If there is a child in your household chances are they have at least a few construction vehicles and dinosaurs in some form or another. Whether they are in books, on the wallpaper or lined up proudly along the shelf dinosaurs & construction vehicles are two of the childhood perennials that never get old. What child doesn’t love playing dinosaurs, stomping around the house, roaring at the top of their voice? And who hasn’t spent time with their little one at the fence of a construction site, their little fingers gripping the chain-link as they stare wide eyed at the diggers, dozers and cranes?
What could possibly be better than dinosaurs or construction vehicles? Dinosaurs AND construction vehicles blended together to form the loudest, biggest baddest creatures ever to crawl, stomp and roll across the surface of the earth – that’s what! Welcome to the world of giant creatures that are half dinosaur, half construction vehicle and all awesome in DINOTRUX, the fantastic new Netflix original series from DreamWorks.
What is DinoTrux?
When an erupting volcano forces Ty, an enormous Tyrannosaurus Rex combined with a megaton excavator, to flee his home valley suddenly, the tough but charismatic hero finds himself charging into an unfamiliar crater full of his favorite food: ore.
But the new landscape holds even more wondrous discoveries: other species of Dinotrux, a race of resourceful reptiles combined with hand tools called the Reptools, and a territorial bad guy with a nasty temper named D-Structs who lives by a very simple credo: “I don’t share.”
Together, the Dinotrux and Reptools join forces for the first time ever to build a bigger, better world and battle back against the biggest and baddest of them all: D-Structs, who threatens to wreck everything they’ve built. As the different species mix, huge battles break out, leading to loads of suspenseful action sequences and resourceful rescues. Whether it’s the dastardly plots of D-Structs, chaos caused by hungry Scraptors, or natural dangers like earthquakes and volcanoes, the Dinotrux and their allies are always challenged to act fast and think smart to save the day.
Some of the amazing creatures we meet in the first episode, who become Ty’s friends, are:
- A Reptool named Revvit (lizard + rotary drill),
- Skya, a sassy Craneosaur (brachiosaurus + construction crane),
- Ton-Ton, a daredevil Ankylodump (ankylosaurus + dump truck) and
- Dozer, a grumpy but kind-hearted Dozeratops (triceratops + bulldozer).
Natural predators called Scraptors and Scrapadactyls are always scrounging for scrap metal — even if it’s still attached to a Dinotrux and there are other threats too – such as:
- Rollodons (montanoceratops + road rollers),
- Gluphasaurs (dilophosauruses + hot glue guns that spit glue like the cute-but-poisonous creature in Jurassic Park),
- Towaconstrictors (snakes + tow chains whose fangs and tails link to make chains), and
- Dragonflopters (dragonflies + air pressure gauges).
Some of the other Reptools are:
What did we think of DinoTrux?
I was lucky enough to be given access to the first episode of DinoTrux and watched it with our two youngest little ones Evey & Gabriel. I was unfortunate enough to be sitting between them while we watched on the laptop and was almost deafened in stereo by the squeals, the laughter and the roaring that were induced by this amazing new show. As regular readers will know, Gabriel lives with autism and is not the most vocal child in the world (to say the least) but he was making boom & crash noises, swinging his arms around and, best of all, laughing. A laugh from your child is not a big deal for most people but from Gabriel a laugh is HUGE.
We cannot wait for the whole series to stream on August 14th – although I will find it difficult to enforce our “No binge watching for the kids” rule on this one!
A DinoTrux activity to share
We decided to fill some of the time until the series is available making up our own Dinotrux. You will notice that our imagination far outwieghed our artistic abilities but Gabriel did pretty well with cutting & pasting. This is what we came up with:
A Velocilift – part Velociraptor, part fork-lift. It’s agility helps it dart easily to where it is needed and its speed means that no load is left unmoved for long!
A Panoploroller – Part Panoplosaurus, part roller, this fully armored lizard has all the weight behind it to flatten everything in its path.
Finally, we have the Talarudemo part Talarurus part demolition crane; he uses his thick tail to knock down rock towers and his wrecking ball to give reptools rides.
Gabriel had such a great time making up his own Dinotrux – we’d love to hear all about the ones you created – share your ideas below.
