The children entertainment industry has made several attempts to capitalize on dinosaurs and their popularity, starting way back with the old Dinoriders cartoon. This attempt failed, probably because of its complete lack of sound effects, or lack of anything that even remotely resembled a plot. Kids know enough about dinosaurs to realise they should be able to make noises. Yet such marketing ploys seem decidedly primitive compared to a line of toys that I recently discovered while travelling through Europe. Believe it or not, these toys are better than mere dinosaurs. What could better appeal to kids than dinosaurs, you ask? Ninjas riding dinosaurs, obviously. It totally sounds like the kind of idea that a bunch of kids would come up with while playing in your backyard. Everybody loves ninjas! And people surely love them even more when they're mounted atop giant carnivorous reptiles that should only exist in a different time period altogether!
Ninjas and dinosaurs are like the yin and yang of children's entertainment, and when you put them together you get Dino Ninjas. These toys take a page out of the Dinoriders book by putting action figures astride plastic dinosaurs - though this time they are true action figures, as opposed to the boring non-ninja humans that graced the Dinoriders series. Furthermore, each Dino Ninja has a unique color and name, ranging from the incredibly banal Dino Roger to the presumably villainous Dino Ben. It's unclear whether the name belongs to the dinosaur or the ninja, but I doubt it really matters. The names are unbelievably generic and boring either way, and hardly fitting for either ninjas or dinosaurs. Of course, when you have a concept as good as this, you don't really need to worry so much about trivialities like names. You can tell the designers thought their work was done as soon as they had this idea, and couldn't be bothered with any further details.
Dino Ninjas are definitely off to a good start, but they will only achieve true longevity if their toy line can easily be expanded and extended (inherited, perhaps?) for future cash grabs. Presumably these expansions would have to include antagonists to do battle with the Dino Ninjas. But what kind of foes could match up against such heroes? My suggestion would be pirates! Riding gorrillas. With ROCKET LAUNCHERS! Because you can never take a good idea too far. And this way you could tap into that whole Godzilla vs. King Kong vibe. You could even give them amazing names like Gorilla Colin.
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