and as happy endings are a matter of course in kids movies you have a fair idea of how the problem might be solved from the moment it is presented. Still I think that some of the Dink movies had really interesting ideas and some of them almost certainly inspired some LBT movies. There is an episode for example in which the flyer flapper meets an uncle who makes up false stories about his past styling himself more of a heroe than he is... does that sound familiar?
And there have been some interesting and funny ideas which have not been used in LBT stories (not advocating rip offs here, but something inspired by something else doesn't need to go all the way to being a mere rip off).

Also, if you want a show where the adults are STUPID, look no further than this. They're even worse than what we get of Land Before Time.

Thing is that grownups (with the only exception of Crusty the tortoise) play a much lesser role in Dink than they did in the (later produced) LBT sequels. They are mere extras most of the time and I don't think they come across as so much more stupid than those LBT grownups which are mere extras as well. The case about the Triceratops you mentioned was necessary to provide the background for the respective story. In nature it can happen that whatever hatches from the egg in my nest is accepted as my kid (cuckoos being the most striking example).

The only likable characters end up being the main five in the story, but they sadly don't add much. There's not much to say about them and not much I want to emphasize on.

Sorry, but to me this sounds a lot like you were out to list just all that you found bad and at the same time trying to blind out all that may have been good. A more objective review looks different.
One of the benefits of the Dink series is that each of the main characters gets his or her spotlight and it is quite fairly shared. Many have criticized for LBT to be often too focused on Littlefoot only and I think the makers of Dink deserve credit for never conducting such a mistake in the first place.

In fact, the predatory villains end up looking less threatening than anything Land Before Time has offered.

I disagree. Sure the sharpteeth in Dink never came close to being as scary as the original movie's sharptooth, but I still think they did not dull them down as much as LBT has done in the sequels since number 10. Also, there are some creepy parts as well. Shylah being caught up by a big snake and brought to its nest to be fed to the snakes brood... that did not come without some degree of scariness.

I found many of the Dink episodes nicely made, very funny and in many cases you could see where the inspiration for LBT sequels was coming from (and I am not talking of the fact that some of the same voice actors were involved).
Sure, it does have its weaknesses and maybe it does not want to be taken just as serious as LBT does (e.g. the character Scat is a level of comic-relief that no LBT character was ever subjected to), but I really think it is quite enjoyable. I do not think it deserves to be discarded as contemptuously as you did John.
My suggestion is for everyone to give it a try and then decide for yourself whether you like it or not.
I for my part deeply regret that I lost my dink episode recordings when my external harddrive broke back in November

[DarkHououmon]

Personally I disagree with you Pokeplayer. Dink The Little Dinosaur is a show that I still like to watch from time to time and, in my opinion, it is not as bad as you are trying to make it out to be.

Personally I feel there were some things the series pulled off better than The Land Before Time. For instance, I prefer the predators in Dink than I do in LBT; they come off more of a threat to the main characters than many of the sharpteeth in later LBT sequels. For example, there was a group of predators in one Dink episode that had actually come up with a plan to lure a group of herbivores into one spot for an ambush by blocking off water flow. Not only does this show intelligence in this animals, but it makes the predators more threatening than the sharpteeth of some LBT movies (like the one who trips over a log twice or the one defeated by a tickling).

So yeah I feel the predators are treated better in this show than they were in LBT. They are capable of speech, as revealed in the episode with Scratcher (whom may be the direct inspiration for Chomper) and aren't treated as though they were the dumbest things in the world (like they are in LBT).

There have been some Dink episodes with stories similar to what you'll find in LBT. While it may be just coincidence, it could be that you actually owe Dink the very LBT that you love, Pokeplayer. If it hadn't existed, chances are LBT would not be the way it is today.

You say that Dink is a show meant only for kids, but let me point something out to you: so is Land Before Time. LBT is meant for only kids; that's what they are made for. Yet there are still people who like it, not just kids but adults too.

Personally I view Dink the Little Dinosaur as an underrated show and it deserves more credit than you are giving it, Pokeplayer.

[Cancerian Tiger]

Shylah being caught up by a big snake and brought to its nest to be fed to the snakes brood... that did not come without some degree of scariness.

 

Snakes had not even evolved yet when the dinosaurs were still in existence :blink:.  Even Tickles' existence in LBT IV was accurate, since the late Cretaceous Period began to see the first mammals in the form of small rodent-like creatures.  

I've never seen this series, so I can't possibly have an opinion about it.  The only thing I can say is, based on what I mentioned, I wish they would make things more accurate.  I can tolerate dinosaur species from different periods existing together (an example would be Spike the Stegosaurus living in the late Cretaceous Period) since, in the case of LBT, it is intended to promote diversity and acceptance (and the use of dinosaur species that are popular favorites among humankind ).  However, if they're adding snakes in, they'd might as well add wooly mammoths and cavemen :blink:.  Adding creatures that did not come into existence until long after the dinosaurs vanished is much worse than putting dinosaur species from different time periods in the same time period.  That's just my opinion, though.

[pokeplayer984]

Hmm.  Maybe I'm judging this too soon.  I have yet to see the episodes some of you have mentioned, so maybe those will catch my interest more than what I've seen so far.  Let's not forget, I've only seen 9 episodes here. :

[DarkHououmon]

Snakes had not even evolved yet when the dinosaurs were still in existence :blink:.

Not exactly what I heard. In fact there was a snake species that did live during the time of the dinosaurs. I think it still had limbs, but it's still considered a snake.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madtsoiidae

[Kor]

I do enjoy watching the series now and then.  Like with any show some episodes are better then others and some have what I think are silly moments like Crusty taking of his shell, or a milk vine being able to be used like a bottle to feed infant dinosaurs, but overall I do like it, except for moments like those.  And one does have to understand that with only 8 or however many minutes each episode is they can't tell a story in the same way as an lbt movie or even a lbt tv series episode which has around twice the time Dink does.

[Malte279]

Snakes had not even evolved yet when the dinosaurs were still in existence :blink:

For all we know dinosaurs weren't able to talk either
But seriously, you do have a good point that scientific accuracy should not entirely be abandoned even in a movie for a young audience. But as far as the existence of snakes in the age of the dinosaurs goes there is no entire abandoning of scientific accuracy there are snake fossils that are between 90 and 100 million years old which would be well in the cretaceous period and since the said fossil founds are remarkably similar to modern day snakes already many scientists assume that the evolution of snakes began much earlier in the early cretaceous or even the late Jurassic period.

[pokeplayer984]

Do you all know the main problem I'm having right now?  It's the fact that most of the episodes are on Rapidshare.  The big problem with them is that if you aren't a user that pays them, you can't download all the time.

Their servers keep getting overloaded with paying customers and they refuse to expand it for the free users.  When the servers get overloaded, free users can't download.  They have to wait until it's less busy.

With progress, I have found that either night or early morning is the best time for me to download, but there are times when I just want it NOW, but it's overloaded.  So I have to wait and that could take hours.

Whoever decided to put them up on Rapidshare had a bad idea going here.  There's better on-line file sharing sites out there.  The episodes end up being under 100 MB each, so there's hardly an excuse to not go with something else.

Despite of how my ending opinion is of this, I'm going to do the fans of this show a BIG favor when I'm done getting them all.

Perhaps there's a greater reason for me to get into this in the first place.

[DarkHououmon]

There's something I forgot to point out in my previous post, Cancerian Tiger. LBT (or more specifically the first movie) had introduced an animal that was not at all present during the time of the dinosaurs: Dimetrodon. Dimetrodon had lived on Earth during the Permian Era, before the Great Dying and definitely before the Triassic, where the first, primitive dinosaurs started to appear. This is just as inaccurate as putting humans in the Cretaceous Era.

[Cancerian Tiger]

Snakes had not even evolved yet when the dinosaurs were still in existence :blink:

For all we know dinosaurs weren't able to talk either
But seriously, you do have a good point that scientific accuracy should not entirely be abandoned even in a movie for a young audience. But as far as the existence of snakes in the age of the dinosaurs goes there is no entire abandoning of scientific accuracy there are snake fossils that are between 90 and 100 million years old which would be well in the cretaceous period and since the said fossil founds are remarkably similar to modern day snakes already many scientists assume that the evolution of snakes began much earlier in the early cretaceous or even the late Jurassic period.

Jeez, maybe I should tell the park interpretor to not teach this to the Junior Rangers (the part about snakes evolving after dinosaurs) :unsure:.  I also overlooked the Dimetrodon before making my previous post.  Boy, do I feel sheepish now .  Never mind what I said about snakes then  .

[landbeforetimelover]

I'll take Pokeplayer's word for it.  No disrespect to Malte or anyone else who disagrees with him, but I just not into real "kiddy" shows except for LBT.

[Ptyra]

Snakes had not even evolved yet when the dinosaurs were still in existence :blink:

For all we know dinosaurs weren't able to talk either
But seriously, you do have a good point that scientific accuracy should not entirely be abandoned even in a movie for a young audience. But as far as the existence of snakes in the age of the dinosaurs goes there is no entire abandoning of scientific accuracy there are snake fossils that are between 90 and 100 million years old which would be well in the cretaceous period and since the said fossil founds are remarkably similar to modern day snakes already many scientists assume that the evolution of snakes began much earlier in the early cretaceous or even the late Jurassic period.

Jeez, maybe I should tell the park interpretor to not teach this to the Junior Rangers (the part about snakes evolving after dinosaurs) :unsure:.  I also overlooked the Dimetrodon before making my previous post.  Boy, do I feel sheepish now .  Never mind what I said about snakes then  .

Well, there was of course some kind of VERY close ancestor during that time. But when snakes really became snakes was, of course, after the dinosaurs...and frekkin huge.

[DarkHououmon]

What about about the madtsoiidae? It consists of very primitive snakes and some species did, according to what I read, live in the late Cretaceous.

[Kor]

I"m not anywhere near an expert but I think the dimetrodon was a different type then dinosaurs are since I think dinos are archosaurs and dimetrodon are synapsids which some later became mammals.

Though pterosaurs I think were not dinosaurs either, many kids lump all those under dinosaurs and many adults too.

[Pangaea]

Snakes did indeed appear in the fossil record as early as 100 million years ago. They may have had small hind limbs, but otherwise they would have been recognizable as snakes. These included Najash, Eupodophis, and Pachyrhachis. There’s even a type of boa known from the same fossil site that produced T. rex and Triceratops. It’s probable that by the end of the Cretaceous, there were at least some snakes that closely resembled modern species.

It’s also true that Dimetrodon was more closely related to humans than it was to dinosaurs (or any reptile, for that matter; it was a synapsid, belonging to a completely separate branch from reptiles on the family tree of land vertebrates).

Depicting Dimetrodon living alongside dinosaurs (and mistaking it for a dinosaur itselfóthough I don’t believe anyone on this thread has done that) is one of the most common and oft-cited paleontological inaccuracies in dinosaur films. However, I personally consider it more plausible for a Dimetrodon (not just one individual, that is; a population) to survive the Permian extinction and persist into the Mesozoic than it is for a human or mammoth to evolve 65 million years early.

[WeirdRaptor]

I know this is going to seem pointless, but all I can say on this topic is that I've had a strong fondness for Dink the Little Dinosaur for far too long to ever truly say anything against it. I watched this religiously when I was a little kid and collected the VHS tapes.

But yeah, when looked at objectively, the show does not stand up very well. The animation is shoddy and the stories are predictable, but it still has it's own charm to it.

By the way, that's Anndi McAfee, the voice actress who took over for Cera from LBT5 on as Amber.

[pokeplayer984]

You know, as I go on, I'm getting a rather strange feeling of familiarity here.  People who really aren't into this end up calling Dink, the Little Dinosaur a rip off of Land Before Time.

If anything, this was inspired by Land Before Time and, this might be a stretch, The Land Before Time Sequels and TV Series Episodes were inspired by Dink, the Little Dinosaur.

It seems like a high possibility that this is responsible for all Land Before Time has today.  The references are small, but they're there.

As pointed out, Chomper could have been inspired by the episode "The Gentle Hunter".  Of course, we all know that Universal pretty much dropped the idea of Chomper eating green food. (Especially with his reaction.) However, this "Gentle Hunter" ate fruit.  Big difference, huh?

Then there's the episode "Amber's Crusade" where Amber is trying to take care of some baby dinos and they get into just as many problems as Dinah and Dana did through their actions. :

And don't tell me that Shyler losing a tooth didn't inspire Chomper losing one as well.

Pterano?  Uh, Flap's Uncle Longbeak anyone?  Especially with how much Longbeak and Flap look so much alike.  Much like Petrie and Pterano, don't ya think?

Amber's Birthday/Ruby's Birthday (Though Ruby didn't get as many presents)

Seriously, I could go on here.

Hmm... looking at this, maybe there is something I can do for the fans.

Oh, and I think I'm actually starting to like it now.

[pokeplayer984]

Whoa!  And I thought Land Before Time went far when it came to injuries.  However, this one from Dink, the Little Dinosaur makes those injuries look like bruises.



And no, that is not a mistake.  This guy literally has no eye right there through the whole episode.

Geez!  That's pretty far!

[Ptyra]

I personally think that a lot of what happened in the comparisons between this and the series is just a coincidence.

I tried giving it a few runs and I didn't make it through the end of some of the episodes. I didn't like the characters as much...especially Scat. His voice was irritating and although "Scat" is short for "Scardy Cat"...seriously, most of us might know what "scat" is.

I'm gonna need to find a place to see more episodes to see a lot of the guest characters. I see a lot that I might be interested...and then possibly lose interest in.

It would, however, be good for inspiring some of my own characters personalities.

I have a completely OC character that is a bit like Flapper...if you give him a lot of coffee.